'Naive' watercolours fill style gap in Torres Strait art tradition

28 November 2011
Mad Professor

segarpassi-fishwithcapBetween 1967 and 1972, a group of untrained artists from the Torres Strait produced a series of watercolours that now sit in the State Library of Queensland and featured recently in the library's exhibition Strait Home. The works were first displayed forty years ago in the publication of island stories Myths and Legends of Torres Strait - compiled by the self-taught chronicler of islander culture Margaret Lawrie.

The Australian Indigenous art scene has been dominated by such luminaries in naive art styles as the late Ian Abdulla from South Australia, Pantjiti Mary McLean of the Ngaatjatjarra people of the Western Desert, and the late Ginger Riley Munduwalawala of the Mara people of the Northern Territory, as well as the late HJ Wedge from New South Wales. Therefore, it is now time for the artists represented in the Margaret Lawrie Works on Paper Collection to be afforded a degree of recognition as meaningful contributors to the historical landscape of Australian art.

In this essay, the curator of Strait Home, Tom Mosby, argues that these 'naive' paintings now deserve due recognition, situated between the traditional sculpture of pre-contact times and new works of trained contemporary artists who are making a name for themselves in galleries around the world.

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Torres Strait culture not lost, just buried in the past

01 November 2011
Deep Island Time

Brisbane's Southbank cultural precinct has just been host to almost four months of exhibitions celebrating Torres Strait Islander history, arts and culture. The largest venture of its kind ever staged, the showcase ranged from 'naive' to contemporary art, music, dance, religion and traditional storytelling - all designed to make visitors more aware of the 270 islands (17 inhabited) and five language groups that make up non-mainland Melanesian Australia.
For its part, the State Library of Queensland brought to life more than 100 years of islander history through its exhibition Strait Home. The multimedia show draws on material collected by three different non-islanders who each recorded and preserved aspects of Torres Strait Islander culture in different time periods. One was Margaret Lawrie, a self-taught anthropologist and historian who returned regularly to the islands in the 1960s and 70s.
Tom Mosby is the library's manager of indigenous research and the curator of the Strait Home exhibition.

Brisbane's Southbank cultural precinct has just been host to almost four months of exhibitions celebrating Torres Strait Islander history, arts and culture. The largest venture of its kind ever staged, the showcase ranged from 'naive' to contemporary art, music, dance, religion and traditional storytelling - all designed to make visitors more aware of the 270 islands (17 inhabited) and five language groups that make up non-mainland Melanesian Australia.

For its part, the State Library of Queensland brought to life more than 100 years of islander history through its exhibition Strait Home. The multimedia show draws on material collected by three different non-islanders who each recorded and preserved aspects of Torres Strait Islander culture in different time periods. One was Margaret Lawrie, a self-taught anthropologist and historian who returned regularly to the islands in the 1960s and 70s. 

Tom Mosby is the library's manager of indigenous research and the curator of the Strait Home exhibition.

National pride undiminished by problems back home

22 September 2011
Home & The World

 
Hundreds of Papua New Guineans gathered at Roma St Parklands Brisbane city last Saturday to celebrate 36 years of freedom. The expatriate community was out in force, many travelling from outside Brisbane to be there. Others flew down from PNG curious about how the event is celebrated by those who now live and work in Australia.
Consul General Paul Nerau said the event was growing year-by-year and soon he hopes to have a permanent cultural centre in the city where residents, students, government officials and other visitors can mingle.

Consul General Paul Nerau said the event was growing year-by-year and soon he hopes to have a permanent cultural centre in the city where residents, students, government officials and other visitors can mingle.

Recognition comes late for Scouts 'rounded up and thrown into the fight'

