Two days ago there was already some news showing us that the relationship between Australia and the Solomon Islands will not improve soon.
"Solomon Islands PM Manasseh Sogavare takes another swipe at Australia, and says referring to his country as "our backyard" is offensive - particularly as this is where toilets are often located, and where rubbish is burnt".
I am unclear whether PM Sogavare's description of the word "backyard" is sincere or disingenuous (I suspect the latter so is also being insincere).
Certainly in somewhat alignment with PM Sogavare's experiences in his nation, for New Zealanders and Australians, certainly in "days of old" (eg well, well over 100 years ago) typically toilets were in a homes' backyard (for some older houses this is still true today although more than likely connected to municipal water and sewerage systems) and rubbish was burnt in one's backyard, but it never had negative connotations (in the way PM Sogavare is portraying it) as a home's backyard was also the garden, a place to relax amongst nature trees and birdlife and a place to grow fruit and vegetables i.e. food for the household. A backyard is a good thing.
However to clear up any possible misunderstandings over the phrase "back yard" in a regional sense (and in the way that PM Sogavre is implying when criticising Australia), in terms of the wider South Pacific for Australians and New Zealanders it simply means, as per some dictionary definitions:
In a place close to you, or in a situation that you are directly involved in
For contrast in places like for example Europe and Asia, many nations (and people and ethnicities etc) live relatively close to each other (from our Australian and NZ perspectives) and one may not be able to travel "too far" before coming across land borders preventing further travel.
On the other hand for Australia and NZ (and Pacific Island nations too) our perspective is different, we live (for a lack of a better description coming to mind) in a "maritime" environment in which distances, although vast, are natural and one understands/expects to travel these vast distances to get from one point to another.
This is "our" history, even pre-European colonisation, in which Pacific people travelled and navigated vast distances over the oceans in canoes (if using the NZ experience, the pre-European Maori when they settled in NZ several hundred years ago they still traveled to and from what is assumed to be the areas around the Cook Islands, French Polynesia and Easter Island (and likely, although separately, as in not from NZ but from the South East Pacific to Hawaii too).
(And for Australia too, as they are a continent, the people there take it as normal to travel (what we NZ'ers think as) vast distances, as if it is nothing! And the pre-European Aborigines traversed the continent over thousands of years, on foot)!
So in today's context for NZ and Australia, due to its closeness and cultural ties to Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia, we refer to the South Pacific as "our backyard" (and also as security guarantors).
(Note: I accept that there may be some negative "colonialism" connotations to the phrase too nowadays, where activists and academics may also take offense to the term "backyard", but that's a different matter altogether, being one of the modern activist/academic trend to disassociate from aspects of the past).
I doubt PM Sogavare is coming from this "activist/academic" perspective (for if he were then the CCP could be regarded as "colonial or "neo-colonial" too and he would be careful not to attract or link such potential criticism from or to his new "overlords").
I suspect PM Sogavare is possibly ramping up the rhetoric for domestic reasons (which he needs to be very careful of as many Solomon Islanders are not happy with CCP overtures in their islands and do respect the efforts of Australia, NZ, the US, Japan and Taiwan providing aid and development etc), but it's more likely that PM Sogavare is ramping up rhetoric to align with the CCP, his backers. The CCP are investing a lot of money in various projects in the Solomons and in particular the 2023 Pacific Games, which PM Sogavare sees as means to gain prestige (both for himself and the Solomons in a wider patriotic sense). When I get a chance I'll expand upon this.
