> Theoretically, an EU-like arrangement could be very beneficial for the
> Pacific Islands, specially if it allows freer migration (fat chance!).
It's
> much more likely we'll get a nastier version of NAFTA. Not even that, in
> fact. But I suppose that is better than waiting for them to sink, which
was
> the previous policy.
I also came to the conclusion that a NAFTA-type model is closer to the mark. What the Aust govt seems to have in mind is having their cake and eating it too: a homogenous capitalist economic space, albeit one without the free movement of islanders to Australia & NZ, when the islands start disappearing due to global warming, or civil wars break out and/or they suffer economic collapses. Which is pretty much the state of things already.
It seems to me that the emergence of some particularly vicious forms of local nationalism (e.g, in Fiji) make achievement of any kind of union difficult.