20 August 2011
WWII History

'The news of Bogese's defection was flashed to all Coast Watchers and others, for it made their positions even more precarious. Bogese knew them all....and if the Japanese used his knowledge it could only be a matter of time before Government officials and Coast Watchers were rounded up and tortured for such information as they could give before being beheaded, as had happened in other territories to the north of the Solomons.'
- D.C. Horton, Fire over the Islands, 1970
The US Navy's defence of Port Moresby in May 1942 - known as the Battle of the Coral Sea - was fought entirely in the air by fighters launched from opposing aircraft carriers. But at the same time, the capital of British Solomon Islands Protectorate Tulagi - in the Florida Islands - was occupied by a Japanese force including ships arriving from the north, the southernmost tip of Santa Isabel Island.
It was District Officer Donald Kennedy, a New Zealander, who gave warning of these ships; this allowed aircraft from two US carriers south of Guadalcanal to meet them at Tulagi, sinking nine of them. But later that month, Kennedy's mountain coastwatching position at Mahaga became precarious. The occupiers on Tulagi had captured a South Isabel man and physician on Savo Island named George Bogese. He was press ganged in various duties including translating Japanese propaganda for local consumption but went close to breaking the coastwatching network when - together with a number of his wantoks -  he led a Japanese patrol to Kennedy's hideout.
Fearing the worst, some of Kennedy's carriers deserted. He was left with his deputy and medic Geoffrey Kuper, five police from North Isabel and six Rennell Islanders. But as luck would have it, the patrol was called off and ordered back to Tulagi.
As a parting shot, one of Bogese's relatives led the Japanese to mangroves where Kennedy's vessel, the Wai-ai, was hidden. The 14-ton sloop was Kennedy's ticket as district officer to roam a very wide patch from Isabel to the Florida and Russell Islands, New Georgia and the Shortlands. The boat was captained by his second-in-command, Bill Bennett, a New Georgian, described by one author as 'a man of many parts: sailor, radio operator, mechanic, medical dresser, cook, and schoolteacher'.
Under orders to prevent the vessel falling into enemy hands, Bennett doused it with petrol and was still on the boat when it ignited from a bullet fired from a Japanese barge. He escaped but was badly burned.
But how much is really known about the position of Solomon Islanders enveloped by a calamity not of their own making? And how much is known about those islanders who worked closely with the coastwatchers gathering and sharing intelligence for the Allied cause?
A young Solomon historian researching this part of her country's past is Annie Kwai from the Australian National University in Canberra. From the writen memoirs of European coastwatchers, she says, a picture emerged of locals - seen by the Allies and the Japanese - as 'civilians' whose loyalty was there to be won. Once trusted, their local knowledge could be used in pursuit of military victory.
"This perspective does not generate a comphrensive picture," says Kwai. "Rather it promotes the story of coastwatchers, while suppressing that of Scouts."
She believes that this suppression may be because of the oral tradition in the Solomons where the real stories of the scouts are embedded in memory and transferred to the next generation.
Clearly, the scouts' loyalty towards European coastwatchers varied depending on how each of them conducted their affairs. Eric Feldt in The Coast Watchers praises Donald Kennedy as 'one of those to whom command came naturally, a full-blooded, dominant man, who at last found himself in a position where he could really use his talents'.
There seems to be no doubt Kennedy trained and commanded an effective military fighting force backed by a disciplined network of local intelligence operatives. His 'commando-style' attacks on Japanese barges were daring, to say the least. In addition, after July 1942, his base at Seghe, New Georgia was the centre for rescuing downed airmen - a haven for Allied pilots, a prison for Japanese ones.
As much as his military-style discipline exerted control over local villages and prevented Japanese infiltration,  some of Kennedy's most perilous moments were partly the result of his personal habits. His betrayal by Bogese on Isabel (described above) is said to have been partly related to his womanising. At Seghe, Kennedy was known for brutal punishment of anyone suspected of disloyalty. Researcher James Boutilier records Kennedy's crew ramming a whaleboat in Marovo Lagoon. Kennedy himself was wounded in the leg. Much later, his captain Bill Bennett, admitted that it was he who caused the injury and not the enemy. Despite his senior rank as one of Kennedy's 'lieutenants', Bennett too was brutalised by the coastwatcher.
Other coastwatchers, it seems, commanded respect more than fear. Martin Clemens on Guadalcanal was supported by many acts of courage, guile and heroism, built around a group of savvy police constables who protected the intelligence operation as it was forced to move inland from Aola. All three qualities were often required to win the crucial psychological battle waged at the grassroots, a battle on which the quality of intelligence turned. In his coastwatcher's memoir, Fire over the Islands, Dick Horton wrote -
'The scouts and police were continuously active in seeking news of enemy dispositions and preserving and encouraging morale amongst the islanders. They combined business with pleasure by attaching themselves to the Japanese as simple villagers anxious to work for them....When they had gleaned all they could, they would slip away and report to Martin [Clemens], making certain en route that the local people knew what they had done so that they would take heart and look down on the invaders who could be fooled so easily.'
