CANBERRA’S TIRED OLD SCRIPT HAS LED TO A LESS DEMOCRATIC SOLOMON ISLANDS AND A LESS...
0Canberra’s tired old script has led to a less democratic Solomon Islands and a less secure Australia
In the absence of a realistic and clear eyed strategy. Australia is again trying to buy leverage with the corrupt central elite China must be hoping that Australia persists in its “business as usual” approach to Solomon Islands. An appeasement policy by Australia towards the Solomons prime minister. Manasseh Sogavare. has been outstandingly successful for Beijing over the past few years. and the CCP’s muscular actions in the South Pacific in the last six months seem to anticipate that it will continue. Since the news of Sogavare’s alleged secret military deal with China was leaked in March. the cycle of response and counter response between Honiara and Canberra has been entirely predictable. It goes like this: a bombshell revelation is leaked from Solomon government sources to local social media. The Australian press seizes on it. There is silence from both capitals – a calculated one from Honiara. and an agonised one from Canberra. Sogavare denies the truth of the news. He then pivots to blustering about sovereignty. Morrison issues cloying statements about the “Pacific family”. DFAT officials are trotted out to recycle tired talking points about cooperation and Australia’s “favoured status” as Solomon Islands’s security partner. Canberra blusters to its counterparts in Washington DC – who. years ago. made the fatal error of outsourcing their response to the running cycle of crises in the Solomons to Australia and New Zealand – that it has everything under control. A closer search for details reveals that much is still unclear and unconfirmed. Australian funded thinktank analysts and academics seize on this lack of clarity to play semantics. They then propose their favourite activities and a few harebrained schemes as solutions. The mainstream media sidesteps these gatekeepers and piles unrelenting coverage on a region where they have next to no local expertise or presence. Canberra officials fly in. grab a photo opportunity and leave. Confirming and increasingly grave revelations emerge from Honiara. Solomon Islander voices are called for. They respond with clarity. authority and eloquence – then are steadfastly ignored if they clash with the status quo narrative from Canberra. An Australian minister flies into Honiara. meets with Sogavare and repeats the original points that Morrison first made. The serious statements of “concern” they utter are completely neutered by overwrought kowtowing to “sovereignty”. which rings hollow in a country that is close to being a failed state. In the backrooms. Canberra officials propose a response. It looks exactly like that of the last five. 10. 15 years. only more supersized. In Solomon Islands we can recite this tired old script with our eyes closed. because we have watched it many times before. It was the script between Sogavare and Morrison in 2019 before the switch to China from Taiwan. It was the script last November after Australia intervened to tip the scales in favour of Sogavare when he faced a parliamentary motion of no confidence. Even further back in 2018. it was the script between Canberra and Honiara when the Huawei cable deal was proposed and Canberra coughed up the money for the Coral Sea cable. The pattern is clear. In the absence of a realistic and clear eyed strategy. Australia is again trying to buy leverage with the corrupt central elite after having squandered its influence in the Solomons for more than a decade. For 15 years. during the RAMSI mission. Australian officials had a hands off approach towards the vastly corrupt logging industry that has been China’s Trojan horse into Solomon politics. At the same time. they concentrated power and resources on the central Solomon government. setting it up for capture. This myopia continues unabated to this day. with a deep unwillingness by the Australian foreign policy establishment to try alternate approaches that engage with the wider parliamentary system in Solomon Islands. or...
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