Roderick Ewins* writes favourably of Adam Wolfenden's article we published earlier (see "Why the Rush over PACER?") and adds his own warning about what "free trade" may mean for Pacific Islanders' "rights."
This is a truly insightful article by one who is deeply immersed in the struggle to secure fairness in the trade area, and is justifiably afraid that the Pacific islands are on the point of being gulled into accepting a deal that is anything BUT fair. It is somewhat ironic that Fiji has been frozen out of the talks that are promoting this imbalance, by the very proponents of it, Australia and NZ. As a result, Fiji might, with a bit of luck, escape what others may be sucked into.
Back in 2004 I wrote to the anthropology community describing my great misgivings at Australia (under Howard of course) signing a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US. My fears were that from what I had been able to glean, under such agreements Aboriginal rights (or indeed the rights of a number of parties in a number of areas) could not be protected without Australia being legally challenged for infringing the agreement. There was a flurry of interest from some fellow academicsand one or two Aboriginal rights advocates, no reply from DFAT to my and many other public requests for reassurances on these and other issues, and it was duly signed and became law in Jan 2005:
Should we ever get a government in Australia that might truly wish to protect Aboriginal or other ordinary Australians' rights against big business, they would very probably find this FTA very difficult to get around, just as the government of Peru is currently finding with a similar FTA. Check out this site. Of course that is a big "if" and there is no available evidence any such government is anywhere in sight, so presumably any such conflict would merely be ruled in favour of the US because of the FTA.
That, it would seem, is the scenario that Aus/NZ are now wishing to visit on the small governments of its neighbours in the Pacific. Only this time, they are the ones set to gain, and the littlies the ones to lose. I guess it's a case of "Try and do unto others that which has been done to you".
*Dr Rod Ewins is a fourth generation European Fijian born in Ba and now resident in Australia. An anthropologist with close links to the Fiji Museum, he has researched many aspects of Fijian art and material culture. He has also written on political issues such as the Fijian Western Confederacy and Speight's 2000 Coup.
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