A police sergeant-major who came out of retirement, Jacob Vouza, was also a key member of Clemens' scouting team. There are many recorded accounts of Solomon Islanders not giving up coastwatchers under Japanese interrogation but Vouza took his duties one step further. While scouting for Marines in August 1942 just prior to the Battle of Alligator Creek, Vouza was captured . A Marine journal from 1992 describes his ordeal in this way -
'Vouza refused to answer questions. The Japanese tied him to a tree and beat him in the face with rifle butts. He not only refused to answer more questions but shook his horribly bloody head. They bayonetted him twice in the chest. He still said nothing. Finally in frustration, a Japanese soldier thrust his bayonet forward, stabbed the sergeant-major in the throat and left him for dead, tied to the tree. Vouza, though choking on his own blood, was too tough to die....Vouza gnawed and chewed his way through the ropes. Eventually freeing himself, Vouza crawled to the Marine lines.'
Miraculously, he recovered and in November the same year, he was back guiding Marines through the jungles behind Aola. Highly decorated, he died in 1984, aged 89.
As it is with all soldiers, the extremes of war create bonds between those whose lives depend on each other. So, Dick Horton, a long-time resident and district officer, speaks highly of the individual islanders who defended the protectorate. He also suggests that their collective loyalty, however praiseworthy, still relied on people like him and Clemens standing firm and staying committed to the Allied cause.
On the other hand, Eric Feldt,  who ran the coastwatching operation from Townsville, did not have the personal ties to Solomon Islanders, though he did serve as district officer in New Guinea. In his book, The Coast Watchers, he recognises the auxiliary (and sometimes heroic) role of loyal islanders and cites their military honours by name; but collectively he regarded them as prone to disintegration.
'[I]n spite of the encouraging signs in the native attitude, it was obvious to anyone of experience that time would bring deterioration. The only question was how much time would elapse before native loyalty cracked completely, and what would have happened in that time elsewhere.'
As a naval officer outside the theatre of war, Feldt may have underestimated the ingenuity of key local leaders (in particular, the scouts with their ties to colonial authority) in forestalling this process. Scouts not only used guile and trickery to keep community members away from the enemy and vice versa but also worked to bring local populations into the game of intelligence-gathering and so gave them a stake in its outcome.
Horton recalls an episode at Aola when the Japanese were still holding ground on Guadalcanal's north coast. One of their patrols had enlisted the help of a local Japanese man from Tulagi (Ishimoto) to interrogate villagers. It encountered
Corporal Andrew Langaebaea, one of Clemens' police scouts.
'Andrew was interrogated but was far too wily to give anything away, and spun a yarn so convincing that in the end the Japanese were made to believe that all the Europeans had fled from the islands and that all Andrew was interested in was the cultivation of his garden. Andrew's example of courage and quick thinking did a great deal to stabilise the local people after their first wild panic when they saw Ishimoto with the Japanese patrol.'
Courage and quick thinking aside, the war brought unmitigated hardship. Another decorated hero is Sir Gideon Zoleveke, a former government minister from eastern Choiseul, who had to defer his medical education in Fiji till after the war.
Speaking at a seminar in 1988, Zoleveke is at times resentful of foreign powers turning his land into a killing field. And despite being untrained, they still offered themselves up to the Allied cause.
"If it hadn't been for us, they would have been stopped by the reefs, the jungle, and starvation," he said in a translation from Pidgin. "They wouldn't even have met up. They would have died, every one of them, both Japanese and American. But we were there and we led them."
But he complains most bitterly about the lack of financial support for Solomon veterans, something that foreigners fighting on their shores were covered for. It reminds him that what the Allies achieved in the Solomons was possible due to Solomon Islanders being a dependent people.
"The British rounded us up and threw us into the fight," he said. "If they were to do that today, they would have to go through the Parliament. And Parliament would have to ask the British government to pay a certain amount of money before they could take even one Solomon Islander to join that war."
Another Solomon veteran who has spoken about his wartime activities is Alfred Bisili, a New Georgian who scouted for Donald Kennedy at Seghe. Bisili was on-duty during the occupation of Gizo and Munda in the Western Solomons in late 1942. He recalls the evacuation of Munda and how the villagers fled to the hills and suffered from food shortages. He scouted for them telling them when it was safe to come down to their food gardens.
Bisili told the 1988 seminar that he was "saddened by the fact that for many of us who have contributed and done a lot during the war, no recognition has been given to us for what we have done". His memories may have been sweetened by an opportunity to attend a commemoration earlier this month in Honiara (see photo) which dedicated a permanent monument to the scouts and the coastwatchers whom they so selflessly served.
Main sources
Feldt E. (1946), The Coast Watchers
Horton, D.C. (1970), Fire Over the Islands: The Coastwatchers of the Solomons
Laracy, H. & White, G. (eds)(1988), 'Taem Blong Faet: World War II in Melanesia',
’0’0: A Journal of Solomon Islands Studies, No 4
Boutilier, J. (1989), 'Kennedy’s Army' in  White, G. & Lindstrom, L. (eds),
The Pacific Theater: Island Representations of World War II

