As Australia and New Zealand tentatively celebrate successes in their battles to bring Covid-19 under control, Winston Peters, New Zealands deputy prime minister, has raised the possibility of the two nations opening up travel to one another.
The mooted trans-Tasman bubble would allow travel between these two countries, which seem for now to have brought infection rates under control, while keeping their borders with the rest of the world closed or tightly managed.
While this seems like an excellent idea, it is one that needs go further. Specifically this spirit of neighbourliness needs to be extended to the small island states of the Pacific. Aside from giving real substance to Canberras talk of a step-up in the region, if managed carefully, medically there is little to lose and economically there is much to gain from this approach.
Pacific nations have been successful in preventing the spread of Covid-19 within their territories. American Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands and Frances Pacific territories have reported cases, as have Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste, but of the independent island states only Fiji has been more exposed 18 cases with no deaths and no new infections in more than a week. Once eradicated, there is no rational case for not allowing travel to and from Pacific Island states to Australia and New Zealand, should this be something that Pacific nations want.
Expanding a potential trans-Tasman bubble to the Pacific could help to stop its tourist industry from withering on the vine. Vanuatu, Fiji, Palau and the Cook Islands are all friends who depend upon Australian and New Zealand visitors for a substantial part of their economy, and we should not be leaving them out to dry now.
The impact on these nations from the lack of international tourists has already been devastating. In Fiji, where tourism contributes nearly 40% of GDP, nearly 300 hotel and resorts have closed, and tens of thousands of people have already lost their jobs. A recent survey of more than 250 tourism businesses in Vanuatu suggested drops of 70% of full-time and 33% of part-time employment in the sector as a result of Covid-19 impacts.
Going the other way, the Pacific has become an important source of seasonal harvest labour for Australia and New Zealand, and reopening the borders is one way of maintaining this. During the financial year 2018-19, some 12,000 workers from the region spent time in Australia as part of the Seasonal Worker Program (SWP), and if it hadnt been for the pandemic the numbers would have been even higher this year.
The issue of whether or not the closure of borders will disrupt Australias food supply-chain is complicated. Some farmers report being overwhelmed by trapped backpackers, others worry that if borders remain closed into the latter half of 2020, fruit and veg may go unpicked.
News that seasonal workers currently in Australia can extend their visas by a year is welcome, but a temporary fix. Especially when we factor in the importance that remittances from Australia have for many households in places like Vanuatu and Tonga the case for reopening the gates to seasonal workers, and perhaps even expanding the SWP is a strong one.
While supporting Pacific households and Australian farms are excellent reasons to advocate for opening our borders to Pacific Island states one aspect of this issue that does require some soul-searching is the degree to which such action would also be motivated by a spirit of competition with China. Some have argued that a trans-Pacific bubble could be a way of strengthening Australias strategic interest in the region as China is making its presence felt there.
Common as such reasoning may be, the spirit of it is not in anyones best interest, especially at a time of acute crisis. Anti-Chinese sentiment has a long history in both Australia and the Pacific and responsible policy-makers must not give oxygen to some of the paranoid rubbish that is out there. The question Australians need to be asking themselves is not how we can compete with China but how we might cooperate with it to help our more neighbours through an economic storm theyre ill-equipped to weather.
Without a doubt reopening our borders to the Covid-19 clear nations of the Pacific would pose more of a challenge than setting up a trans-Tansman bubble. Great care would need to be taken to work with Pacific governments and communities to ensure their great work at keeping the virus out was not undermined and any inclusion would have to be at the invitation of Pacific governments. Yesterday Matangi Tonga reported that Tongas top health official, Siale Akauola said Tonga was not ready to reopen borders and when it did it would be first to countries with no recorded cases of the virus, such as Samoa and Vanuatu.
However if Pacific nations wanted it, their inclusion in a trans-Pacific, rather than trans-Tasman travel bubble could be an act of goodwill that would better the lives of thousands and be appreciated for decades to come.
Michael Rose is a research fellow and anthropologist from the Australian National University.
Excerpt from: