Greg Fry

A new and powerful set of images of the South Pacific, and of Pacific
Islanders, has recently come to prominence in Australia. The images are
embedded in a forthright salvationist message that describes a region in
danger of "falling off the map." It warns of an approaching "doomsday"
or "nightmare" unless Pacific Islanders remake themselves -- just as Aus-
tralians have had to. Such a remaking, it is asserted, will require sacrifice:
a change in cultural practice, the taking of hard decisions, and the chang-
ing of unsound behaviors. Yet, not only can the nightmare be avoided
through right action, dreams can be realized. These ideas, of the kind
more generally associated with millenarian movements or nineteenth-cen-
tury missionaries, are coming from a most unlikely quarter. This is not yet
the imagery of Australian popular culture, which still holds to the idea of
paradise, but that of the heartland of "rational" thinking -- the intersect-
ing worlds of the bureaucrat, the politician, the foreign affairs journalist,
and the academic economist.

This new doomsdayism ¹ depicts a region that is failing to become part
of the Pacific century. In the dramatic imagery associated with this con-
ception, the South Pacific is the "hole in the Asia-Pacific doughnut" or
"the eye in the Asia-Pacific cyclone." It draws attention to what is seen as
a series of grim trends: a history of failure in development as measured by
growth in gross domestic product; "soaring" populations; unsustainable

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