In this second article on Solomon Islanders in World War II - commemorated earlier this month in Honiara - Telinga Media reports the deeds of the Solomon Scouts who fed, spied for and protected the coastwatching operation so vital to the eventual Allied victory over Japanese occupying forces.

But as scouts themselves remind us, Solomon Islanders - in supporting the Allies - made sacrifices in aid of someone else's war.  

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Solomon Scouts' eyes and ears gave Allies tactical edge

05 August 2011
WWII History

Quote: "The occupation of Tulagi put the Coast Watchers in the position that they could escape only by our reconquest of the Solomons, if they could survive until that took place....[They] continued to signal intelligence; this, in itself, meant their death if they were captured. Deliberately accepting the risk, they remained, with only the faith that the Allies would one day strike back; if soon, to save them; if not soon, well, that would be bad luck."
- Eric Feldt, The Coast Watchers, 1946
To say the British Solomon Islands Protectorate was unprepared to assume centre-stage in the Pacific War in early 1942 is an understatement. Its defence force based in the colonial capital Tulagi amounted to a handful of locals and about 150 Europeans. In response to the Japanese advance, a plan for Australian airmen to train up a local militia never got off the ground.
The island-hopping that saw the occupation of the Philippines, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia and by January the New Guinea islands (Rabaul) was about to encircle the Solomon chain from its northwest. How Japanese naval, air and land forces were  dislodged from their foothold in the protectorate is a story being re-considered by a new generation of Solomon Islanders curious about how largely untrained, non-military personnel helped turn the tide. In particular, how and why did the sudden affront of someone else's war spur Solomon Islanders to defend the colony?
The answer lies in how a naval intelligence operation sprung up across the islands. Its key operatives were largely Europeans, recruited as coastwatchers and stationed at strategic points to observe enemy activity. But their intelligence-gathering was enabled by the cooperation of many local recruits who spied for, fought for and generally protected the coastwatchers, allowing them to continue to supply critical information to the Allied military effort.
"The Japanese know that there are coastwatchers on the islands," says Annie Kwai, a young Solomon Islands historian studying her country's wartime history at the Australian National University in Canberra. "[They] have to move from one place to another just to make their location unknown to the Japanese and their mobility is assisted by the local people."
When war came to the Solomons, the civil administration became militarised. Those who took up coastwatching duties were often serving or former district officers in the colony. Or they were long-term residents who ran plantations and were later given naval rank. As Europeans, this rank was less important than the trust they inspired in those whom they recruited as scouts to be their 'eyes and ears' on the ground.
One such coastwatcher looked at by Kwai is Martin Clemens, a Scottish-born former district officer on Makira who responded to the strike on Pearl Harbour by returning to duty at Aola on Guadalcanal's north coast. He was at first posted to Gizo which was already under threat.
"Clemens claimed that going to Gizo would be suicide and he insisted to be posted on Guadalcanal," Kwai told Telinga Media. "In the end, he manage to convince [District Commissioner] Marchant to assign him to the district office on Aola."
"The interesting thing about him is while trying to hide behind enemy lines and escape from the Japanese, he also tried to maintain law and order in the country and tried to maintain his role as the district officer," she said.
These two difficult tasks depended on each other. In New Guinea, there were cases where coastwatchers had been 'given up' to the enemy. The Japanese did not underestimate their value to Allied war readiness and in various part of the archipelago, sent patrols to track them down, using locals to gather their own intelligence.
For example, in March a Japanese landing crew near Kessa on Buka Island suspected that coastwatcher Percy Good had betrayed their position and killed him. More fortunate was Paul Mason, a planter who set up a lookout near Buin, southeast Bougainville to report on bombers flying in from Rabaul and warships amassing in the Shortland Islands. Protected by seven scouts led by a police constable named Moia, Mason avoided a search party in May; in October, just prior to a major offensive to re-take Guadalcanal, the Japanese sent tracker dogs (destroyed by an aerial bomb) plus a party of 100 trackers to capture Mason. They failed because his own scouts secreted him inland and when it was safe shepherded him back to his lookout where he continued to signal news of the naval build-up back to the east.
Clemens likewise was dependent on the loyalty of his scouts and their ability to guarantee him safe passage as he moved inland to avoid Japanese patrols. This was particularly acute in May after Japanese forces overran Tulagi and nearby islands and begun to establish a base and airfield at Lungga Point, just east of the present-day capital Honiara and only 60km west of his base at Aola.
Clemens had his core of loyal scouts who were mostly police constables. But as the occupiers raced to complete their airfield with local labour, Japanese contact with locals inevitably increased. According to Kwai, this caused some villages to turn against the coastwatchers, though most recognised their authority, many having been part of the  civil administration.
