The Thin Red Line is a novel by James Jones set during the World War Two battle between the United States and Japan for control of the Solomon Islands. It is about the devastation war visits even on the “winners”; the title refers to the physical and mental fragility of human beings, which combat inevitably exposes with horrifying consequences. And it is about the hypocrisy and callousness of those who give the orders to fight without having to suffer those consequences.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently declared a different sort of “red line” in the Solomons. “We won’t be having Chinese military naval bases in our region on our doorstep”, he fumed, after confirmation that the Solomon Islands and China had signed a new security treaty. It was a warning to China to back off from what the Australian government considers its exclusive sphere of influence. It also puts Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare on notice about the limits of acceptable behaviour on the part of junior members of what Australia patronisingly terms its “Pacific family”.
But if this red line were to be breached, would it mean war, or an invasion of the Solomon Islands? Neither Australia nor the United States will rule out the possibility. On Anzac Day, Defence Minister Peter Dutton bluntly told Australians “to prepare for war” to counter China’s rise. 
Not to be outdone, Labor’s shadow minister for foreign affairs, Penny Wong, labelled the China-Solomons treaty Australia’s “worst foreign policy blunder in the Pacific since the end of World War Two”. To ward off China, Labor has pledged to train more security forces from Pacific nations and increase Australian maritime surveillance activities in the region. The single biggest argument between Labor and the Liberals in the election campaign to date is about who would be the more competent managers of Australian imperialism.
Presumably Jones’ novel has not been foremost in the minds of Australia’s leaders in recent days. But World War Two certainly has been. Victory on Guadalcanal and in the earlier battle of the Coral Sea, which lies between Australia and the Solomons, marked the moment when the Allies went on the offensive against Japan. By smashing Japan’s military power, the US established its current hegemony in the Asia-Pacific.
We are repeatedly told that the Solomon Islands are “just” 1,750 kilometres from Australia, as if their proximity means a Chinese presence there would physically threaten this country. There’s no serious prospect of that. The Solomons’ real strategic significance, now as in World War Two, is that they sit astride supply lines with the United States. By threatening to cut that link, a Chinese military base in the Solomons would constrain the role Australia could play in any conflict between the US and China, for example over Taiwan or in the South China Sea. It would weaken Australia militarily and reduce its utility as a base for US forces.
In other words, the Solomons matter little in themselves, but they play a role in the intensifying competition between China and the United States for regional dominance. The Australian ruling class benefits immensely from US power in Asia, which has guaranteed not only strategic stability but an economic architecture under which Australian exports to China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and South-East Asia have flourished. All this is threatened by China’s rise; hence Australia’s determination to preserve the current international order.
It should be noted that both Sogavare and China have disavowed any plans to establish a Chinese military base in the Solomon Islands. A leaked draft of their treaty suggests China would be permitted to deploy security forces to the Solomons only if the latter’s government asked for security assistance. That’s little different to an existing treaty between the Solomon Islands and Australia, which was invoked late last year when Australian soldiers and police were deployed after political unrest in the capital, Honiara. Little wonder Sogavare would seek an alternative source of international assistance, lest he becomes dependent on an Australian government that has made no secret of its disapproval of his friendly ties with China.
Australia repeatedly denounces China’s presence in the Pacific as threatening the sovereignty of smaller nations. Events in the Solomons give the lie to this rhetoric. Pacific nations are sovereign, but only if they exercise their sovereignty within the “red lines” laid down by Australia itself. 
It’s the same story in Papua New Guinea. Australia is building a new naval base on Manus Island, which lies off PNG’s north coast. But rumours last year that China might construct a fishing port on the island of Daru in the Torres Strait caused panic in Australia, because it supposedly could provide cover for construction of a Chinese naval base.
So Australia reserves to itself the exclusive right to establish military bases in the South Pacific, under threat of war if other countries do the same. Put simply, the Pacific, in the eyes of those who run Australia, is “our backyard”, not China’s. It’s the same sort of imperialist logic that Vladimir Putin invokes to justify his brutal invasion of Ukraine: that NATO might construct military bases there that threaten Russia’s interests.
Beyond these staggering double standards lies an important reality. When Australia and the US talk about defending the “international rules-based order”, they mean maintaining their own positions at the top of the imperialist pecking order. They mean that every other country must obey the rules that they have established in their own interests.
