Mandates and Missteps

Front matter

AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT SCHOLARSHIPS TO THE PACIFIC - 1948 TO 2018

AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT SCHOLARSHIPS TO THE PACIFIC - 1948 TO 2018

ANNA KENT

Part 3: 1971-1983 5. Radical subsidies

7. Goldring, Jackson and the fight for the future of international education

9. Multiple objectives for scholarships and aid 10. Diplomacy or development?

123 149

177 203 219 227 247

Acknowledgements

The bulk of this book was written on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present. Sovereignty was never ceded.

I would like to acknowledge the students that have made the difficult decision to move away from their homes in the South Pacific for study. Their stories are the backbone of, and the reason for, this study. I would also like to thank all the alumni that I have spoken to over the course of this project, who have shared their experiences with me. These conversations have enriched this work and my own understanding.

This book started its life as a PhD thesis, supported by a scholarship connected to the Australian Research Council—funded Discovery Project, ‘Australia’s foreign aid since 1945’. My continued thanks go to my supervisor, David Lowe, for his guidance, support, understanding, empathy and knowledge. Thanks also to Helen Gardner and Carolyn Holbrook, who were excellent and supportive associate supervisors. Thanks also to my excellent PhD examiners.

I am also indebted to the other historians of the Centre for Contemporary Histories at Deakin. In particular, Sarah Pinto, Bart Ziino, Clare Corbould and Jon Ritchie have provided advice and collegiality that is a wonderful representation of possibilities of a supportive academic community. I was also fortunate to test out many of the ideas of this book at conferences over the years, and I am grateful for the interest, questions and comments that many colleagues made.

Iam grateful for the archivists at the National Archives of Australia, National Archives of Fiji (NAF), the National Archives of Papua New Guinea and the National Archives and Records Administration in the United States of America. In particular, I would like to thank Amelia Waqamailau at the NAF and Asena Dame, Emily Rasoqosogo and Amaili Vakanawa at the vii viii

NAF Library. I also appreciate the collegiality of staff at the University of the South Pacific, especially Nic Halter. Thanks also go to staff at the Australian High Commissions in Suva and Papua New Guinea who reaffirmed the need for research like this.

To my ECR (Early Career Researcher) colleagues, Brad, Deb, Jacqui, Fiona, Celeste and more, thank you so much for your support and encouragement, and for tolerating my ramblings and enthusiasm with kindness. Thanks to Matt Mawer, Joan Dassin and Anne Campbell for showing the global potential of my research, to Jemma Purdey for encouraging me into this, and to Joanne Barker for joining the scholarship research caper. To my colleagues, mentors and friends in the international education world, I hope to repay your support by translating this research into a broader understanding of international education history in Australia.

Special acknowledgements and thanks go to my friends, who have encouraged me in this madcap scheme from the beginning, consoling me and celebrating with me throughout.

Finally, thank you to my family. To my parents, for showing us the world as it is and the ways it can be better. To my sisters, Elly and Kate and their families for their support, and special thanks to Elly for paving an academic pathway (and for a place to stay in Canberra). To my kids, Adele and Quinn, whose encouragement and curiosity fill me with joy and love. Thanks also to the best office buddy, Grover. And to Peter, thank you.

Foreword

Nayahamui Michelle Rooney

On Wednesday 24 October 1990, when I was in my final year of high school in Port Moresby, and with about two weeks before the final Year 12 exams, I woke up one morning to my mother crying as she entered into my room. During those times, every morning either her or our father would walk in and wake me up for school. This morning, our father was away in Manus. He was then working between Mendi, Kavieng, Port Moresby and Manus and had taken one of his regular trips to Manus to check on their lodge, Lorengau Kohai Lodge. He called home regularly to check on us and when we spoke over the phone the night before he asked me how my exam preparation was going. I had told him things were okay and I asked when he would return home. His response was something along the lines of a lighthearted tiredness of being on the road so often; ‘Maybe never’ or ‘God only knows’. I remember those words and his voice because it was our last conversation. Through her crying, and my confusion about why she was crying as she entered my room, I also remember her words becoming clearer. ‘He is dead. They killed him’. I sat up abruptly, awake, and asked, ‘Who?’ or “What?’. She repeated “They killed him. They killed Papa’. I knew he was in Manus. He must have been killed in Manus.

