Last week back home in Australia, the new Minister for International Development and the Pacific, Pat Conroy, said that migration and cultural ties are key to the new government’s approach:
You won’t see a Fijian rugby league team playing in Chinese competition. You won’t see a permanent migration of Pacific Islanders to China. You won’t see a Pacific labour scheme being a primary source of temporary labour in China.
If we are successful in making the Pacific labour schemes the primary source of temporary labour for rural and regional industries, that’s hundreds of millions of dollars of remittances every year for these nations, and that’s a lot more sustainable than overseas development assistance which is tied to budget cycles.
Mr.Conroy also spoke on ABC Pacific Beat about the Pacific Engagement Visa:
This is a real ground-breaking initiative, the Pacific Engagement Visa. It’s the first time that … the Australian Government will allocate a specific number of permanent migration visas for a region, and it’s a sign of our support and enthusiastic membership of the Pacific family, that we want to make it easier for Pacific Islanders to live in Australia, to be permanent migrants, and eventually become citizens. Because that diaspora is so important. And I, quite frankly, I think it’s a disgrace that in 2019 for example, there’s only 621 Pacific Islanders that became permanent migrants to Australia, which represented only half of one percent of the total permanent migration to Australia.
We’ve announced that every year there will be 3000 permanent migration spots allocated to the Pacific Islands. They will be done on a pro rata basis amongst the Pacific Island nations, so that we’ll generally give people from each nation an opportunity. Importantly, they’ll need to have a job offer in Australia, so that there is an economic opportunity for these countries …
This is a really important thing. People have said to me previously that they find it very hard to migrate to Australia compared to other nations around the world. I think it’s ridiculous given the fact that obviously PNG, for example, is our nearest neighbour, it’s only 3km away from Australia. There’s nine million Papua New Guineans but it’s very difficult for them to travel to Australia or even settle in this country. But we do need to be sensitive to the concerns of some Pacific Island nations around the implementation of this scheme, we need to make sure this a scheme that works to advance all nations in the Pacific, and builds on the economic sustainability of the entire region.
The reception to the Labor government’s new policies has been as positive at home as it has been abroad. As Greg Sheridan of The Australian recently wrote:
This is the right time for the Albanese government to think big and ambitious in its South Pacific policy.
Although it would need to be done with care, a substantial widening of the Pacific labour program would be good for Australia economically and a powerful glue with the region, producing cultural and strategic dividends.
Probably there are no circumstances more propitious for such an initiative than now. Who could oppose it?
Source: Devpolicy and Radio New Zealand.
Footnotes
Author: Evie Sharman
Evie Sharman is a Research Officer at the Development Policy Centre, working in the Pacific Labour Mobility team.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