"According to some of the interviews I've done with the local surviving scouts, they see the coastwatchers as 'well, they are our government and we're supposed to look after them.'"
In a battle for the hearts and minds of the people, the Japanese did their cause no good by killing cattle, looting gardens and by their rough treatment of labourers recruited to build the airfield. Some Japanese propaganda had gone down well with some villagers but their work regimes did not inspire confidence. Kwai says notices were put about offering citizenship within the empire after two-years' unpaid labour.
"The local people - some of whom know how to read - say, 'well, if we don't get paid for what we're doing, what's the point of us working?' So, the relationship started to break down," she said. "If the Japanese built a better relationship, it could have been a different story."
The destruction visited on US naval infrastructure at Pearl Harbour in December 1941 was part of a strategy to prevent the Americans coming to the aid of pre-communist China, under Japanese occupation since 1937. Its military adventure through the islands of Southeast Asia aimed to secure control of Indonesian oilfields, controlling the sea lanes and thus isolating China from its potential allies.
With bases in the New Guinea Islands at Kavieng and Rabaul, Tulagi and the airfield on Guadalcanal was the next staging post extending the buffer southeast. The American entry into the Pacific War after Pearl Harbour saw them overcome the Japanese Imperial Navy at the Battle of the Coral Sea (4 - 8 May) as it approached Port Moresby. In June, they were successful again at the Battle of Midway. And just as the Lungga airfield was almost operational, the US Marines launched a surprise ground attack on Guadalcanal to seize the airstrip and re-take British headquarters at Tulagi.
It is the date of the dawn landing by US Marines - 7th August - that has been chosen to honour Solomon coastwatchers and police scouts and recognise their role in turning the tide on Japan's imperial ambition. It was a day when the coastwatching network  demonstrated its prowess - not as a substitute for fighting - but in Eric Feldt's words, by putting 'the fighting man in a position of advantage'.
The re-taking of Tulagi and the near-complete airfield at Lungga was bound to provoke a swift counter punch by Japanese bombers. Air strikes ensued, sent from bases at Kavieng and Rabaul but reported by coastwatchers on Bougainville, giving the Allies more than two hours' warning to prepare their defences and brace for the bombardment.
The warnings also were critical to blunting the Japanese strategic advantage in the air. As Feldt explains in his book The Coast Watchers, their Zero bombers had proved a superior fighting plane owing to their manoeuvrability. The extra time gave the slow-climbing Wildcats the edge by allowing them to be above the Zeros when they reached Guadalcanal airspace.
This Sunday at Point Cruz on Honiara's wharves, a monument will be dedicated to this network of people - planters, labourers, police, soldiers, medics, missionaries and civil servants - who chose not to evacuate and worked together at great risk in defence of their islands. In addition to the monument designed by local artist Frank Haikiu, a roll of honour will be displayed at the National Museum.
Visitors will read names like D.C. Horton, H.E. Josselyn and A.N.A. Waddell who acted as guides to pilot Marines to Tulagi and each serving at various times as coastwatchers on Guadalcanal, Rendova, Vella Lavella and Choiseul. They will also be able to view the names of thousands of Solomon Islanders - names like Sir Jacob Vouza and Sir Gideon Zoleveke - whose contributions are well known throughout the Solomons. There will appear the names of enlisted scouts, some members of the Solomon Islands Labour Corps formed in December 1942. There are also those local boys who simply turned up to help who will not all find their way onto the distinguished list.
Annie Kwai's desire to recognise her compatriots' role in shaping their own history comes partly from her own education.
"I finished my studies at USP [the University of the South Pacific] and come back. I don't have any idea about the topic. It is a wealth of knowledge - what your people do during the war and feeling a sense of pride for it."
Her research efforts have been supported by the Ministry of Education. Some of her results have already started to find their way into the national high school curriculum.
"Most of the things on the social science syllabus don't talk about the involvement of Solomon Islanders in World War II," she says. "It talks briefly about 'World War II comes to the Solomon Islands' but nothing about the Solomon Islanders."
The roll of honour is intentionally presented as a national roll of those who at a time of  bewildering destruction that they did not fully understand, showed the highest levels of resourcefulness and cooperation in spite of the divisions within colonial society.
"We try not to separate these names to build a sense of national unity," Kwai explains. "So you can look at the list and say, 'oh, these are people from Solomon Islands, not this is Guadalcanal or Malaita."
"And given the complexity and the sensitivity of ethicity in the Solomon Islands, it is very important for a project like this to pull together these differences and put Solomon Islanders into one nation and say, 'these are the people of the Solomon Islands, these are the heroes of Solomon Islands' and I think that the project will achieve that."