With bitter irony, Jones dedicated The Thin Red Line to the “greatest and most heroic of all human endeavours, WAR and WARFARE”, which provide us “the heroes, the presidents and leaders, the monuments and museums which we erect to them in the name of PEACE”. Leaders like Morrison, Dutton and Wong, who are marching us ever deeper into a more dangerous future.

Sam Pietsch

Red lines, imperialism and the Solomon Islands

Australian imperialism between the US and China

Australia’s rivalry with China in the south-west Pacific is intensifying. On 8 November, Scott Morrison declared it was time for Australia to “step up” in the region. He revealed a new aid package for Pacific island countries, featuring a $2 billion financing facility to help construct basic infrastructure including telecommunications, energy, water and transport.
This might sound generous, but it will do little to solve the problems of economic development and poverty confronting Pacific island nations. It also isn’t clear how much of the money will come from cuts elsewhere to the foreign aid budget, or what conditions might be attached to any loans. The bulk of it will find its way back into the wallets of Australian contractors. A further $1 billion has been allocated to export finance assistance for Australian businesses, with the express purpose of helping them compete in the region.
The Australian government is not motivated by humanitarian concerns, but by fears that China is gaining influence in the region at Australia’s expense.
Announcing the new policy, Morrison said, “This is our patch. This is our part of the world”. The trouble is, not everyone agrees.
In the cynical world of imperialist rivalry, so-called humanitarian or development aid is just another bargaining chip. As the 2017 Australian Foreign Policy White Paper noted, “Much of the new competition for influence is … being played out through infrastructure development”.
Australia is already by far the largest provider of aid in the south-west Pacific, with expenditure estimated by the Lowy Institute at nearly $800 million in 2016, more than four times larger than China’s.
In recent years, however, Australian aid has been cut back. The Chinese government has been expanding its presence in the region, as part of its wider project of challenging the dominance of the United States and its allies in the Asia-Pacific. 
The new aid package attempts to shore up Australia’s pre-eminent position. For example, Australia will fund a humanitarian and disaster relief ship operating semi-permanently in the region. China already has a similar hospital ship in operation. In June, Australia stepped in to construct a new international telecommunications link for the Solomon Islands after Chinese company Huawei had initially been contracted for the job.
Increasingly, the jostling for position includes military aspects and financial aid. Australia has committed to supplying 19 new naval patrol boats to several Pacific countries at a cost of $2 billion. Now, a dedicated facility will be created in Australia for training Pacific nations’ police forces, and an ongoing Australian Defence Force detachment will be formed to tour the region training local militaries.
This focus on security reflects longstanding Australian concerns that “unstable” island nations could provide an opening for major power rivals such as China to gain a foothold in the region.
Australia is looking to boost its military position in its former colony of Papua New Guinea. About 1,500 ADF personnel were stationed in the capital, Port Moresby, during the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, an ideal opportunity to parade Australia’s military ties with PNG in front of international dignitaries.
In early November, it was announced that Australia would fund a redevelopment of the Lombrum Naval Base on Manus Island. Once again, this move was prompted by rumours that China was working on a similar deal with the PNG government.
Lombrum was a major base for the United States during World War Two, and was operated by Australia until 1974. It occupies a strategic location facing open waters to the north of PNG, adjacent to major shipping lanes connecting Australia with north-east Asia and North America. Although it is a PNG facility, the Australian Navy is planning how it could use the enlarged port at Lombrum as a base for operations. The United States Navy will reportedly be joining them.
It’s hard to see how any of this is in the best interests of Pacific islanders. Morrison claims that Australia’s new policy is in accord with the Boe Declaration on regional security, issued at a recent meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum. But Pacific leaders actually said that “climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific”.
Obviously, Scott “my-best-friend-is-a-lump-of-coal” Morrison will not be acting on the threat that some Pacific islands could be literally wiped off the map by rising sea levels. Nor will home affairs minister Peter Dutton be opening Australia’s borders to climate refugees who find their island homes increasingly uninhabitable.
At least the Pacific nations can look forward to more visits from foreign naval vessels. Flying the Australian flag, of course.

