Good governance is a big issue even with strong democratic nations, who have public institutions built over centuries and low corruption indexes. For nations who are revelling in independence, coming back to normality after extended guerrilla war or hostile occupation, it is an even bigger problem. The western response is to send in the military to secure the area, bring in supplies by air and sea, and do a bit of nation-building. But it is the civic structures that need stability and permanence, as a result, we may get better results with our neighbours if we export our bureaucracy rather than our military.

Nation building is treated as a temporary high tempo deployment. The area is secured, indigenous civic structures installed, or recreated and then the nation is pretty much left on its own.

For small nations like East Timor, independence can be heady stuff, creating pride and a shared sense of purpose. So the high tempo type mission is probably the only way to help a new nation establish itself.

But East Timor has fallen back into instability, and our other neighbours like the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Fiji are periodically under-going disturbances, often as a result of poor governance.

Until the 1970s Australia was actively involved in the Pacific nations around us. Papua New Guinea remained an Australian territory until 1975 when Australian policy moved toward the Pacific Island nations self-governing without Australian interference.

Maybe it is time we offered a third option. The ability to attach and detach themselves to Australia's federal parliament as their people wish. It could be permanent, but with the goal of it being temporary until the bureaucratic structures have built up sufficiently in the Pacific Island nation.

The Pacific Island nation attaching itself to the federal system would not be a state, but a discrete political entity, who would have Senatorial representation, and an Australian federal civil service office and liasons in their country.

Australian federal authority into the Pacific Island nation would be prickly, as some form of taxation would be leveraged, but since it would be with the goal of being temporary, maybe some arrangement can be drawn up.

Another option is to make them a state of Australia with an easy to declare incession/secession act which gives the flexibility for the island nation to jump into the Australian federation, and also jump out once their structures have received positive benefit from our bureaucracy.

Currently our parliament is a very static entity. It looks inward to Australia for its own structure and treats outside nations as their own little balls of discrete inward gazing.

If parliament becomes more flexible, capable of accepting refugee political systems, absorbing them, strengthening them, and releasing them back to their original nation, then this can be a stronger form of nation building than just sending the military in.

In the same manner as RAD, an RCSD? Rapid Civil Structure Development?

cam