I screamed and got out of bed and followed her to their bedroom where we made a phone call to my brother’s friend to ask him if he could go and pick my brother who was at work. Mama had already begun making calls to let people know. Mama was a political figure in Papua New Guinea and the news about our father’s death spread rapidly. The house began filling up with streams of friends, relatives and my parents’ colleagues arriving in shock to confirm the news or to mourn and offer condolences. My world was turned upside down, into a big fast-moving blurry place with a lot of wailing and moving people. I knew we would be going to Manus, and I thought that I would never return back to Port Moresby.

That day, amid the turmoil, a phone call came in and my mother took it. I recall her sitting in the corner speaking on the phone and waving me over to her. She was saying to the person on the line, ‘It is best you tell her, and she hears it directly from you.’ Curious, I took the phone from her hand. On the other end of the line, a female voice explained that she was a staff member from AIDAB (the Australian International Development Assistance Bureau, later called AusAID). She told me that my application for an Equity and Merit Scholarship Scheme (EMSS) had been successful. I had been selected for a scholarship to study economics at The Australian National University (ANU). At that moment, leaving our Port Moresby home in the direction of Australia, instead of Manus, was the last thing on my mind. I tried to explain that my father had just died and that I was returning to Manus for the funeral and did not know when I would return. The voice on the other end of the call informed me that they had already heard the news and she proceeded to calmly tell me to go to Manus and to contact them when I returned. My scholarship would be held for me. I cannot remember her name. At that time, I was Papua New Guinean. With our father being a former Australian citizen and with his family in Australia, our family had always lived between the two countries. Mama had made it clear to Papa when they got married that, if he married her, he was marrying her entire family and so PNG was the home they chose to live and raise us in. With our mother’s family in PNG, her political career and our father’s decision to become a Papua New Guinean citizen, we also held PNG citizenship. Both our parents were very proud Papua New Guineans, and they made this clear. When I reflect on my, and my siblings’, education, each of our journeys seems to reflect our parent’s juggling between life realities for each of our specific situations, their aspirations to educate us, year-toyear strategies for affording different forms of education, while supporting a large extended family. In my case, this included spending around three years living with my paternal uncle and aunt in Australia attending a public school. I think because of this, my parents never raised my expectations and nor did I entertain the idea that they would pay for me to attend university in Australia. I was encouraged to look for scholarships and to apply to what was available in PNG. They encouraged me in certain ways that, now on hindsight, I think also reflected their worries at that time. For example, in high school my favourite subject was art. However, my mother encouraged me to think about other career options. In any case, even after two years of art, I never saw my art portfolio because it got lost during the Year 12 examination process and the tumult when my father died. Despite scoring top marks for art and under average in maths, that day in 1990 set my life’s

FOREWORD pathway on a different direction so perhaps any ideas I had about pursuing art were never meant to be. As a PNG citizen exploring options to pursue tertiary education, I was aware of the restrictions and costs of studying in Australia. There were not many scholarships around and I applied for the EMSS when it was advertised. At home, I applied and received an offer to do an arts degree at the University of PNG. I was also accepted to another Australian university; a nice but impossible dream for our mother to even consider supporting after our father died.

