[deccan]

Finally, a Last section for me to express some of my personal opinions on the situation in the S.I.

On balance, I support Australia's planned intervention in S.I. But I have many reservations.

1) Obviously Australia should have intervened much, much earlier. A show of force in support of Ulufalu's refusal to negotiate with the militants would have been relatively inexpensive and very effective. But, in the real world, it took 911 and the Bali bombing to stir the Australian government into taking action.

2) The fact that the Australians delayed acting for so long means that they will now have to rebuild many institutions that were effectively destroyed during the so-called ethnic tension. This isn't a question of building physical structures, but a question of re-training and properly motivating a cadre of competent, honest civil service employees. This is an extremely difficult and time-consuming task. I am not certain that the Australians yet realize the scope of the responsibility they have chosen to shoulder and may back out at a crucial moment.

3) The very scope of the intervention that is now necessary worries me. History has proven that large numbers of highly-paid aid workers in small, poor economies do bad things to those economies. Furthermore, the scope of the intervention and the amount of money involved creates moral hazards amongst some parties. In effect, some parties will inevitably greatly benefit more than others from all of the money being spent by the Australians here and may go to great lengths to artificially prolong the intervention as much as possible. These include local politicians sucking up to the Australians, some sectors of Australian-owned businesses and even possibly some of the aid workers sent here.

4) The Australian government answers to the Australian electorate, not the S.I. electorate. Therefore, any decisions taken here (example: economic and social policy, scope and depth of the intervention etc.) will necessarily be subject to the whims of Australian voters, which may change from time to time and can be a dangerous thing for Solomon Islanders.

A couple of suggestions that I would recommend, but see no signs of the Ozzie government being keen on include:

1) Initiate and enforce a comprehensive land reform. An extremely small proportion of the land in S.I. are properly registered parcels. By far the vast majority of land, and this includes land that people build houses on, farm on, and yes, even log on, are what is known as "customary lands", i.e. land owned in custom. Disputes over customary land are resolved in an extremely complicated way that involves calling in witnesses (tribal elders and chiefs) who are familiar with the oral traditions and customs of the various tribes / clans involved and who frequently don't speak English and instead must make their pronouncements in some obscure, nearly extinct regional dialect. This is a very contentious / subjective / difficult to properly administer and document task. This makes land tenure insecure and reduces the incentive of landowners to make long terms plans / investment decisions concerning their land.

2) Government (and taxation) should be conducted at the most local level possible. This is thorny issue. Making government and taxation local would avoid the problem of revenues from resource-rich areas being leeched away to pay to solve the problems in resource-poor areas and the tensions this causes. However, it would increase the overall administrative cost of government because of the need to duplicate many institutions and infrastructure. On balance, I still think that it's a good idea. Some areas of the S.I. don't really need to be subsidized because they produce plenty of revenue already. But some areas are so poor and isolated that they might see a boat from the outside world at most once a year. Properly separating them would make the subsidies that really needed in the really poor areas more explicit.

Last question:

Baron Grazic indicated earlier that the funding for the intervention was sold to the Australian public at least partially on the premise that it would help to prevent the S.I. from becoming a breeding ground for organized crime, drug production and smuggling, terrorism etc. To be honest, I believe that this is incredibly far-fetched. If the Australian government really is selling it on that basis, they are surely lying because all of those are extremely implausible scenarios. On the other hand, if the Australian public were sold on the basis that the it is a good thing to help a faltering neighbor, then that's another thing entirely, but it would be up to the Ozzie voters and taxpayers to decide whether or not it's worth it.