LEADERSHIP FIJI 2007 GRADUATION 23 NOVEMBER 2007
REMARKS BY HE MR JAMES BATLEY AUSTRALIAN HIGH COMMISSIONER

Thank you for doing me the honour of inviting me to be your Chief Guest this evening.

As you may know, in the two years prior to my arrival in Fiji as Australia’s High Commissioner, I worked as Special Coordinator of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, commonly known as RAMSI. My experiences with RAMSI caused me to reflect on issues of leadership from a number of perspectives.

The first reason why RAMSI caused me to think about leadership was very personal - simply because the job of leading RAMSI was the most challenging job I had ever undertaken.

This was so, not only because RAMSI was a coalition of 15 countries. It was not only because RAMSI included around 700 personnel from very different backgrounds and traditions – police, military, aid experts, lawyers, economists and so on. While RAMSI enjoyed – as it still does – very strong popular support, its work nevertheless was often sensitive from a political perspective, and demanded frequent high level consultations with national leaders. In these circumstances the job of Special Coordinator threw up leadership challenges on a daily basis.

But there’s a second, and a more significant reason that my time in Solomon Islands gave me cause to think about questions of leadership. This is because many of the difficulties which that country had got itself into by the start of this decade seemed to have a lot to do with leadership.

This was true both at the national level, and at the village level. Over 80 percent of Solomon Islanders still live in villages, and in visiting villages in various parts of the country I can remember the men telling me, time after time, that chiefs no longer had the authority they once had; that the government didn’t seem to pay them any heed; and that the young men no longer respected them. To me, this sense of flux and frustration in traditional leadership structures was the tip of the iceberg of long term and major social changes. To me, it was an important clue in understanding how Solomon Islands society had run into so many difficulties in the late 1990s and early part of this decade.

At the same time, and just as seriously, Solomon Islanders gradually came to lose confidence in their political leadership and their institutions of government. This process did not happen overnight, but it accelerated dramatically in the late 1990s and the early part of this decade as Solomon Islands’ economy stagnated, and as armed conflict between two main island groups set in, leading to a breakdown in law and order and in government services. By 2003 – just before RAMSI arrived – there had been a dramatic collapse in the bond of trust which normally links ordinary citizens with their leaders.

Why did this happen? Essentially I think that ordinary people saw their leaders acting in a way that was not accountable to them. They saw the executive government acting without heed to the national interest or even the law at times; they saw their Parliament failing to serve as a check on the executive government; they saw institutions such as the Ombudsman, the Auditor-General and the Leadership Code Commission failing to control and modify the behaviour of their leaders; they saw their security forces acting outside the law, failing to investigate and prevent crimes, indeed sometimes participating in criminal activity.

One of the reasons that RAMSI remains so popular is that, with RAMSI’s support but under Solomon Islands’ own laws and institutions, a number of leaders in that country have been made accountable for their actions in power. In the most high profile cases, two former Prime Ministers in Solomon Islands have been convicted of criminal offenses. One of these is in prison now and one is awaiting sentencing.

Many political leaders were quite conscious that they had lost the respect of the people, although we did not always agree on why this was the case. Some political leaders thought it was wrong that that ordinary Solomon Islanders respected RAMSI, but did not respect their own political leaders. In my view, this perception goes some way to explain the tension that exists between RAMSI and some political leaders in Solomon Islands.

As I am sure you recognize, the problems I have been describing in Solomon Islands - a loss of faith in leaders by ordinary citizens, a lack of accountability on the part of leaders, a questioning of the role of traditional leadership – these problems are not confined to that country. Indeed, in various manifestations, they are felt by many people throughout our region.

Of course, the organisation which has sponsored your program this year – Leadership Fiji – was set up in recognition of the fact that leadership was an issue that needs addressing. Indeed, Leadership Fiji should be acknowledged as a pioneer in the work of developing the leadership potential of this country, and in the region more broadly, and I would take this opportunity of congratulating it on the excellent work it performs.

In recent years our political leaders have themselves acknowledged the importance of leadership, through the development of the Forum Principles of Good Leadership and Accountability. Those Principles have been incorporated into the overarching Pacific Plan.

Through our aid program, Australia is now also focussing much more on the issue of leadership. This focus springs from an understanding that leadership is a key part of promoting good governance. Institutions – whether they be public or private – cannot function effectively without the fuel of good leadership.

In our 2006 White Paper on the Overseas Aid Program, Australia announced that it would develop a Pacific Leadership Program. This initiative received $10 million in our 2007 budget, for an initial two year phase.

We are keen to develop our program in a way that supports and complements the Pacific Plan. Over the last twelve months AusAID has worked with the Forum Secretariat to undertake consultations with a range of stakeholders in Samoa, Tonga, Solomon Islands, PNG and Fiji. I am pleased that Leadership Fiji has been involved in that process.

Our Pacific Leadership Program is expected to commence in January 2008. It will be headed by an Advisory Panel of eminent leaders from the Pacific.

It will work with current and emerging leaders in the region to promote and encourage more ethical and effective leadership and contribute to improved governance. It will have a broad reach to a range of groups and sectors, including women, youth, the private sector, the public sector and civil society.

In addition to supporting the work of the Forum Secretariat on leadership and accountability, Australia’s program will support work at regional level, including through regional leadership exchanges, as well as specific national level initiatives, research and analysis on leadership and good governance issues.

I hope that the program will be able to work closely with groups such as Leadership Fiji who already have an established track record in this field.

I noted that the Pacific Leadership Program was expected to commence in January 2008. To manage the program, we would like to base two AusAID personnel in the Forum Secretariat in Suva.

We have sought approval for this from the interim government and we keenly await a response.

Tonight is not an occasion on which I should be telling you what leadership is, rather I should be stimulating you to reflect on your own experiences over the year.

Certainly I think this is a challenging time for leadership in the region, in all walks of life – in politics, in business, in the public service, in the traditional sphere. Programs such as the one you have undertaken this year can only help your society meet the challenges it faces.

I congratulate all of you on your graduation from this program and I wish you all well as your careers progress. I hope this experience remains with you throughout your professional and personal lives, and I trust that the network that has been formed in the class of 2007 persists and thrives in the years to come.