Australia attempting to ward off Chinese influence among Pacific island nations

In a rare moment of clarity, Donald Trump tweeted after Scott Morrison became prime minister, “There are no greater friends than the United States and Australia”.
Coming from the bigot-in-chief, such endearment would turn the stomach of any decent human being. But it was a sweet serenade to the ears of Scott Morrison, who in turn waxed lyrical in a phone call to Trump about “the strength and depth of our alliance and the unbreakable friendship” between the two countries.
It’s a bipartisan love-in. Labor leader Bill Shorten may have described Donald Trump as “barking mad” and “entirely unsuitable to be leader of the free world” during the 2016 presidential elections. But once Trump was elected, Labor’s shadow minister for foreign affairs Penny Wong confirmed that “the US alliance remains critical to Australia” and she now boasts of plans for “both broadening and deepening our relationship with the US”.
After all, what’s a crazy president or two between friends? The US-Australia alliance is far too important to get hung up on trivialities.
Origins of the alliance
The alliance has its origins in the destruction of World War Two and Cold War paranoia. Previously, the Australian ruling class had looked to the British empire to guarantee its security in a region comfortably divided among European powers. Japanese imperialism smashed this old order, as France, Britain, the Netherlands and Australia were driven in short order from their colonial holdings.
Although initially losing its colony in the Philippines, the United States was able to regroup, and used Australia as a base from which to re-conquer south-east Asia. The USA’s victory established it as the main imperial power in the Asia-Pacific, and it replaced Britain as Australia’s “great and powerful friend”.
The alliance is formalised in the three-way ANZUS treaty, signed in 1951 with the participation of New Zealand. Australia had wanted to impose a “hard peace” on Japan, permanently deindustrialising its long time rival. But US strategists wanted to rehabilitate Japan as a friendly power to help contain the USSR and China. In exchange for Australia acquiescing to this plan, the United States signed ANZUS to placate ingrained Australian paranoia about the “Yellow Peril”.
On the face of it, the treaty wasn’t much of a payoff. It says very little, committing the parties only to consult one another in the event that the security of any one of them is threatened in the Pacific. Successful alliances, however, depend not on legal clauses, but on the material interests to which treaties merely give expression. And both Australia and the United States receive ample benefit to make the alliance worthwhile.
Australia: loyal ally of US imperialism
Most obviously, Australia has proved a loyal partner to US imperialism. Korea. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Iraq again. Syria. These are the wars the United States has fought in Asia since World War Two, a roll-call of death and destruction. Uniquely among the USA’s allies, Australia has been present for each and every one.
While Australian contributions have been tokenistic from a military point of view, they are useful for propaganda depicting the USA as leading coalitions of democratic, freedom-loving countries against assorted dictators and evil doers.
More important to the USA is Australia’s primary strategic asset – its geography. Located adjacent to Asia but isolated enough to make enemy attacks nearly impossible, Australia is perfectly placed to serve as the southern anchor to the USA’s dominance in the Asia-Pacific, just as bases in Japan do in the north. Domestic political stability adds to the attraction.
During the Cold War, the United States established critical communications and intelligence infrastructure in Australia. Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, is jointly operated by the Australian military and US intelligence agencies including the CIA. The base is used to communicate with spy satellites above China, Russia and the Middle East. Intelligence processed at Pine Gap feeds directly into the US war machine, targeting drone strikes, for example, from intercepted mobile phone transmissions.
The North-West Cape base in Western Australia, which houses the most powerful low frequency radio transmitter in the southern hemisphere, is used to communicate with the US fleet of nuclear powered submarines.
Australia is once again also hosting US combat forces. Since 2012, a US Marine base has been established in Darwin, housing up to 2,500 personnel on rotation each year. US aircraft, including nuclear-capable strategic bombers, regularly rotate through Australian bases. These deployments are merely a foretaste of how the extensive network of naval and air force facilities in northern Australia could be used by the USA in any regional conflict.
Ruling class consensus
For decades, the US-Australia alliance has enjoyed near unanimous support from the Australian ruling class and its ideological representatives. It is seen as cornerstone of Australian policy within the senior ranks of the defence and foreign affairs bureaucracies, as well as by the bulk of intellectuals operating in the mainstream of the media and academia.
