Neo-colonialism in PNG

The decision to dump up to 3,000 refugees at a time on PNG’s Manus Island tells us as much about Austraia’s neo-colonial relationship with its former dependency as it does about its racist disdain for the rights of vulnerable asylum seekers.

Although nearly 40 years have passed since PNG won independence, the country has still only partially broken free from the chains fastened upon it by Australian colonial authority.

Eighty percent of the population still live by farming on communally owned land. The urban and mineral sectors of the economy, which account for a large proportion of GDP, are dominated by foreign capitalists and a narrow layer of well-connected politicians and local businessmen. They have grown fat in recent years off an enormous resources boom. The costs of this boom have been borne by rural communities whose land has been seized and environment despoiled.

Alongside commercial interests in the hands of Australian companies, worth $19 billion in 2012, successive Australian governments have pursued a neo-colonial political project in PNG. Most dramatic was the 2003 Enhanced Cooperation Program (ECP), an attempt by the Howard government to grab control of the upper echelons of the PNG state machinery – the courts, the police and the finance, immigration, border security and aviation departments – in order to render them subservient to Canberra’s wishes. Threats by Australia to reduce its annual aid package force Port Moresby to concede Australia’s demands. The ECP was wound back only when the PNG Supreme Court in 2005 struck down legal immunity for Australian Federal Police charged with crimes committed in the country.

The ECP was but one of several such Australian interventions in the internal affairs of its Pacific neighbours by the Howard government. The intervention in the Solomons (RAMSI) in 2003 and East Timor (in 1999 and again in 2006) have been others. In each case, Australia has tried to insert itself into the government, financial and security apparatus of these countries with the aim of “stabilising” them, which means imposing economic policies favouring Australian business – privatisation, tax breaks, an end to restrictions on foreign investment and so forth – and in the case of East Timor, blatantly stealing the revenues from its oil and gas resources. On top of it all, Australia uses its control over the Pacific Islands Forum to try to impose its agenda on all of the small Pacific states.

The Rudd government promised a more diplomatic approach to Pacific neighbours. Its 2008 Port Moresby Declaration and talk of “Pacific development partnerships” seemed to suggest a change of tune. But in practice these have been window dressing. Much of the aid funding continues to end up in Australian corporate pockets. Demands for “transparency” and “good governance” continue to mean heavy-handed interventions in the internal affairs of the PNG government and the promotion of neoliberal economics. The ECP has been replaced by the Strongim Gavman (“Strengthen the Government”) program, but this maintains its basic features.

The new “refugee resettlement arrangement” is the latest confirmation of Australian arrogance towards the people of PNG. Little wonder, then, as blogger Deni ToKunai remarks, that this latest deal is “breeding a boiling resentment against Australia and the Australian people never before seen by this generation”. On 2 August, hundreds of University of PNG students rallied against the “PNG solution” and were only stopped from marching on the Australian embassy in Port Moresby by a heavy cordon of police.

Partners in crime

The contempt with which the Australian ruling class treats PNG is resented by large numbers of Papua New Guineans, but not all. PNG, like every country in the world, has a ruling class, comprising the political leadership, the largest landholders, the army, police and public service chiefs and those with large businesses, and they share many interests with their Australian counterparts.

Both the PNG and Australian ruling classes benefit from the maintenance of low wages, the land grabs by resources and forestry companies and the tax breaks to the capitalists.

Successive economic agreements between Australia and PNG, including the Economic Cooperation Treaty, which comes into effect this year, continue the neoliberal agenda through which both Australian and PNG businesses are enriching themselves. The annual confab, the Australia-PNG Business Forum, brings politicians and businesspeople from both countries together to discuss ways in which they can best screw over the poor farmers and workers of PNG. While PNG is a resources honey pot for Australian mining companies, PNG bosses make sure they don’t miss out on a piece of the action. The same is true of the $500 million Australian per year aid budget paid to PNG.

PNG capitalists are also keen to maintain free trade with Australia, their biggest export market, dwarfing all others. And it is not “dependency” that explains the PNG military undertaking training with their Australian counterparts but their understanding of the benefits that the PNG ruling class gains by smashing the Bougainville secessionist movement, crushing resistance by local residents and landowners to major resource projects and pushing back refugees fleeing persecution in West Papua. So it was not the mass of New Guineans Peter O’Neill was thinking of when he flew into Brisbane to sign the refugee deal with Kevin Rudd on 19 July. A big chunk of the $1.2 billion that has been set aside over the next four years by the Rudd government for the expansion of the Manus Island detention centre and the associated package of sweeteners will find its way into the bank accounts or the electoral slush funds of this ruling class, whose interests the O’Neill government serves.

The PNG ruling class, although weak and still operating under the wing of the Australian one, can also see opportunities to forge a more independent path. While the Australian government is trying to stitch up a new Pacific Island trade agreement, PACER Plus, led by Australia and New Zealand, the PNG ruling class is increasingly looking to a Melanesian trade and investment pact that it can dominate.

On both sides of the Torres Strait, the working class and the poor are oppressed by their own rulers. Our common struggle is to fight the imperialism of the Australian state and to wage a fight against our own rulers.