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Migration scheme won't solve Pacific's problems

By Gaurav Sodhi

Posted August 21, 2008 08:37:00
Updated August 21, 2008 08:38:00

Low income, high population growth countries account for about 80 per cent of the Pacific population. (AFP: Ben Chutaro)

It wouldn't be polite to say so at the Forum meeting in Niue this week, but there is trouble brewing in the South Pacific. Conflict in the Solomon Islands, coups in Fiji, murders by raskol gangs in Papua New Guinea, and the burning of Chinatown in Nukualofa in Tonga suggest an 'arc of instability' right at our doorstep.

At the heart of the region's civil strife is the unemployment and underemployment of men. Lots of them. There are more than two million underemployed and unemployed men in the Pacific as a whole. More than 100,000 join the labour force each year. Most do not have any hope of earning an income or having a job in their lifetime.

Men well into middle age can be seen languishing, openly unemployed, on the streets of the region's capital cities or underemployed in rural villages. They make ready recruits for the criminal gangs that help Port Moresby compete with Port-au-Prince and Nairobi for the most violent towns in the world.

The region certainly presents a bleak picture, but it isn't all bad. Look a little more closely and there appear to be two groups of countries in the Pacific.

One group of islands has managed to grow modestly over the last 30 years and provide decent levels of education, healthcare and living standards for their population. They include Tonga, Samoa, Cook Islands, New Caledonia and French Polynesia among others. Population growth in these islands has slowed as they have become wealthier and good education outcomes mean they can travel abroad for further opportunities.

A second group of countries, however, has stagnated at best and in some cases, become poorer. In Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, population growth has been exceeding economic growth for much of the last 30 years. In Fiji, coup after coup has damaged what was once the most prosperous country in the region.

What is most important is that this second group of low income, high population growth countries account for about 80 per cent of the Pacific population. It will be in these countries that the future stability and prosperity will be decided. And on current trends, that path looks shaky.

As if acknowledging that very fact, the Australian Government has just announced that guest workers from the Pacific will be allowed temporary work as fruit pickers in regional Australia. The scheme has been widely applauded by the Nation Farmers Federation, by the World Bank, and loudest of all, by Pacific governments themselves, who see it as a way of releasing some of the building employment pressures at home.

The scale of the labour market problems in the Pacific, however, suggest that unless a million or more guest workers were invited to participate, migration will fail to make any inroads into the problem. The only way to make the Pacific stable and prosperous is to pursue economic growth. Migration is not development.

The guest worker scheme will undoubtedly benefit those Pacific Islanders lucky enough to qualify for the initial program. The danger is that the warm glow that has accompanied the announcement of the scheme will serve to endorse the Pacific leaders unwillingness to take the steps that would provide significant farming incomes and jobs in the Pacific.

The bulk of the region's unemployment is concentrated in the larger states that cannot argue that they lack economies of scale for growth.

During the past 30 years Botswana, a small, landlocked African country has outpaced Papua New Guinea. Mauritius, about the same size as Fiji, with much the same starting endowment of a sugar industry, has become a labour short economy. Iceland, which is the same size as the Solomon Islands, is poorly located in the cold North Atlantic with short growing seasons and barren agricultural lands. But it has become one of the highest income industrialised countries anywhere.

Fate does not doom the Pacific to poor standards of living. Bad policy by corrupt, incompetent elites does.

The Pacific can only avoid looming economic, social, and political crises if its large economies dramatically reform their policies to encourage substantial employment creating growth. Otherwise, it will only be a matter of time before the growing army of unemployed and underemployed turns from restless to violent.

Gaurav Sodhi is an economist at the Centre for Independent Studies. He and Helen Hughes have written a report on the Pacific islands titled The Bipolar Pacific.

Tags: business-economics-and-finance, immigration, foreign-affairs, world-politics, farm-labour, australia, pacific

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Comments (53)

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dragon:

21 Aug 2008 9:02:49am

"Fate does not doom the Pacific to poor standards of living. Bad policy by corrupt, incompetent elites does."

This was, is and always will be the case in any country where the upper echelon of power is not democratically elected by the population on a regular basis !

Head honchos placed in power by business or military cronies will always be succeptible to bribes and coersion.

Educate the people on the basic levels of government, economics and family planning, but please don't look to adding 2 million unemployed to the strained Australian infrastructure !

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MO:

21 Aug 2008 9:08:01am

Provided they are allowed to send their wages back, then the development of a pool of persons whom see work as a means to a better life should be beneficial to these nations.

To allow them to do so tax free would appear to be an excellent way to provide "aid" and contribute to stability on our doorstep.

Good governance once they get home is a different matter altogether. Maybe some of the workers should be "interns" who are trained and mentored in good governance. These people can become leaders at home.

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Bullfrog:

21 Aug 2008 9:16:36am

From what I can tell, the benefits to Pacific Islands are of secondary concern. The primary benefit is to Australian farmers, who need people to pick the produce.

I'm not sure what Australia can do to 'fix' the Pacific Islands - anything to overt is colonialism. Tying our funding to specific requirements seems like the only real lever Australia has.