Occasionally, a rogue academic or think tank might voice disagreement, but such views have had zero impact on the policy debate. Or perhaps more accurately, there has been no debate. Successive governments, both Liberal-National and Labor, have without exception reiterated their fidelity to the alliance.
Some dissent has come from figures on Labor’s left when they are not in government. But it has always been understood that, once the ALP assumes office, the US alliance is not to be seriously questioned.
A case in point is the trajectory of Jim Cairns, leader of Labor’s left faction and a principled opponent of the war in Vietnam. When he became deputy prime minister in 1974, the USA was concerned that he might threaten the alliance because he had previously opposed the presence of the spy bases. 
But Cairns now kept his criticisms to himself, failing even to exercise his right to a full briefing from the defence department about the bases, which at that time were operated in great secrecy and without any Australian involvement. So despite the huge political turmoil generated by the movement against the Vietnam War, Labor remained committed to the alliance, without any serious challenge from the left of the party.
Today, the Greens are the only mainstream political force with a sustained critique of the US alliance. Last year, leader Richard Di Natale went so far as to say: “It is crystal clear now that Australia must rip up the ANZUS treaty and renegotiate our relationship with the US. This is a relationship that is making us less safe, not more safe”. Greens policy calls for the closure of the US military bases and for “an independent Australian foreign policy”.
The demand to end “dependence” on the United States and for a stronger Australian policy has long been a staple of left-nationalist critiques of the alliance. But this analysis leads to some decidedly right wing conclusions.
First, it implies that “our own” military should be strengthened or used more frequently in “Australian interests”. Indeed, the need to use Australian forces to quell disorder in the South Pacific was repeatedly cited by then Greens leader Bob Brown as an argument against sending troops to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Second, the dependency critique remains at a shallow psychological level, in which every major party politician for more than 75 years has somehow lacked the intellectual fortitude to recognise and defend Australia’s true interests. It suggests that we need stronger Australian leaders, not a fundamental change in the operations of the Australian state. 
An insurance policy for Australian imperialism
A more substantial analysis of the US alliance needs to begin with some basic material realities. Australia is not a weak state, nor is it beholden to any foreign power. It is the largest economy in south-east Asia and the South Pacific, structured around high levels of capital investment and a skilled workforce. This in turn enables Australia to maintain the strongest military force in the region, with relatively few personnel but incorporating the latest in advanced weapons platforms.
In short, Australia is an imperialist country in its own right, with substantial capability to defend the interests of its ruling class in the international arena.
However, while it is a regional heavyweight, Australia is not a first rate power at the global level. In this context, the US alliance is an additional source of strength, with multiple benefits for Australian imperialism.
At a practical level, the US is a key supplier of high tech military hardware for Australia, such as fighter jets and advanced radar systems. Australia has not needed to develop nuclear weapons of its own, being implicitly protected by the United States’ arsenal. As part of the Five Eyes consortium, which also includes the USA, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, Australia has access to intelligence material which it could not collect via its own resources.
Perhaps most importantly, the alliance with the US serves as a sort of insurance policy. Other countries know that, in any conflict with Australia, they would run the risk of being drawn into confrontation with the most powerful military on the planet.
The premiums on this insurance policy come in the form of contributing to the USA’s endless wars. Australia has been more than willing to pay.
Contrary to the myth that it was forced to join the war in Vietnam, Australia from an early stage encouraged the US to commit troops to the defence of the South Vietnamese regime. Once full-scale war was underway, Australia demanded the right to send its own forces as well.
Such acts of conspicuous loyalty were rewarded in 1999, when East Timor won its independence from Indonesia and Australia deployed its military to the territory to ensure stability during the transition. The United States provided strong diplomatic support for its ally, and positioned naval assets and a detachment of marines off the coast of East Timor, in a clear warning to Indonesia about the consequences of any opposition to Australia’s intervention.
The US-Australia alliance and the rise of China
Today, China’s growing stature as an economic and military rival to the United States is creating a dilemma for the Australian ruling class.
China is Australia’s most important trading partner, providing the market for 34 percent of all Australian exports in 2017, compared with just 5 percent going to the United States. But China is also seen by the Australian state as a security threat, with the potential to overturn US regional dominance. 