This Sunday - 7th August - marks the 69th anniversary of the Battle of Guadalcanal, a turning point in the Pacific War where Japanese sea and air power was exposed in the waters between Guadalcanal and the Florida Islands. Military planners have long acknowledged the decisive tactical role played by the Coastwatching Organisation, a naval intelligence operation extending from New Guinea through the southwest Pacific islands and northeastern Australia.

But in the Solomons, it was loyal Solomon Islands police scouts who made the operation work on the ground. Their contribution is now receiving due attention through new research and a celebration on Sunday in Honiara honouring the 'non-military' effort in support of Allied defence of the islands in 1942-43. 

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Caneworker descendants dream of island homes

26 June 2011
Labour History

Sonny MAster from sarahscragg on Vimeo.

Most people are familiar with the pitch of Australian politicians when speaking about immigration. It was post-war mass migration from Europe that provided the labour for the great monuments to nation-building such as the Snowy Mountain Scheme.

But far fewer remember that before Australia ever called itself by that name, agricultural workers from Melanesia were forging a nation in the canefields of Queensland - a nation that would later reject them once they had outlived their usefulness.

The descendants of those caneworkers are now remembering their contribution through two exhibitions in the Queensland town of Cooroy.

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Most people are familiar with the pitch of Australian politicians when speaking about immigration. It was post-war mass migration from Europe that provided the labour for the great monuments to nation-building such as the Snowy Mountain Scheme.
But far fewer remember that before Australia ever called itself by that name, agricultural workers from Melanesia were forging a nation in the canefields of Queensland - a nation that would later reject them once they had outlived their usefulness.
The descendants of those caneworkers are now remembering their contribution through two exhibitions in the Queensland town of Cooroy.

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Star-struck schoolboy answers Pacific calling

