Guest-worker schemes, which have been proposed as a development solution for the Pacific, no doubt benefit the individuals lucky enough to be selected to participate. But even high guest-worker numbers, of 25,000 a year for New Zealand and 50,000 for Australia, would not help the employment problems of the majority of Pacific Islands.

One group of Pacific islands is developing—the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Samoa, Tonga—with reasonable education and health and modest socioeconomic outcomes for their peoples.

A second group of islands, including Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu, have stagnated or become poorer since independence. In these islands, most families have no electricity, no running water, no sanitation, and little healthcare.

‘The problem for New Zealand is that the second group of countries includes the largest, most populous islands. About 80% of the Pacific’s population is found in the low-growth group of islands, where employment is rare and living standards are not rising. This is the dilemma presented by a bipolar Pacific,’ say Hughes and Sodhi.

‘In the low-growth islands, the state of medical services is dire. Papua New Guinea has an HIV/AIDS epidemic of African proportions. Nauru’s poor policies place it in the group of low-income, low-growth islands with one of the shortest life expectancies in the Pacific despite its once great mineral wealth.’

Hughes and Sodhi’s island-by-island survey of health and education outcomes, demographic trends, and the labour force, identifies a sharp division between island populations that are functionally literate and those that remain basically illiterate.

‘Underemployment and underemployment are at the core of the Pacific’s ‘arc of instability’. Without employment-led growth, crime, civil disruption, and corruption will worsen. It is a matter of time before the growing army of unemployed turns from restless to violent.’

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