FROM THE ARCHIVES: NURTURING JUSTICE feature articles 2006-2009 [1]

NURTURING JUSTICE is a series of regular online blogs begun in 2005 by former Monash University academic and Australian Christian philosopher, Dr Bruce Wearne. NJ took up, on occasion, issues that concerned the Pacific and specifically, Fijian politics. Here we present the first of a number of extracts fro NJ feature articles that first appeared in the FDP during the period 2006-2009:

PREAMBLE:

Nurturing Justice is an occasional publication based on the conviction that Christian people are called to seek justice and thereby form their political lives by loving our neighbours by doing justice. By understanding ourselves as men and women called to serve God and neighbour with diverse callings in our complex society, NJ seeks in its own journalistic way to respond to what the prophet Micah told God's ancient people long ago. What are the Lord's requirements? None other than the doing of justice, the loving of mercy and walking humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).

Nurturing Justice encourages a sustained Christian political contribution by affirming our God-given calling to seek for public justice, and avoiding the empty myths and contradictions of human autonomy. A Christian understanding of how these myths are accepted and enshrined in changes to public law, requires a comprehensive political philosophy, one that finds its point departure for seeking justice in the gentle and merciful rule of Jesus Christ, the ruler over all of the earth's political regimes.

NURTURING JUSTICE IN THE SOUTH-WEST PACIFIC - Nurturing Justice 7 28 November 2006

We have to ask ourselves whether Australia, as a large and prosperous nation, has respected and cared for our South West Pacific neighbours as we should have done?

In recent decades the major forces in our national life have pushed us relentlessly to adopt more centralist, and less federalist, political planning. Whatever the area of government concern, it seems that only policies that equate "national self-interest" with economic profit and financial gains will get on the national political agenda. And in the meantime, far-reaching alterations are taking place. Our 1901 constitution was framed with a clear understanding that it was in the national economic interest for the State Governments to regulate the economies of the former colonial centres of power. But now, after 105 years, a centralist policy agenda is firmly in place. The current Prime Minister is pushing centralised control from Canberra as hard as he can and it seems that he considers that this will be the culminating transformation that has resulted from his tenure as Prime Minister. This is a significant turn-around for one who began his political career as an avowed defender of the States, alleging that any centralised and nationalised economy as espoused by the Whitlam Labor Government was merely a socialist half-way to communism, a denial of human reason as expressed in free market principles. But now communism is no longer on the radar and Australia's "national interest" has become the unifying theme in all federal policy areas promulgated by the Liberal-National Coalition.

But, in the light of current regional instabilities we should surely ask: what has been achieved long-term for our region by Australia's subtle change to its own self-definition? And what has this internal change done to Australia's "national interest" in the region? It is an important question, needing sustained historical analysis. In recent years the Howard Government has been happy to play the role of regional "sheriff" for the US and Australia's military involvement in Iraq confirms this obsequious attitude. But then the split in ANZUS was brought on when the Hawke Labor Government insisted on concurring with the Reagan administration's demand that ships carrying weapons of mass destruction be allowed to use Australian and New Zealand port facilities. Our efforts to understand what is happening today should not ignore these historical background factors, which are themselves developments of the security agreements set up after the Second World War.

Today, there seems to be a perverse relationship at work: the more Mr Howard and Mr Downer appeal to the "national interest" the more, it seems, that our region is characterised by political instabilities and constitutional imbalances. It is as if Australia's national interest should operate as the primary framework for the region's development. And so the imbalances continue provoking a new round of affirmations of the importance of "Australia's national interest" from our politicians.

Why is the network of international relations in our region less peaceful these days? Could it be that the successive policies of Federal Governments since the 1980s to advance Australia's "national interest" in the region has actually contributed to profound structural changes in the region? Is the region more just, more healthy, more stable, more safe, and more prosperous than it was before this two decade effort to equate Australia's "national interest" with programs that progressively centralised ongoing economic restructuring? If, as a result, we have become such a wealthy nation and if the freedom of the market is supposed to be the key to democratic governance, why then all this regional instability?

There is indeed a serious problem with the involvement of the Laskar Jihad terrorist group in West Papua that the Australian Government must not ignore in its dealings with Jakarta. But, the instability among Pacific Island states can hardly be blamed on terrorism. But then, maybe this country's grandiose and altogether inadequate response to the "war on terrorism" has actually had a negative impact on relations between it and the South Pacific nations, not only at Government to Government level, but also where grass-roots meet grass-roots, and NGOs work with NGOs, not to forget where police work with police, and military strategically co-operates with military. This is a critical line of argument and it must be asked by "all sides of politics" as we reassess our regional standing, as we think about our own strategic place among the nations, and as we calculate the political, cultural and social impact of more than two decades of economic restructuring. It is not just a matter of those responsible for current foreign policy from Canberra.