10 June 2011
Regional Diplomacy

Richard Marles - print story
Title: Star-struck schoolboy answers Pacific calling
Category: Pacific Diplomacy
'I first became fascinated by PNG when I visited on a school trip in 1984. We hiked in the Highlands and went to places which had not seen a European face in years. We stayed in village huts. We mucked around with our contemporaries at the local school, and slept in their accommodation. We saw grand resource projects and monuments to our grand military history in this place. For me, it was - quite simply - love at first sight.'
Australians are known for lasting attachments, even after relatively short stays in the Pacific islands. The connections - whether they be made on a surf trip to the Admiralty Islands or a rite-of-passage trek across the Owen Stanleys to Kokoda village - often lead travellers back to re-live an adventure or for some higher purpose.
The higher purpose for Richard Marles - the author of the above quotation - is to be Australia's premier diplomat in dealings with the islands and their governments.
'Because we are so close, we need to make an extra effort to ensure we know each other well,' he told a gathering in Melbourne two weeks ago, referring to Australians and  Papua New Guineans. What once may have sounded like lame rhetoric this time did ring true.
The Melbourne brainstorm on Australia-PNG relations was his own idea as Permanent Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs. Marles was responding to widespread skepticism about PNG's ability to manage the flow of funds from Australian aid ($480 million this coming financial year) and revenue from its minerals boom, now 50% of its GDP. One project alone - the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project in the Southern Highlands - will add K3.1 billion to government revenue. Prudent use of these funds over time could transform the nation. But so too could next year's elections. One speaker sketched a bleak scenario of political violence along tribal lines at election time, possibly centred on the very area that hosts the LNG project.
Marles musters a refreshing optimism without glossing over the problems around Australian politicians' word-of-choice -  'fragility' - when speaking about PNG or other points along the Pacific chain. Fragility of politics, economy and environment. He hails from Geelong just outside of Melbourne and holds qualifications in law and science.
Speaking to Telinga Media, he presented as an open, willing communicator of ideas and policy. Lacking an irrational fear of media that afflicts some politicians, he takes his views to his readers in an online column. His columns suggest that, like a good traveller, he thrives and learns from direct contact with people.
After years of swimming in a sea of mutual ignorance - with all the distrust and demoralisation that attends it - he stands as good a chance as any of convincing his Pacific counterparts that it is possible to 'know each other well'.
Nowhere have Australia and Pacific nations appeared more like reluctant dance partners than in negotiations for regional economic integration, through a free trade agreement called the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER Plus). Activated in 2009 with Australia and New Zealand across the table from the island member states of the Pacific Islands Forum, these negotiations have - according to official accounts - been 'progressing' with more dancers stepping onto the floor, such as private sector and non-government groups.
Non-government groups worry about the neo-liberal agenda underlying all free trade agreements and claim, among other things, that Pacific economies with suffer a reorganisation that will leave their small industries and subsistence base vulnerable and dependent on the vagaries of foreign investors and consumers. Some lobbyists based in Australia fear essential services in health with suffer as Pacific governments will be constrained in implementing social, industry and consumer policy.
One dependency that will surely be threatened will be government revenue collection from imports, on which many island states rely to fund social services and infrastructure. Ironically, an Australian Foreign Affairs report in 2003 spoke of economic reform in the islands as a way of liberating them from dependency. The parliamentary secretary acknowledged that economic arguments are not treated the same way on both sides of the table.
"We're talking about very different economies and lives that are based on subsistence living. What we're talking about in terms of PACER Plus is the reduction of tariffs, which means a reduction in government revenues from tariffs," he told Telinga Media.
"We've gone through our own experience in Australia around that and we've reduced those tariffs with a consequent economic benefit in terms of the productivity of our economy and that's what one would expect in the Pacific Islands as well. But  we are just running into what is a really difficult debate. But this is a debate that needs to be had by the region and if we could achieve a much more integrated Pacific, that would be of enormous economic benefit for the Pacific Island countries."
The same government report from 8 years ago anticipated this difficulty and recommended that each Pacific government run national education campaigns explaining why such policies were essential to achieve economic self sufficiency in the long-term.
Eyeing export opportunities in Australia and New Zealand, leaders from the Solomons, PNG, Samoa and Tonga have made supportive noises about moving the negotiations forward. Whether they can bring their citizens with them will depend on national consultations which are now underway in countries such as the Solomon Islands. Critics of PACER Plus who advocate a 'go-slow' approach are trade NGOs based in the Pacific who are networked with Australian-based lobbyists.
In April, the Gillard Government released its trade policy statement, which presented a priority list of trade negotiations. PACER Plus was not one of them. Confusion was met with re-branding of the agreement as 'not a traditional trade agreement'. This appears to signal a policy adjustment where Australian negotiators slow down, in-step with their Pacific partners.
There may actually be some consistency in the argument that Australian diplomats are treating PACER Plus differently to other trade agreements. In a meeting with NGOs in Honiara last October, the Australian position was at pains to suppress the notion that Australia's economic interests were driving its support for the negotiations. Australia was driven by a desire to help Pacific Islanders develop their national economies, it argued. Damaging Pacific economies was not in Australia's interest: 'We strongly believe that the agreement can provide a platform for a more prosperous, stable and sustainable Pacific. A prosperous and stable region is unambiguously in Australia's interest,' the statement said.
Foreign Affairs confirmed to Telinga Media that there was no back-pedalling on PACER Plus nor regional integration but the re-branding appears to signal a shift in negotiating tactics towards using aid to help Forum Island  countries engage in the global trading system. There are already schemes that are design to get Pacific export businesses off-the-ground and supplying Australian markets. Avoiding the T-word (tariff) may be what a non-traditional trade agreement stands for.
In any event, Marles believes his negotiating partners are coming around to accept the reform agenda. It may be smart diplomacy to exclude PACER Plus from a trade policy that couches negotiations  in terms of an unabashed pursuit of Australia's national and commercial interests.
"I actually think in the last few months there is a renewed interest within the Pacific Island countries about seeking economic integration. That's a long journey. It's not going to happen overnight. And I think there's a renewed belief in the benefit of doing that," he said.
So, 'a long journey' may become the new metaphor for regional integration, a journey travelled at a pace more attuned to Forum Island states. The negotiating terms are likely to be staggered in recognition of vast differences between island economies themselves in terms of size, productivity and capacity to export.