Both those events on that fateful day — the death of my father and the phone call informing me about the scholarship — changed the course of my life and marked the beginning of the life I came to know; defining my entry into adulthood, setting the course for my professional and scholarly journey. As we journeyed to Manus to bury our father there was a kind of darkness that comes when you combine sorrow, confusion and apprehension about the nature of his death itself and the unknown details of his murder and the investigation that followed. In the sea of faces of people present for his funeral and burial, someone or some people knew what happened. That phone call gave me an alternative world to imagine as my world slipped into that darkness of grief and uncertainty. After our father’s burial in Manus and the customary five days mortuary ceremony, I returned to Port Moresby still dazed, and sat my Grade 12 exams. Now back in Port Moresby with the exams over and my imminent departure to Canberra, I resisted our mother’s plans for us to return to Manus for the Christmas holidays. The way our father had died and with a scholarship to look forward to, Manus had become a sad place for me; I did not want to return. However, Mama was a strong woman and insisted that I return with everyone to Manus. It was an important return; beautiful and sad at the same time; it helped to keep me grounded.

By early 1991, I was on my way to Canberra. At the Port Moresby international airport departure area, I recall very shyly giving an interview to one of the national radio stations. The interview might have been arranged by the EMSS Australian scholarship officials because I recall the question seemed to focus on what I thought I would do with the education I was to receive in Australia. I recall responding along the lines of using the education to help the development of Papua New Guinea. A few hours later I was on a plane arriving into Canberra with a small cohort of other scholarship recipients. I stayed at the Ursula Hall college to commence an economics degree with the College of Economics. At ANU I met other Papua New Guinean students. In Canberra, family and friends formed an xi xii important social support net as I immersed into life as an ANU Bachelor of Economics student. My mother came to visit Canberra soon after I arrived. I remember one conversation when she and I were walking from ANU to Canberras city centre. I was feeling so sad and homesick for family and friends. I told her that I wanted to give up the studies and return home to PNG. I mentioned that perhaps I could return and take up the UPNG offer to study for an arts degree. But she did not want to hear a word of it. In no uncertain terms, she sternly told me I was to focus on my studies and complete the degree at ANU.

The scholarship must have been a great relief for our mother and other family who tried to fill in the gap our father left. In all the sorrow that arrived with that news that day, that phone call was like a light through a pinhole in the darkness. I could see some hope and relief in my mother’s eyes. As she grieved and cried, she would also mention this good news. Reading some of the letters she sent to me and her diarised notes during those years after our father died, it is evident that she was grieving deeply and under immense pressure to try to figure out, along with other family members, how to cope after his death. I know that under the circumstances and with her knowledge of the challenges PNG women face, and what had just happened to her husband, our father, she must have been very worried about the kinds of challenges we faced ahead of us. At the age of 18, she and our father had already provided an excellent foundation for me, but without him around she would need support. The scholarship to ANU was a unique opportunity for me to study while relieving her of one worry.

I put my head down and completed my degree between 1991 and 1994 and graduated with a Bachelor of Economics with second class honours. I stayed at Ursula Hall college in 1991, Burton and Garran Hall in 1992, then moved off campus for 1993 and 1994. In 1993, my younger brother lived with me as he attended school in Canberra. In 1994, he would visit me over weekends in Canberra from boarding school in Goulburn. The scholarship enabled me to provide small but important support to other family and loved ones. It enabled me to return home to visit during those years.

I returned home to PNG in 1994 with my degree in hand and returned straight to Manus where I stayed and waited for responses to my job applications. I returned to Port Moresby in early 1995 after I received a job offer from the Bank of PNG to work as a monetary policy officer. I have always been drawn to social and development issues, and in 1996 I successfully applied for a job as a National Program Officer with the

FOREWORD

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). I spent over 10 years as a national officer with the UNDP and then just under a year with the World Bank. In 2009, facing challenges in life and after our daughter fell very ill, I made the decision to migrate to Australia when I found out that I was eligible for Australian citizenship by descent because of my father’s citizenship before he took up PNG citizenship. I took up Australian citizenship and moved to Australia in 2010. Under PNG laws at the time, I had to forfeit my PNG citizenship. I cried so much when I lost my PNG citizenship. But now as a mother myself, I was making decisions for my family. In Australia, after some time looking for work, including working in casual childcare, I commenced my PhD in 2012 with the ANU State, Society and Governance in Melanesia program, which is now known as Department of Pacific Affairs. My PhD was very much motivated by my own questions about how we create social safety in our life, and how we balance life between the customary obligations and our aspirations for education, good health, motherhood and so on.