Despite the potential economic cost of alienating China, Australia’s response has been to strengthen ties with the United States. Former US president Barack Obama’s policy of a “pivot to Asia”, a military build-up in the region aimed at containing China, was welcomed by Australia.
The stationing of US combat forces at Australian military bases is one concrete expression of this support. Another is vocal diplomatic backing for US “freedom of navigation” operations in the South China Sea. China’s territorial claims in the area are a major concern to Australia, as they cut across important trade routes.
None of this results from blind, passive obedience to the alliance. Australian policy makers are actively encouraging the US to defend its position in the Asia-Pacific because they have calculated that this is in the best interests of the Australian capitalist class.
But the renewal of great power rivalries can be of no benefit to workers and students in Australia or indeed any other country. Even short of an actual war, we are the ones whose living standards will be sacrificed to pay for the military budget, not the bosses or the generals or the politicians.
The task for the left, therefore, is not to offer better strategies for the Australian state to pursue. It is to stand against the rising tide of militarism and anti-Chinese paranoia. 
This means we want to break the US alliance. Not so that Australia can finally be “strong” or “independent”, but on the contrary in order to weaken Australian imperialism.

Mateship of mongrels: seven decades of the US-Australia alliance

New “foreign influence” laws were passed by federal parliament on 28 June, along with increased police powers relating to espionage and sabotage of infrastructure. The laws purport to counter the pernicious effect of overseas countries, specifically China, on Australian democracy.
“Media reports have suggested that the Chinese Communist Party has been working to covertly interfere with our media, our universities and even the decisions of elected representatives”, prime minister Malcolm Turnbull warned. He pledged that these dealings would be “exposed to sunlight”.
Labor supported the new laws, despite concerns from the Greens and groups such as Amnesty International that they could be used against the media, critics of the government or protesters such as anti-Adani mine campaigners.
It’s hard to know how seriously the government takes its own rhetoric about Chinese interference in Australia. Perhaps it’s just an attempt to inspire racist paranoia. But it is completely serious about China’s growing influence on other countries in the Asia-Pacific.
Under the Belt and Road Initiative, China is financing up to $1 trillion of infrastructure projects globally, including in Australia’s immediate region. But the BRI is about more than infrastructure spending. The BRI is to be the foundation of a global trade and political network centred on China. In time, it could rival the existing international system of trade and diplomacy dominated by the United States and its allies such as Australia.
Australia – defender of Pacific sovereignty?
When Papua New Guinea signed on to the BRI last month, foreign minister Julie Bishop warned of a Chinese takeover. If recipient countries are “trapped into unsustainable debt outcomes”, she said, “the trap can then be a debt-for-equity swap and they have lost their sovereignty”. Australian aid programs in the Pacific have no such ulterior motive, Bishop claimed:
“We want to be the natural partner of choice. We recognise we’re not the only partner, but we would like the Pacific to see Australia as providing them with the kind of support that maintains their sovereignty, maintains their economic stability and doesn’t become an unsustainable debt burden.”
The idea that Australian policy aims to defend the sovereignty of island nations from rapacious foreigners brings to mind the infamous words of a United States military officer during the Vietnam War: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it”.
Papua New Guinea was an Australian colony until 1975. Australia remains the dominant foreign economic player there, $18 billion of capital being invested in 2016, more than from any other country. Australian aid to PNG totalled $540 million in 2017-18 – more than two-thirds of PNG’s total foreign aid income, and 8 percent of the government’s budget.
Australia’s economic power buys plenty of influence. Since 2004, Australian officials have been embedded in key positions in PNG’s public service, police and military. 
More than 40 percent of Australian aid goes to enforcing “good governance”, more than to health and education combined. Behind the facade of technocratic neutrality, “good governance” is diplomatic code for imposing Australia’s preferred neoliberal model of economic management and service delivery. Governance programs are delivered by private sector consultants selected and managed by Australia.
Similar examples could easily be listed. Last year, the Solomon Islands concluded a deal with Chinese company Huawei to build a new international undersea internet connection. To ward off this threat to the Solomon Islands’ sovereignty, Australia stepped in to fund most of the construction and keep Huawei out.