We need to develop insight into how Australia's national and economic development has been contributing to our region for good and ill. We cannot now avoid the prospect of a long-term instability in West Papua. But the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Fiji also show the world signs of considerable constitutional uncertainty as the citizens of these island states seek to resolve problems that are deep-seated in post-colonial settings.

Meanwhile, how does Australia, via its powerful media and our political leaders, interpret these regional instabilities? Is our country properly aware of the inner weaknesses in our own system of government as we give attention to the political difficulties faced by our neighbours? Are we as a country sufficiently empathic about the difficulties of constitutional change? Or do we forget our national irresolution about our anomalous "monarchic republicanism" and proceed to comment as if we have reached a point in our national life where no constitutional self-criticism is needed for ourselves? To listen to our PM and Foreign Minister it would seem that Australia's constitution is perfect. They seem to go out of their way to make conciliatory and complimentary comments to the Indonesian government, but at the same time the Pancasila doctrine, basic to Indonesia's emergent democracy since independence, is itself undergoing significant challenges and threats. Australian Government representatives seem to be extremely quiet when it comes to the privations and depredations of the indigenous people of West Papua. On the other hand, the reported comments of the Australian Government to the island states of the South West Pacific seem to regularly adopt the tone of an imperious "head prefect" as if relations in the region are merely about organising a sporting carnival for first formers at high school. These are matters that need our further reflection.

In the meantime, in the context of Foreign Minister Downer's comments about the possibility of a attempted coup in Fiji, we offer the following Christian democratic editorial from the Fiji Daily Post for your careful consideration. Further news on this matter can be gleaned from the Fiji Daily Post editorial "On using the c-word" [26-Nov-2006]:

THE comment by Australian Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer that another coup is likely and imminent in Fiji, is most unhelpful. It will not help resolve our crisis. His opinion brings nothing new to the discussion except to raise levels of alarm even further. The fact that our military commander ‘could conduct a coup within the next couple of weeks’ (as Downer put it) simply adds fuel to an already volatile situation because of his position - who he is, and the weight his opinion is likely to carry. It sends all the wrong signals to an already jittery international investment community and will do nothing to assist tourism in Fiji.

Of course, Mr Downer will have his defense at hand: he will claim that he is simply reporting what has come through to him from his departmental resources and the Australian High Commission. He will say better to be forewarned than regretful after the fact. But in all of this, he must understand the difference between an ordinary citizen in the street expressing that opinion and his status as a top-level political diplomat of a powerful neighbouring nation with deep historical, economic, social and political ties with Fiji.

He must also appreciate the incendiary potential of the word ‘coup’ when used by outsiders in an already coup-drenched culture such as we have in Fiji. Local political scientist, Dr Steven Ratuva, has rightly drawn our collective attention to the hyperbolic use of the ‘coup’ word by overseas journalists who seem too willing to sum up any political tension in Fiji as ‘coup’-related, or as having potential for a ‘coup’.

While there is a proper place for the consideration and evaluation of our rising political tensions and especially the prospect of a stand-off between police and the military, it is analytically wrong and injurious to the national interest to over-simplify these critical tensions as necessarily coup-driven or unavoidably coup-oriented.

That is to say, the free use of the ‘coup’ word such as we have in Fiji is part of a localised discourse, an ethno-linguistic ‘rap’ that is generically built into political exchange since 1987. We wish the c-word could be erased from Fiji’s consciousness and correspondingly expunged from our dictionary and discourse. But that may take generations.

The point is, we in Fiji use the word loosely, Mr Downer uses it seriously. Our use of the c-word has by its currency debased the fear-factor considerably. See evidence for this, for example, in the recent DP street polls which provide admittedly anecdotal evidence of people’s willingness to support a military overthrow of the very government they elected just some six months ago! This evidence suggests that a truly democratic culture in Fiji is skin-deep and few appreciate the philosophical contradiction between supporting democracy on one hand and supporting its overthrow on the other. Hence, the use of the c-word among us should be interpreted quite differently from the way non-Fiji outsiders and observers would use the word.

While we do not doubt the Australian Foreign Minister’s genuine concern for Fiji, it is this anthropological and cultural-linguistic point that he is missing and which, if taken on board, may better temper his choice of language in addressing our present crisis.