My career has been a journey since that phone call telling me that I had been awarded a EMSS scholarship to do economics. It has defined my professional life, my scholarly journey and my entire life since my father died. My mother’s response to me when I told her I wanted to give up also taught me about being humble and pragmatic about life choices. Even if I was not sure if I wanted to do this course, or if I was more passionate about doing something more creative, at that moment in our lives she was very constrained in how she could support me. It was better for me to take what was available and follow the course of where it would take me, rather than return home to an uncertain future ahead of us. I have held this approach in my life. We don’t always get to choose what we study or what life deals out, but when presented with opportunities, we can try to make the best of these opportunities. The EMSS to study economics at ANU was my opportunity and I have no regrets taking it. Even today, when some of my work is critical of the Australian government’s approach to Papua New Guinea, I am always grateful to the Australian and PNG governments for creating the opportunity in that scholarship.

Anna Kent’ book provided me with historic context and gave me an insight into the official side of the scholarship schemes and the various iterations of the Australian government's scholarship schemes through themes like decolonisation, national interests, Australian aid, foreign relationships, education policies and Australia’s domestic political environment. A key argument of the book is that scholarship policies are characterised by xiii xiv incremental iterative policy changes. I was intrigued to learn that the EMSS scholarship, which I was a recipient of, was a short-lived scholarship scheme which, according to Kent, was a compromise between the two major reports — Goldring and Jackson reports — commissioned by the Australian government. According to this book, the EMSS was another departure from the trend of iterative change and was an experiment in redefining the role of recipient government’s decisions over scholarships.

I read this book as a 1991 recipient of the Australian EMSS. I have sometimes wondered about the selection process and what and how decisions were made that led to that specific phone call being made on that day. How was the decision made for me to do economics at ANU? It is so long ago, and perhaps it does not really matter now. I have simplified my story for the purposes of reflecting on the importance of this book because I believe that it will be of interest to a wide audience within and beyond academia and the policy space. The case studies drawn from the official records of scholarship recipients were an excellent way to introduce the key themes and underlying policy and political considerations at the time. The case studies also help to bring the book closer to readers who have either directly been recipients of scholarships or have been a family member of a scholarship recipient. Like me, I know the book will prompt many scholarship recipients to reflect on the questions of how the Australian scholarships shaped their lives. What specific iteration of Australia’s scholarship policy did their scholarship come under, and how and why were they selected for the scholarship? How did each of our experiences, individually and collectively contribute, or not, to the goals of those policies? Each scholarship recipient has our unique story to tell about the ways the Australian scholarship shaped our lives and careers. All our stories are rich with multiple relationships that mean that the actual reach and influence of the scholarships extend far beyond recipients of scholarships and the state bilateral relationship.

Given the changing geopolitical context that we find ourselves in, international students, including recipients of Australian scholarships, will remain crucial to the Australian tertiary sector and Australia’s engagement with the Pacific region. Importantly, the experiences and relationships formed as part of the experiences of scholarship recipients will remain important threads in the fabric of Australia’s relationship with the region. This book provides an important baseline study to understand how the past shapes Australia’s current and future policies on scholarships. It will also open new conversations and points of inquiry about Australia’s scholarship policy discourse and recipients’ experiences both in Australia and the region.