Like PNG, the Solomon Islands depend heavily on Australia for aid funding. In 2003, Australia dispatched hundreds of troops, police and civilian administrators to the island nation amid civil unrest, and assumed many core functions of government. This intervention formally ended in 2017, but the Australian aid program remains invested in policing and, of course, governance.
East Timor and the ‘rule of law’
Australian defence minister Marise Payne has also joined the diplomatic piety act, telling a multilateral forum held in Singapore in June:
“Nations must … have the right to be free from coercion or criticism when they lawfully and reasonably communicate concerns about the behaviour of others. This extends to the reasonable expectation that rules, not the exercise of power, govern our actions.”
Payne cited the conclusion of a border treaty with East Timor earlier this year as an example of Australia’s commitment to the international rule of law. The hypocrisy is staggering. Since sending troops into East Timor in 1999 to ensure its own interests were protected during the transition from Indonesian rule, Australia has treated the new nation with an equal mixture of contempt and greed. Coercion and criticism have flowed freely.
Australia refused for years to agree to a border in the Timor Sea based on the international standard of the median line between the two countries. This denied East Timor, one of the poorest nations in the world, billions of dollars in oil revenues, a conscious attempt to coerce the new nation’s leaders into signing an unfair agreement. 
Australia’s then foreign minister Alexander Downer responded to East Timor’s demands for a fairer deal on oil revenue by saying, “We are very tough … Let me give you a tutorial in politics – not a chance”.
It is now known that Australia used the cover of an AusAid reconstruction project to bug the East Timorese cabinet room during the oil negotiations. Australia has, however, proved its commitment to the rule of law – by charging a former Australian spy and a lawyer representing East Timor, who exposed this scandal, for betraying national secrets.
In 2006, Australian troops were again deployed to East Timor when civil unrest threatened the elected government of Fretilin, led by Mari Alkatiri. Far from remaining neutral in the conflict, Australia threw its full support behind Alkatiri’s political rivals Xanana Gusmão and José Ramos-Horta. Alkatiri was viewed by Australian officials as being under the influence of China, whereas Gusmão and Ramos-Horta were thought to be friendlier to Western powers.
Australia’s regional military ties
Australia has military and economic interests in south-east Asia and the South Pacific. Rumours that China wanted to establish a military base in Vanuatu triggered panic among Australian policy makers earlier this year. Last month there was concern about the docking of a Chinese “spy boat” next to an Australian warship – while both were visiting Fiji! One country’s good will tour is another’s spy mission.
Australia’s military openly seeks strategic influence in neighbouring countries. The 2016 Defence White Paper stated, “Australia will continue to seek to be the principal security partner for Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Pacific Island Countries, by deepening our security partnerships, including through our Defence Cooperation Program”. 
This program purchases more than $160 million worth of influence for Australia per year, in military training and hardware.
Further afield, Australia maintains a close military relationship with Malaysia, Australian troops and aircraft being on permanent rotation through the Butterworth air base on the strategically vital Malacca Strait. 
Since 2017, Australian military and intelligence forces have also participated in a highly secretive operation against “Islamic terrorism” in the southern Philippines. And Singapore has a longstanding agreement to use Australia as a training base for its armed forces.
Imperialist manoeuvres and the return of great power rivalry
It is not “foreign influence” that Australia objects to in the Asia-Pacific. It is being outcompeted for influence by China.
Australian strategists have always valued maintaining stable and friendly regimes throughout south-east Asia and the South Pacific. This region acts as a buffer against any hostile power threatening the Australian mainland, and cuts across shipping lanes vital to international trade and communications with great power allies.
Since the end of World War Two, Australia and the United States have enjoyed a relatively untroubled dominance throughout the region. China’s rise and ambition to rival US power in the Asia-Pacific are upsetting this cosy status quo, opening a period of intensified imperialist competition.
One aspect of this competition is jockeying for influence within smaller nations, the governments of which seek “protection” from one of the great powers, or attempt to play one rival off against another to advance their own interests. 
Diplomatic spats are therefore likely only to multiply over the coming years. But China has a lot of catching up to do if it wants to displace Australia as the biggest bully on the block.

Australia is a master at peddling foreign influence

The Manus Island concentration camp is not only the culmination of Australia’s increasingly brutal treatment of refugees over many years. It also epitomises the neo-colonial relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea.
