Reopening Manus will complicate PNG-Australia ties

Story by Nic Maclellan

In recent months, Australian media reports about Papua New Guinea have largely focused on the Gillard Government's proposal to reopen an asylum seeker detention centre on Manus Island. But this focus on boat people misses the big picture in Australia-Papua New Guinea relations.

There are major changes underway in economic relations between the two countries, and Papua New Guinea's politics are being transformed with the announcement that long-serving prime minister Sir Michael Somare will stand aside due to ill-health.

Ongoing political and legal wrangling over Manus and asylum seekers won't help relations between Australia and Papua New Guinea, at a time when three major changes are transforming the relationship with our nearest neighbour.

The first of these transformations is a generational shift of leadership in Port Moresby. Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare has been at the centre of PNG politics since the early 1970s. Somare has been in and out of office ever since he assumed leadership of the PANGU Pati in the lead-up to independence in 1975. But with the retirement of the ailing 75-year-old leader, a new generation of politicians are coming to the fore. The sacking last month of foreign minister Dan Polye by acting prime minister Sam Abal is just one sign of the jockeying to come.

While Australia remains a key partner, PNG's new leaders are looking further afield, seeking membership of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and building ties to China. Increasingly, they will look at proposals like a return to the "Pacific Solution" without a sense of obligation to Canberra that marked an older generation of leaders.

We already see this, as up-and-coming leaders in Port Moresby raise questions about the legality of mandatory detention under the PNG Constitution. The Governor of PNG's National Capital District Powes Parkop - a noted human rights lawyer - has foreshadowed a legal challenge to any deal re-opening the Manus centre.

Will asylum seekers detained on Manus be given access to independent lawyers for legal advice about their rights under Australian immigration and refugee law? If so, this defeats the very purpose of processing them offshore - the "Pacific Solution" is designed to remove people from Australia's legal jurisdiction. If they are denied legal assistance, this may breach PNG's Constitution. Under section s.42 (2) of the Constitution, a person who is detained "shall be given adequate opportunity to give instructions to a lawyer of his choice in the place in which he is detained, and shall be informed immediately on his arrest or detention of his rights under this subsection".

The negotiations over Manus have bogged down over these issues, with the UNHCR concerned over possible human rights breaches (as shown with the leaking of internal UN documents to the ABC's Lateline program).

Canberra's pre-occupation with boat people comes at a time when there's another major shift that will transform PNG-Australia relations and our neighbour's society and economy: the expansion of an LNG industry to tap massive reserves of oil and gas in the PNG Highlands.

The LNG boom will be a central element of PNG-Australia policy in coming years, as both governments work to manage PNG's "resource curse". There has already been extensiveconflict in the Southern Highlands Province, which the media often presents as atavistic tribal rivalry, but is driven by competition over the benefits flowing from state or corporate entry into customary lands, to construct a gas pipeline from the highlands to the coast.

This economic transformation is tied to new patterns of labour mobility. We are moving to an era of increased movement in both directions across the Torres Strait, with Australians cashing in on the LNG boom and PNG workers seeking opportunities in Australia.

For many years, PNG students have enrolled in Australian secondary and tertiary institutions and PNG's business and political elite have bought property on the Gold Coast. But overall, labour mobility has been largely internal within Papua New Guinea, in contrast to smaller Polynesian states like Tonga, Samoa or the Cook Islands (over decades, Tongan migrants have spread to Auckland, Sydney and other cities of the Pacific Rim and there are more Cook Islanders in New Zealand than in their home islands).

Today, we're seeing the first signs of new trends in labour mobility that will transform Australia-PNG relations. In May, the first nine PNG workers arrived in Australia under temporary visas to pick fruit under the Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme, with more to follow. We've welcomed many skilled migrants from the Pacific, but this pilot provides temporary jobs in the horticulture sector to unskilled workers from the region.

 

Papua New Guineans also ask why they are not eligible for visas under the "Working Holiday" program (subclass 417) or the separate "Work and Holiday" program (subclass 462). Indonesians, Thais and Malaysians can now obtain s462 visas and South Koreans make up the second largest group in the s417 Working Holiday program (there were 37,056 British backpackers under this program in 2009-10, but 34,870 visas issued to Koreans in the same year).

Many Papua New Guineans wonder why Australia opens its working holiday market to South-East Asian nations but not a fellow member of the Commonwealth.

The current Canberra debate about Manus and boat people misses this bigger picture. Regional labour mobility will only grow, at a time when remittances from overseas permanent and temporary workers far outstrips the amount of development assistance provided to developing nations (in 2010, OECD countries provided $US128 billion in aid to developing countries, but migrant workers from the south sent home $US328 billion in remittances, more than two and a half times the amount of aid).

Both the ALP and Coalition face complex policy dilemmas about asylum seekers. But their knee jerk "solution" - to re-open Manus or Nauru - will just plant the seeds of future crises.

People seem to have forgotten the diplomatic explosion between Canberra, Jakarta and Port Moresby when a boat load of 43 West Papuans arrived on Cape York Peninsula in January 2006. What if the next boat load of asylum seekers is full of West Papuans - as part of a regional processing deal, will they be sent to Malaysia or to Manus?

Our government, blinded by the current panic over boat people, may not want to answer that question.

 Nic Maclellan works as a journalist and researcher in the Pacific islands. (http://www.abc.net.au/)