Greg Fry, ‘“Climbing Back Onto the Map?”: The South Pacific Forum and the New Development Orthodoxy’, IR Working Paper 1994/7, Canberra: Department of International Relations, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, December 1994.

The development orthodoxy concerning the Pacific Islands region no longer advocates structural adjustment strategies simply as desirable measures. It now argues that they are imperative if the islands region is not to ‘fall off the map’ in the changed circumstances of the post-Cold War world. This paper explores the attempts by Australia’s Minister for Pacific Island Affairs, Gordon Bilney, to create a new regional economic order built on these principles by exercising leadership through the South Pacific Forum.