Colonial powers have long favoured “offshore processing” for unwanted groups of people, far from the support of sympathetic domestic populations or the prying eyes of the media. This of course includes white Australia’s own origins as a penal colony.
Today, PNG’s nominal sovereignty over Manus Island provides a convenient fig leaf for the Australian government, which can leave the sordid details of imprisoning refugees to the local police and military and private contractors. But there is no doubt who really calls the shots.
An Australian colony
The imprisonment of refugees on Manus Island is another chapter in a long history of Australian colonialism in PNG. From 1905, Australia assumed control of British New Guinea, the south-eastern quadrant of the island. To this was added German New Guinea in the north-east, seized as spoils of war in 1914.
Inevitably, Australian colonialism was accompanied by racism and brutal authoritarianism. When local workers went on strike in 1929, one outraged colonialist deprived of his domestic servant fumed, “My coon’s not here”, while another insisted that “the only thing a native understands is a beating”.
Australian capital for the most part failed to develop the PNG economy, with the partial exception of mining. Rio Tinto operated one of the world’s largest copper mines on the island of Bougainville from 1972 until 1989, when it was closed during an armed independence struggle waged by Bougainvilleans who suffered from the mine’s environmental impact but saw little of the profits. On the mainland, BHP owned a giant gold and copper mine that wreaked environmental and social havoc when a tailings dam collapsed in 1984, releasing millions of tons of untreated mining waste into the Ok Tedi and Fly rivers.
Primarily, however, Papua New Guinea was seen by the Australian ruling class, not as an opportunity for profits, but as a strategic problem. This “uncivilised” territory adjacent to Australia needed to be kept out of the hands of rivals to the British Empire such as France, Germany or Japan. World War Two cemented this analysis, with major battles in the territory bringing to a halt the advance of Japanese forces through south-east Asia.
Following the war, Australia hoped to extend its dominion into West Papua, at that time controlled by the Netherlands. Indonesia eventually occupied the territory instead. But the era of direct Western colonialism was coming to an end in any case, many colonies achieving independence in the postwar period. Papua New Guinea eventually joined them in 1975.
Nonetheless, Australia retained significant influence. Australian aid initially amounted to 40 percent of the PNG government budget, and Australian personnel formed the core of the new PNG defence forces. Australia supplied the weapons used by PNG in the military conflict on Bougainville, and eventually oversaw a peace settlement in 1998.
Neo-colonialism and the threat of China
­­­­­­The Australia-PNG relationship entered a new neo-colonialist phase in the early 2000s. Following Australia’s military intervention in East Timor in 1999, Prime Minister John Howard warned of an “arc of instability” stretching from Indonesia through PNG to the South Pacific. This required aggressive action from Australia, to stop any unfriendly powers gaining a foothold in the region.
Having essentially taken over administration of the Solomon Islands in 2003, Australia pressured the PNG government into signing a new bilateral aid treaty in 2004. Decades of Australian aid were alleged to have been wasted by the corruption and mismanagement of the PNG government. Now, so-called “good governance” would be imposed. This supposedly neutral, technocratic term is deeply paternalistic and racist, implying that inept Papuans cannot be trusted to administer their own country.
Several dozen senior Australian officials assumed line management positions in the PNG public service, particularly in areas relating to governance and finance, including the solicitor-general. More than 200 Australian police took control of the PNG police force and were initially granted immunity from prosecution under PNG law, until the PNG High Court ruled this to be unconstitutional. The number of Australian military officers serving within the PNG army also increased. More than a decade on, the intervention continues, without life improving much for ordinary Papuans.
The recently released foreign policy white paper openly reaffirms that a major objective is to ensure “Australia remains Papua New Guinea’s principal security partner”. This stance is bipartisan. Labor’s defence spokesperson, Richard Marles, in October argued that fear of acting “in the manner of an overbearing colonial power” should not stand in the way of a more active Australian policy in the Pacific, to ward off competitors.
Australia’s main rival for influence in PNG is China, which is a source of increasing trade, investment and financial aid. Last month, China and PNG signed deals for infrastructure development as part of Beijing’s massive “One belt, one road” initiative. Chinese aid generally does not come with the sort of strings attached by Australia.
