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Written by Dr. Binoy Kampmark
When will this nonsense on familial connection between Australia and the Pacific end? In 2018, Australia’s then Pentecostal Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, drew upon a term that his predecessors had not. On November 8 that year, he announced that Australia’s engagement with the region would be taken to another level, launching a “new chapter in relations with our Pacific family.”
In an address to Asialink prior to attending the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Osaka, Morrison was again found talking about the Indo-Pacific, which “embraces our Pacific family with whom we have special relationships and duties, our close neighbours, our major trading partners, our alliance partners and the world’s fastest growing economies.”
Such language had all the resonances of white European paternalism, ever watchful over the savage dark races who would only ever advance with the aid, and management, of civilised powers. It was a sentiment reflected in the views of British explorer and anthropologist William Winwood Reade, who opined in his 1872 work The Martyrdom of Man that, “Children are ruled and schooled by force, and it is not an empty metaphor to say that savages are children.” While he accepted slavery as “happily extinct”, he thought it wise for a European government “to introduce compulsory labour among the barbarous races that acknowledge its sovereignty and occupy its land.”
The language of the family imputes the existence of stern, guiding parents and wayward, mischievous children who might dare show some disobedience. The parents, in the “Pacific family”, are never assumed to be any of the Pacific Island states, who are seen as merely squabbling siblings in need of control.
Morrison’s coining of the expression had the benefit of unmasking a Freudian truth. Pacific Island states had long been considered charity cases and laggards in development, useful only as a labour source for Australian markets or security outposts. Concerns about climate change had barely been acknowledged. When needed, Australian police and military forces had also intervened to arrest any supposed sliding into instability.
The term became even more problematic in the wake of independent security decisions made by Pacific Island states with China. A central premise of the charity-child relationship between Canberra and its smaller neighbours has been of one compliant behaviour. We give you money and largesse from the aid budget; you stay loyal and consistent to Australian interests. Of particular concern, even terror, was the Solomon Islands-China security pact which had, on the face of it, the potential to facilitate the establishment of a Chinese military base.
In his April visit to Honiara, Senator Zed Seselja, Australia’s Minister for International Development, proved unsparing in reiterating the familial script. He told the Solomons Island Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare that, “the Pacific family” would “always meet the security needs of our region.” He would be wise to “consult the Pacific family in the spirit of regional openness and transparency, consistent with our region’s security frameworks.”
The concern from Australian security wonks at Honiara’s willingness to go so far with Beijing caused an outburst of neo-imperial candour. The parent should take full control of the situation and initiate an abusive, punitive invasion, ostensibly in the name of protecting the sovereignty of another state. A rattled Solomon Islands Prime Minister rebuked such views in parliament, claiming that “we are treated as kindergarten students walking around with Colt .45s in our hands, and therefore need to be supervised.”
Australia’s then opposition Labor Party, vying for government in the May elections, quickly fell in with the language, extending it and bending it to suit. In fact, it went so far as to scold the Coalition government for sending a junior minister to the Solomon Islands to argue against Honiara’s signing of a security pact with Beijing. Instead of sending Seselja, Labor campaign spokesman Jason Clare argued, Foreign Minister Marise Payne should have been on that plane. “What happened instead, the foreign minister went to a business function and some bloke called Zed got sent there.” Then savages were simply not wooed.
Building on the theme of coaxing and pressuring Pacific neighbours to do the right thing by Australia’s security interests, Clare insisted on a more aggressive pose. “You can’t sit back on the deck chair in the Pacific and just assume that everything’s going to be okay.” The dark children, in other words, might play up.
The new Labor government of Anthony Albanese revelled in the same language of paternal condescension, letting Pacific Island states know that Canberra was keeping watch on any errant behaviour while still claiming to respect them. Just prior to visiting Samoa and Tonga in early June, Foreign Minister Penny Wong boasted of embarking on her second visit to the Pacific since assuming her cabinet post. “We want to make a uniquely Australian contribution to help build a stronger Pacific family – through social and economic opportunities including pandemic recovery, health development and infrastructure support, as well as through our Pacific labour programs and permanent migration.”
Pacific states were also assured that parent Australia had heard their concerns about climate change in a way that the previous parent had not. “We will stand shoulder to shoulder with our Pacific family in addressing the existential threat of climate change.”
The persistent use of the term “Pacific family” has not gone unnoticed among some Australian critics. Julie Hunt is unimpressed. “If someone tries to inveigle themselves into our family, or continually tell us that we are part of their family, how would we feel? Isn’t it a bit presumptuous?” The utterance of such familial terminology brought with it a range of unpleasant neo-colonial connotations. For Hunt, the term would remain meaningless till “we show by our actions that we understand their perspectives and respect them. Dare I suggest that we wait until they return the feelings, and wait until they call us family?” And a long wait that may prove to be.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Its all about China now that China is offering help to the Islands treated badly by Australia .Like the UK it thinks its a “big force ” when both countries are minor servants to the USA .Australia cuts off its nose to spite its face by putting trade barriers and harassing Chinese residents and tourists . I used to be in communication with two Australians -only one now who say the Australian police are “owned ” by Israel one is constantly harassed by police and the other had run ins with them because he ran an anti-Zionist website that attracted great attention worldwide-one still emails me.
Those islands love Australia. Thats a fact! I have asked them. In fact i know them! You are wrong and I am right!
Morisson has done a lot of bad things SF but this is not one of them.
This wanker could not believe he was dumped by the Aussies since he’d dedicated his leadership to uplift democracy and protect national interest… Who the hell is he fooling?
Good question,but there were several cross dressers in his ministry,which drew the line close,once affirmed support to nazis,the peoples turned on him thus got the sack at breakneck speed,whilst albo may be no better or worse,atleast there is a chance to remedy relations with china though the lgbtq factor does not foresee positive outlook in the future,see too many nocando keweers not enough anzac
Australia an US lapdog and spokesman for US and UK imperial interests in south Pacific. I’m sure ex colonies of former European colonial powers learned a few hints about meaning behind “family” when offered by the west. If the west now is offering an olive branch to their ex colonies from Africa, South America, Asia and Pacific is just a solid proof that times of western dominance over the world is melting away and new alliances are trying to be formed without much success. Globalisation, the western mantra by the end of last century has achieved the western world dream of producing high profit while employing the cheapest possible labour and resources to produce it… and it worked for a few decades but then the sources of cheap labour build themselves to “threatening” proportions of being the world’s leading economical powers… how that has happened? Nobody planned that! Well … there was a bit of miscalculation in the plan where “pions” are not capable of becoming educated while doing the job… Welcome to NWO and multi-polar world where the west is not the place where sun of democracy raises but where it sets.
No big deal also resist hanging out in kweer cbd hornets nest,nothing to gain there anyway (period) Conversely my rules,my wealth,my life,my body,my soul no one can take it,they tried,but they all failed I have a fist and weapon too,both equally effective,yet did not cheat death to give into nwo lgbtq vaccine! (FREE ASSANGE,ALBO YE WEAK LIEING MAGGOT)
Morrison and his nazi gay wannabe goons were sacked because the ozi dollar got raped by team USA!
racist convict island—send these lemmings to Kan sas