Some believe the Pacific's most productive export is people and that remittances from overseas employment the most likely engine for driving island economies. This became an issue in 2009 when trade negotiations were first launched. Critics within the so-called 'trade justice' camp insisted that access to employment markets in Australia and New Zealand not be used as a carrot to lure Pacific leaders into liberalising their economies.
The 2003 Foreign Affairs report recommended a pilot seasonal work scheme for Pacific islanders. It was put forward in the context of a bigger vision of a Pacific Community where greater freedom of movement was anticipated for workers as well as goods within a common market. Having been knocked back at Forum meetings in 2005 and 2006, the issue was at least alive. It was the Labor-led government that finally launched a trial of seasonal migration in 2009 for horticultural workers from Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Vanuatu. Out of a total of 2,500 available visas, only about 450 have been taken up.
"The vast bulk of those have come from Tonga," Marles explained. "And it is a pilot program but it's working well in the sense that those who have participated in it - both the growers in Australia and the workers from the island countries - have found it to be a really good program and there are a number of return visitors from Tonga occurring."
Both growers and workers may have to lower expectations of this heavily studied initiative. For a start, it's demand-driven and demand has been soft for island workers who cost more to employ and who compete with backpackers on working holidays. Demand from islanders to take up seasonal work is also lagging, especially from Melanesia. Traditionally low levels of Melanesian emigration may partly explain this but the policy rationale was always based on the safety valve that overseas work could provide for unemployed young men in places like Port Moresby and Honiara. But Marles sees unskilled farm work as only one area where Pacific Islanders can become mobile and enter the Australian job market.
"There are lots of Papua New Guinea engineers who are working in Western Australia in the resource sector. [We] need to make sure we are investing in the skills of the Pacific, so that they can access the Australia market through the normal skills-based immigration programs that we have."
But he rules out special programs for anyone but the unskilled. Professionals will need to compete with workers from the rest of the world as skilled migrants. And the way out for angry young men is education.
"It is about skills and training. That's why it's such a large focus of our development assistance program. The USP [University of the South Pacific], the Australia-Pacific Technical Colleges and the raft of awards that we have are a way in which we have tried to build the skills base of the Pacific so as to counter that disengagement."
Labour mobility will again be on the table at the next series of trade talks in Australia at the end of this year.
It is fair to say Australian diplomacy in the Pacific knows its destination but is unclear about the route. The road map is further muddied by the suspension of Fiji from the Forum following the illegal takeover four and a half years ago by the Royal Fiji Military Force. Consequently, Fiji is not a party to the PACER Plus negotiations. But last December, it assumed the chairmanship of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), a sub-regional grouping after first being denied it by the previous chair Vanuatu. In March, it chaired its first MSG meeting in Suva.
"I am comfortable with the position that Melanesian countries like Vanuatu, Solomons and PNG are taking in relation to Fiji," Marles said.
"In the discussions that I have had with representatives of governments that participate in the MSG, there's been a consistent view of wanting to see Fiji return to a state of democracy. And certainly if you look at the way in which those countries behaved within the Pacific Island Forum, they have all agreed with the Forum's position in relation to Fiji."
Whatever legitimacy the military regime gained from its MSG 'coup', it did not bring on a policy change in Canberra. Currently, members of the regime and their families are prevented from traveling to Australia. However Fiji's elevation was received privately by Australian diplomats, the parliamentary secretary's response betrays an appreciation that a Melanesian-style negotiation game is in play.
"There is a sense of pain which is felt by the people of the Pacific by the whole circumstances around Fiji. The way that is resolved is by Fiji returning to a state of democracy and everyone understands that. And how those views are expressed, the particular way in which that engagement's going to occur will vary from place to place but the message is pretty consistent. And in that sense, I'm very comfortable with the actions of the countries of Melanesia."
So, Melanesian leaders can find their own way to bring Fiji back into the democratic family, presumably at their own pace. For Australia to show signs of impotence or frustration would not earn the respect of the Melanesian group, founded, as it was, on principles of non-interference.
But Marles's incantation of  'a return to democracy at the earliest opportunity' is loud and often repeated. And it is an explicit rejection of expert opinion calling for a softening of sanctions or a brand-new strategy.
"We would like to see a return to a democratic situation within Fiji at the earliest opportunity. We would like to see a lifting of the public emergency regulations and the media decree within Fiji," he said. "And we would like to see human rights respected within Fiji. They are very clear and simple propositions which anyone would expect a country, which holds democratic principles dear as we do in Australia and as the people of the Pacific do, to express."
Behind the unchanged policy is the message that sticking to one's principles expresses a solidarity with those other nations that hold a democratic course. It also indicates that Canberra does not judge the success of its policy by how much the regime changes its behaviour.
"It's not as though we're in a position to somehow snap our fingers and Fiji does what we say," Marles explains. "What matters is how we articulate our own view about the situation and about our values around democracy. What matters is the statement that the Pacific region makes in relation to Fiji both to itself and to the rest of the world. In that sense, I think there's been success in the way Australia's gone about its policy in relation to Fiji."
Pacific Islanders typically expect much of their politicians but at the same time, are deeply cynical about them. Why would they have any more faith in a foreign, political 'bigman' like Richard Marles?
The once star-struck teenager may be judged in the islands by his own efforts 'to know each other well'. And by how well he read the signs along the way. Like the one you see as you enter Port Moresby's Jackson International Airport:  'Respect our culture!'
Because behind the traditional 'Welkam', there are boundaries. He will need to know where they lie.

'I first became fascinated by PNG when I visited on a school trip in 1984. We hiked in the Highlands and went to places which had not seen a European face in years. We stayed in village huts. We mucked around with our contemporaries at the local school, and slept in their accommodation. We saw grand resource projects and monuments to our grand military history in this place. For me, it was - quite simply - love at first sight.'

 

Australians are known for lasting attachments, even after relatively short stays in the Pacific islands. The connections - whether they be made on a surf trip to the Admiralty Islands or a rite-of-passage trek across the Owen Stanleys to Kokoda village - often lead travellers back to re-live an adventure or for some higher purpose.

The higher purpose for Richard Marles - the author of the above quotation - is to be Australia's premier diplomat in dealings with the islands and their governments.

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