Economic disparity
Economically, Australia overshadows its nearest neighbour. Australia’s gross domestic product per capita, a basic measure of a nation’s wealth, was $48,900 in 2016. PNG’s was just $3,500.
Australian capital invested in PNG totalled $18 billion in 2016, more than from any other country. Bilateral trade with Australia accounts for 26 percent of all PNG’s imports and 16 percent of all its exports. But for Australia, trade with PNG is just 1 per cent of both imports and exports.
PNG is Australia’s largest recipient of overseas aid at $546 million in 2016-17. This amounts to 68 percent of all international aid received by PNG and accounts for 8 percent of the national budget.
Naturally, Australian officials decide how this money is spent, award the contracts and oversee their implementation. In 2017-18, 43 per cent will go to “effective governance” programs. Health and education get 17 and 14 percent respectively, despite the PNG government slashing spending on these essentials in 2017 due to a fiscal crisis.
Manus in context
Given Australia’s economic and political muscle, PNG could hardly afford to refuse prime minister Kevin Rudd’s request in 2013 that refugees be imprisoned on Manus. When Australia cut its foreign aid budget by one-fifth in 2015, PNG was largely exempted, a concession widely seen as a pay-off for Manus.
Australian politicians insist it would be expensive and dangerous to allow the refugees imprisoned on Manus to enter Australia, repeatedly vilifying them as potentially violent criminals. Yet the cost of running the Manus prison has been estimated at $400,000 per year for each individual refugee. Compare this with the roughly $70 per person Australia gives to PNG in aid each year. It isn’t hard to see why some Manus locals, living in poverty and enraged by Australia’s hypocrisy, have come to resent the presence of the refugees.
Of course, the Australian government cares as little about the wellbeing of Papuans, either on Manus or elsewhere, as they do about the refugees themselves. Papuans have long suffered the impact of colonial overlords drawing up arbitrary borders to suit their own ends. Today, refugees detained on Manus Island are the victims of the same imperialist drive to divide the globe without regard to the needs of humanity.

Manus Island: Australia’s neo-colonial gulag

Commonwealth public servants are facing the most serious threat to pay, conditions and job security in nearly 20 years, as enterprise agreements covering around 160,000 workers are due to expire on 30 June.
Tony Abbott’s recently released wish list for bargaining is headed by a blanket wage freeze, which will cut real pay after the impact of inflation. Under the government’s framework, a maximum pay rise of 2.5 percent per year would be permitted only if traded off against existing conditions. Personal leave would be cut from the current norm of 18 or 20 days to 15 days. Redundancy provisions would be weakened and the rights of the union to organise in the workplace curtailed.
Despite the imposition of a central position on wages and conditions, bargaining will actually occur in individual departments and agencies. Bizarrely, this means that the union will not be negotiating with anyone holding real authority over wages and key conditions. Union resources will be stretched thin, and each section of the workforce will be isolated.
Workplaces with weaker union organisation will be soft targets for substandard agreements. Disparities in wage levels between departments, already over $10,000 at some levels, will likely widen.
Job security is also under attack, the Liberals having promised to abolish 12,000 public service positions. News that hundreds of jobs will be cut at one department or another has emerged with grim regularity since Abbott’s election. In the latest round, all Department of Communications staff will be forced to reapply for their own jobs, with only three-quarters of positions to be refilled.
Abbott claims cuts are necessary because the budget is in deficit. But there is plenty of money for locking up refugees on Manus Island and tax breaks for mining companies. The Liberals simply want ordinary workers to pay the price for difficulties they see looming for Australian capitalism.
And it isn’t only those public servants directly affected who stand to lose if they get their way. State governments and private businesses will be encouraged to follow suit, lowering the standard of living of workers across the economy.
To resist these attacks, we need to mobilise as many workers as possible in a sustained campaign of public protests and industrial action. Unfortunately, the Community and Public Sector Union leadership appears unwilling to lead such a fight. It has accepted without a murmur the government’s rejection of service-wide bargaining and refused to countenance industrial action to save jobs.
Rather than preparing the membership for action, CPSU national secretary Nadine Flood has issued a press release calling for the start of the “sober and serious business of constructive negotiations”. It will take a whole lot more than reasonable dialogue to beat back Abbott.

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