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thelonenut:

21 Aug 2008 9:33:23am

I agree wholeheartedly with The Dragon - however, he / she does not go far enough.
In my opinion this applies to just about every country in the world, wether "democratic" elections are held or not.

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whitelephant:

21 Aug 2008 10:18:42am

Mike-I strongly suggest you apply for the job of prime minister. Your succinct and brilliant analytical skills leave me breathless with admiration!
Rarely have I seen such intellectual clarity allied with a social compassion unequalled in the ABC opinion column.
Please let us have more of your carefull and considered analysis-it makes my day.

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Swansea Boy:

21 Aug 2008 10:36:46am

Whilst this move by Rudd may bring some problems, at least is is action rather than just talk.

Can't remember that wannabe farmer Howard ever doing anything to solve this well documented, long term labour shortage for the fruit farmers. Using backpackers was naive as once they had saved enough to move onto the next party town they shot through regardless of "staying the course until the jobs done".

The UK's fruit crops have been picked by workers from Eastern Europe for several years and long term relationships between the farmers and certain villages have benefited all. A signigicant percentage of the GDP of countries like the Phillipines, Albania, Ireland have come from the repatriated wages of citizens working overseas as guest workers. It may not be palatable but it is one solution to the problem. Would you want your nursing aid to be a disgruntled local who was forced into the job under the threat of loosing unemployment benefit?

OK, this scheme may not work. A few might commit crimes. A percentage may overstay their visas.However, lets give it a go and rest assured that many Pacific Islanders will jump at the opportunity for the cash to support their families.

It is totally unrealistic to expect Australian unemployed workers to move to the farms to work for several months at a time. It might embolden a few to say that their benefits should be cut if they turn down the work but then they'll end up getting benefits through another route and the farmers will have press-ganged workers who are unlikely to actually do any work.

Australia needs to open its eyes to the rest of the world an not just sit here as the 'lucky country' and ignore the poverty surrounding it. Go visit PNG, our nearest neighbour and see the poverty on the streets of Port Moresby.

(Mike, good to see the ugly Australian is alive, well and as bigoted and ignorant as ever.)

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GDH:

21 Aug 2008 11:35:44am

A rather poorly put together article which missed one of the key elements of its argument.

If as the author's are suggesting, the key problem for some of the Pacific countries is corruption and ineptitude of the leadership of many of the countries, the exposure by Pacific Islanders to the Australia way of doing things during their time here could actually bring about some of the change that they see as necessary.

There are many examples where such programs have not only offered people in developing countries the chance to generate savings to support their families, but shown these people how they might be able to tranform their families and communities using some of the skills that they have developed during their time in another countries, through developing small businesses etc.

A properly managed program that doesn't get out of hand (like the 457 visa exercise seems to have) could have huge, very positive impacts on communities in the Pacific, as well as get horitcultural produce picked and sent to market.

With regard to local workers, from what I have read, the jobs are there for anyone who wants them, and even with a modest number of Pacific islanders coming in, there will still be jobs going begging.

This is a situation where we can have both!

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bazza of the nt:

21 Aug 2008 11:41:29am

The five well off Pacific nations listed in the article are: Tonga, Samoa, Cook Islands, New Caledonia and French Polynesia.

But the citizens of the Cook Islands are citizens of New Zealand so any one of them can get on a plane and go to either NZ or Australia to get a job. Citizens of New Caledonia and French Polynesia are French citizens and any one of them can get on a plane and go to any EC country and get a job. Samoa has a very advantageous immigration agreement with NZ which sees many of its citizens living and working in NZ. Only Tonga has a classical "Pacific economy".

Thus four of these five listed countries should be left out of the analysis.

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Ian:

21 Aug 2008 12:49:31pm

So the idea is to promote development and provide jobs. In what industiries exactly? Ones that are sustainable both economically and environmentally? And ones thta don't contribute to GHG emission? They are unlikely to start manufacturing cars are they? What will they do to employ such large numbers? No, tourism isn't enough.

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sally:

21 Aug 2008 1:11:01pm

PNG and a whole swag of pacific islands all suffer from a late entry into the modern world as we know it. Keep in mind it wasn't until around the 1920's that Mick Lae walked into the highlands of PNG as the first white man ever to meet the locals. They have a strong 'one-talk' system wherein their first and strongest loyalty belongs to the home village. It's no wonder therefore that when the 'big men' get elected to power in Port Moresby, they see their first duty as grabbing as much money as they can get their hands on and feeding it back home to the 'one-talks'. The church may have succeeded in brain washing thousands of the local people over the years, but the country hardly runs according to Christian principles.

These countries have a long, long way to go before they can ever hope to grow and compete in a global economy. It's a real pity in the case of PNG that Whitlam and his gang dumped PNG in 1974 and that the current government is also falling for the charm of current Prime Minister Somare, someone who will never take PNG forward. What we should be doing is helping these nations build their economies in a positive, progressive way under a long term nation building program. In fact, the reverse is happening and on my most recent visit to PNG, I judged the country as having slipped back another ten years, in terms of the state of its civil infrastructure, a true measure of a countries prosperity.

