The governments of the Pacific island nations are asking for visa-free travel to Australia and New Zealand. Here’s why it makes sense.
Sitting in a cafe overlooking the blue immensity of the Pacific Ocean in the tropical Marshall Islands recently, an official from the World Bank Group chatted with a local dad.
A World Bank study in 2021 found that 37 per cent of the buildings in Majuro would be underwater permanently if the ocean rises by one metre. The other two frontline states are Kiribati and Tuvalu. All three are coral atoll nations. They also happen to be among the poorest nations on earth. Take tiny Tuvalu, with average income per head of about $US5000 a year. The cost of building a safe strip of raised land for the 6000 people of its capital of Funafuti would be $US5 billion, according to the UN Development Program. That’s more than $US800,000 per person.But where will today’s five-year-old go as tomorrow’s climate change refugee? The governments of the Pacific island nations have a suggestion.
“Obviously that would be a transformative approach to the region,” replied Wong, “but there is a lot of work to do on how that would look.”Translating this, Australian National University development economist Stephen Howes says: “Australia isn’t going to give the Pacific visa-free access,” but it is attempting to make “a huge step forward”.
China’s government has a big advantage over Australia in winning the loyalty of foreign leaders – bribes. We know fromLoading Lemahieu says that Australia currently is stuck in an unending game of “whack-a-mole” in the Pacific as it defends against Chinese advances “oscillating between the development lens and the security lens – the way out is to use the integration lens”.
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