AA ADAA ADAB ADCOS ADS AIDAB ALAS ANAO ARDS ASTAS AusAID AVCC CAA CD&W COE CSFP DEA DFA DTS EMSS HECS IDP ITC JCSS

Acronyms

Australia Awards

Australian Development Assistance Agency Australian Development Assistance Bureau Australian Development Cooperation Scholarship Australian Development Scholarships

Australian International Development Assistance Bureau Australian Leadership Award Scheme

Australian National Audit Office

Australian Regional Development Scholarship Australian Sponsored Training Assistance Scheme Australian Aid Agency

Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee Community Aid Abroad

(British) Colonial Development and Welfare Commonwealth Office of Education Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan Department of External Affairs

Department of Foreign Affairs

Development Training Scholarships

Equity and Merit Scholarship Scheme

Higher Education Contribution Scheme International Development Program International Training Courses

John Crawford Scholarship Scheme

XV

Xvi

MELCOS ODA OECD DAC

OSC PNG RAMSI SSSP STP TPNG UK UNSC UPNG USA USP USSR

Melbourne Council for Overseas Students Overseas Development Assistance

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Development Assistance Committee

Overseas Student Charge

Papua New Guinea

Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands Secondary School Students’ Project Sponsored Training Program Territory of Papua and New Guinea United Kingdom

United Nations Security Council University of Papua New Guinea United States of America University of the South Pacific

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Notes on geography and language

The Pacific can be a difficult geographic concept to define. It is complicated by a range of ideas about the Pacific as a region. Historian Matt Matsuda wrote that defining what ‘the Pacific’ means is a ‘daunting challenge’. Matsuda goes on to discuss the difficulty of ‘history drawn from such a complex set of boundaries, nested temporalities, and geographies’.

In this book ‘the Pacific’ is used to describe the south-westerly area of the Pacific Ocean, often known as the South Pacific. This area stretches from Papua New Guinea in the west, and the Cook Islands and French Polynesia to the east. These areas are often described as Melanesian and Polynesian cultural areas — which are themselves constructions. To the north of the equator — what Crocombe and Meleisea describe as a ‘big geographical and cultural divider’, lies Micronesia. Kiribati is the most northerly nation that features in this research; other Pacific Island states north of the equator tend to be more closely linked to the United States of America and have attracted less attention from the Australian Government in relation to aid. This focus aligns closely with British imperialism; many of the states and territories in the Pacific that the Australian Government has been concerned with over the period covered in this book are former British colonies.

1 Matt K Matsuda, “The Pacific’, The American Historical Review 111, no. 3 (2006): 758, doi.org/ 10.1086/ahr.111.3.758.

2 Matsuda, “The Pacific’, 759.

3 Ron Crocombe and Malama Meleisea, ‘Higher Education in the Pacific Islands: Spheres of Influence, Trends and Developments’, International Journal of Educational Development 9, no. 3 (1989): 164, doi.org/ 10.1016/0738-0593(89)90044-8.

xvii xviii

This book also discusses the nation now known as Papua New Guinea, and the former territories that make it up (in the timeframe of this book) — the Territory of Papua and the Trust Territory of New Guinea. The legal distinctions between these territories are important, and affect the status of their residents as part of the Australian state.

As Hank Nelson has written, ‘the names for the east of the island of New Guinea are confusing’. In 1906, Australia was granted control of the south-eastern half of the island that had been British New Guinea, which became the Territory of Papua. The north-eastern half was German New Guinea, until 1921 when it became ‘officially’ Australian New Guinea, a mandate territory under the League of Nations and later a trust territory under the United Nations. Both territories were administered together by the Australian Government, becoming officially known as the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. They are not, however, the same territory. There are key administrative differences that change the status of the individual residents of these territories. The impact of these administrative differences will be discussed across this book.

This book discusses international education at length. The terms used for the globally mobile student cohort that is part of what is now known as international education have varied over the decades covered in this book. In the early postwar years students were generally referred to as ‘Asian students’. Later they were known as ‘overseas students’ and in contemporary times they are referred to as ‘international students’. All of these terms are used at times in this book, and they all refer to the same grouping: students who have travelled from one country to another for study.

4 Hank Nelson, ‘Liberation: The End of Australian Rule in Papua New Guinea, The Journal of Pacific History 35, no. 3 (1 December 2000): 269-80, doi-org/10.1080/00223340020010562.