It appears we are more intererested in trickling a few dollars their way each year in an effort the keep them relatively settled and to allow us to keep a watch on the so called security and stability of the region. A pretty pathetic approach in my view. Let's see if we have anyone in this country with the courage, the vision and quite frankly, the balls to stand up and tackle the real issues in the region. I doubt it will happen for a while yet.

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Emma:

21 Aug 2008 1:14:58pm

Some governments and the World Bank have seized upon the idea that labour migration can solve underdevelopment. It appears to be a good news story - people earn money of their own initiative and send back remittances instead of taking hand-outs of foreign aid.

However, on closer examination the situation is far more complex than that and few countries have become magically 'developed' through such schemes. In fact, guest worker programs can relieve bad governments of the pressure to act to improve their economies and labour market conditions.

The Philippines is a case in point - a country with the highest levels of outmigration of any country in the world. Despite decades of government-supported labour migration, the Philippines continues to be a developing country - in fact it has regressed over the decades. Remittances - if they are invested at all - go toward the education of children into professions that will enable them to out-migrate - a perpetual brain-drain cycle has been created. Few people from developing countries earn enough as unskilled guest workers to be able to invest their remittances in sustainable enterprises in their country of origin, most go toward household subsistence and paying for surrogate carers of children and Western Union makes a tidy profit from whatever is left.

I am not against guest worker programs per se, but after detailed research into migration, development and remittances agree entirely with the author that they are not the magic bullet answer some suggest they are for endemically poor and corrupt pacific island states.

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John Michaels:

21 Aug 2008 1:38:37pm

Is Gourav suggesting that Australia take 1 million labourers to work on farms? I don't see anywhere that the guest workers will be able to gain education in farming practices that will be taken back to their own countries that would then increase agricultural production and in turn make them wealthier. This essay seems a little bit all over the shop with no real concrete ideas or solutions. What I do see is that the writer believes that at least 1 million un/underemployed males need to be relocated to prevent violent unrest and stabilise our Northern neighbours.

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Esscargo:

21 Aug 2008 1:43:58pm

I think the core issue here is corruption in these countries. Australia giving a few islanders a few weeks work cherry picking isnt going to solve these fundamental issues. It really isnt Australias place to be doing this. We have some serious employment issues here as it is.

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Jason H:

21 Aug 2008 2:34:28pm

Teach them Permaculture farming methods while they are here picking fruit and revegetating forests so that when they return to their country they can help establish sustainable farming techniques without the use of fossil fuel based fertilizers. Coffee trees can be grown under rainforest.

Look for oppurtunities for sustainable products and industry. bamboo and coconuts are sustainable and have a varity of uses. Coconut oil is highly nutrious and does not break down when heated. Australia should be importing lots of this and eliminating deadly GM oils containing trans fats like canola and hydrogenated fats which will be banned in California soon.

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Wendy Bunce:

21 Aug 2008 3:06:30pm

The idea of importing more people into Australia is very silly & also very, very risky. Not only because of the elevated risk of knowingly increasing the spread of diseases like deadly bird flu & tuberculosis & hepatitis into our very vulnerable population & into our industries, but it is certainly not helping the people of our own country, first. For far too long stupid, short sighted governments have literally done exactly the opposite of what basic good common sense would do. And this once prosperous sustainable country is still being allowed to be abused & used up & sold off to the biggest, wealthy money makers, most of whom, seemingly, have to account to nobody whatsoever. When leadership fails, nothing can save the people or the land.

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henalf:

21 Aug 2008 3:33:48pm

These Pacific Islands are just another example of over population.The same problem World Wide. However our various wold leaders,prefer to keep their religous heads in the sand.and do nothing. Is there any influential voice out there,to do anything about it?

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Aussie Away:

21 Aug 2008 4:43:54pm

Really people get a life, who cares about what side of politics you come from or support. We have a chance here to build some positive outcomes for all involved, farmers, Pacific Islanders, Australia. We are well off in Australia, so much more than most contries in the world, I'm working overseas at the moment in a country that is being built by imported workers, and guess what it works. The country is going gangbusters and the workers and their families are so much better because of it.

Eg: I have a friend here, he gets paid a terrible wage to what i consider fair, and still he alone suports himself, his wife, he is puting two kids through Uni and is suporting two houses for himself and his wife here and his kids in Uni in his home country.

He is happy just to be able to do that!

Yes i know that there will be people that will oppose this, but how about this, lets stop arguing about things we don't know yet and just give it a go.

From what i have seen here it will only be a good thing for Australia!

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Rob:

21 Aug 2008 5:09:17pm

All that bringing these islander people into this country is going to do is increase the crime rate and cause headaches when trying to get them to go home.

You might not agree with me and that is your right, but it's my right also to hold an opinion, popular or not.

Remember what I have said and watch it happen....Oh I forgot you will probably blame Howard for it going wrong like you do everything else.

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Opinion

Migration scheme won't solve Pacific's problems

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