Australia’s richest man profits from Solomon Islands intervention

[Aidoneus]

Australia’s richest man profits from Solomon Islands intervention
By Mike Head
3 March 2004

The Australian government dispatched 2,000 troops and police, as well as senior officials, to the Solomon Islands last July in the name of humanitarianism. The small Pacific country, the argument went, had become a “failed state” where the collapse of “law and order” had left its half million people exposed to corruption, violence and the dangers of terrorism and international crime. As a regional power, Australia was going to intervene to help them out.

In fact, Operation Helpim Fren (Helping Friend) has formed part of a sharp shift in foreign policy, aimed at asserting Australian commercial and strategic hegemony in the southwest Pacific. Just as the Bush administration seeks hegemony over the Middle East and Central Asia, the Howard government wants to become the strongman in this region.

One little-reported feature of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) has been the participation of some of Australia’s major corporate interests in the so-called aid programs administered by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID). They supply nearly all the goods and services, including consultants on six-figure salaries, leaving little money for the local people.

These highly-profitable arrangements highlight the predatory character of the operation, which is paving the way for Australian companies to benefit from the program of out-sourcing and privatisation that is being imposed on the Solomons’ government. A revealing case in point is the handing over of the management of the Solomons’ prisons to GRM International, owned by Australia’s richest individual, media magnate Kerry Packer.

GRM advisors are now supervising prison officers at Solomons’ main jail, Rove, which has been enlarged to house 300 inmates, and the reopened Tetere prison farm on the Guadalcanal Plains. The prisons are pivotal to Canberra’s operation. So far more than 700 local people have been arrested.

--snip--

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/mar2004/solo-m03.shtml

[lostnfound]

1. Is this all part of "you're with us or you're against us"?

Seems like the Brits, Aussies, French, and US have just decided to help themselves to 2nds and 3ds whenever they like.

[Djinn]

2. nothing new

just have a look at our history in Papua, particularly Bouganville