There is a long history of student mobility across land and sea to access higher education.’ For the people of the islands of the South Pacific during much of the twentieth century, travelling overseas was the only option to access higher education. And for many of these students, a scholarship was the only way to access such opportunities. For more than 70 years, the Australian Government has been providing scholarships to Australian universities for aspiring students from across the Pacific and the rest of the world.

For much of that time, scholarships have been considered part of the Australian nation’s obligation to provide aid to developing countries in its own region, including the Pacific. Despite changes in governments, aid and foreign policy approaches and the conditions in the recipient territories and nations, scholarships have persisted. This longevity, through changing national interests and shifting government priorities, through (and in spite of) reviews that have sought to reshape aid and scholarships, is remarkable. It is also instructive. This book explains what both the persistence and the longevity of international scholarships can tell us about Australian foreign and aid policy over the last 70 years, particularly in relationship to the Pacific region. This is particularly relevant today given the current Australian Government’s focus on engagement with the Pacific.

There are three key themes running within this book. The first is the flexible but powerful notion of national interest, and in particular Australian national interest. The second is the decolonisation of territories and colonies in the South Pacific, and the related British Empire and Commonwealth,

1 Travel was often, although not exclusively, within the borders of empires. For example, there is travel around what Herrera refers to as the ‘fluid borders that made up the Islamic Empire’ from the ninth century. Linda Herrera, “Higher Education in the Arab World’, in International Handbook of Higher Education, ed. JJF Forest and PG Altbach, 409-21, Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol. 18 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 410.

especially the Australian Territory of Papua and New Guinea. The final is the concept of incrementalism, of un-radical, iterative policy change in scholarships, and why that iterative change has occurred.

The concept of national interest is nebulous, difficult to pinpoint and changes over time. Political scientist Scott Burchill wrote that at the ‘very basis of claims for the national interest is an assumption that a political community can speak with a common voice’.* What this book, and these scholarships, demonstrate is that this common voice is assumed, but not necessarily present in the community involved in the planning and implementation of international development scholarships. Political scientist Thomas Davis has noted that the relationship between effective development assistance and Australia’s national interest should not be assumed.’ National interest is an umbrella term that can contain particular interests at different times. By understanding these scholarships through the prism of the ‘national interest’ that different departments and individuals were seeking to defend, one can see the differing interpretations, ideological and otherwise, of national interest. It is a contention of this book that this quality, the malleability of purpose and approach in framing the national interest, helps to explain the longevity of international development scholarships in the Australian foreign aid approach.

The bilateral relationships between Australia and Pacific nations, and earlier Pacific colonial administrations, are central to the book. In some cases, such as the administration prior to 1975 in what for simplicity will be referred to as the Territory of Papua and New Guinea (TPNG), this relationship is intragovernmental. This Pacific lens allows for an in-depth analysis of the colonial and decolonising relationships that the Australian Government had with these Pacific administrations and postcolonial governments. These relationships have changed since 1948, when the first awards were made, as one would expect. However, the presence and the role of scholarships have remained relatively constant.

Domestic policies, immigration policies and politics also played a significant role in the provision of these scholarships. This was particularly acute in relation to scholarships for TPNG, where the White Australia Policy affected

2 Scott Burchill, The National Interest in International Relations Theory (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 13, doi-org/10.1057/9780230005778.

3 Thomas Davis, “Does Australia have an International Development Assistance Policy? National Interest and Foreign Aid Policy Making’, in Proceedings, Second Oceanic Conference on International Studies (Australia: University of Melbourne, 2006).

the ability of non-European students from the colony to travel to mainland Australia for study. However, it also affected the design of subsequent schemes as equal opportunity and racial discrimination legislation was introduced in Australia. This book argues national interest, and domestic policies, play such a dominant role in these international development scholarships that these programs are more a reflection of Australia, and its perception of itself as a nation in the Pacific, than they are reflective of the needs of Pacific Island nations.