KEY POINTS:
There is an advantage, my fickle children have discovered, to being Samoan-Tongan-Pacific Island-New Zealanders during the Rugby World Cup. Whichever way you look at it they've had their bases covered. With so many Pacific Islanders in so many teams, it's been less a case of divided loyalties than
spot the cuzzy bro.
Well, it's no wonder. The Pacific's greatest export has always been people, and some of them were bound to end up in the world's best rugby teams.
Nearly a third of Tonga's and Samoa's national incomes are from remittances sent home by overseas workers, and it's clear that a few of them were also propping up their cash-strapped teammates at this World Cup.
Maybe that's why we've been so conscious of this being a tournament of two halves: we've had rellies among rugby's pampered haves as well as its underfunded have-nots.
The haves stay in the best hotels, with legions of support staff. When the final whistle blows, their teams will take home around $9 million each.
Meanwhile, the tournament's second-class citizens will reportedly get just $450,000 a team, whether or not they're poor and produce more talented players per head of population than most other countries - like Tonga, Samoa and Fiji - or rich enough to buy in talented players and coaches - like Japan and the US.
It's hardly a level playing field, and the IRB seems to go out of its way to keep it that way, even to denying Tonga's team the chance to thank their generous Irish backer by dyeing their hair green.
No wonder so many Pacific Island players would rather be in the All Blacks or the Wallabies.
They get treated with more respect.
And as with rugby, so with trade.
Last week, Pacific civil society groups and fair trade advocates held a global day of protest, accusing the European Union of trying to bully Pacific nations into a free trade deal that benefits European investors and businesses at the expense of the region's people and development.
The EU, they point out, has an economy 1400 times bigger than the economies of the Pacific Island countries. But under the terms of the Economic Partnership Agreement currently proposed by the EU, already fragile local markets would be opened up to devastating competition from the EU, destroying local business and jobs.
Local services would be pressured to deregulate. Government revenue from tariffs would be slashed and Pacific countries would lose the freedom to regulate and design policies that meet their developmental goals and needs.
"There is currently no such thing as a level playing field in world trade," says Roshni Sami, of the Fiji-based Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG).
She accuses the EU of hypocrisy for urging Pacific countries to develop more businesses, while putting up non-tariff barriers, such as the EU's ban on kava products, which has so far cost the region more than US$1 billion of export revenue. It remains in place despite kava being declared safe by the World Health Organisation.
Barry Coates, who heads Oxfam NZ, says the proposed agreement shows a lack of respect for the Pacific. The EU proposal came more than a year after the Pacific presented its own negotiating proposal - which appears to have been ignored - and just five months before the expiry of the World Trade Organisation waiver that allows Pacific exports to enter the EU market duty free.
But the fact that the EU proposal was "so late, inflexible and self-serving", says Coates, didn't prevent it from making "serious threats" that the Pacific will have to suffer the consequences if the December 31 deadline isn't met.
What worries Coates most isn't the relatively small trade with European nations, but the implications for trade between the Pacific and its main trading partners, Australia and New Zealand, both of which also want a free trade deal.
The impact of such a deal on a country like Tonga, which earns around $6 million a year from the tariff on New Zealand goods, would be proportionately greater than the benefit we'd get here.
Where is New Zealand in all this? It plays both Pacific friend and the hard-headed trade partner. But it taketh far more than it giveth.
New Zealand's trade surplus to the Pacific is around $1 billion. In the year to July, we exported more than $1.2 billion worth of goods to the Pacific region, and imported just over $200 million.
A prosperous and peaceful Pacific is in all our interests. Even if it means Samoa and Tonga get to keep more of their rugby players at home.
