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The Asia-Pacific Magazine quarterly is published by the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University (ANU), Canberra ACT 0200, Australia.

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Asia-Pacific Magazine
No. 3 June 1996
pp. 42-43.

The Pentagon Gives Way to a New Canoe

by David Ambrose

After nearly fifty years in temporary occupation of temporary accommodation, the Pacific's oldest regional organisation, the South Pacific Commission, officially inaugurated its new and permanent custom-built Headquarters on 25 October 1995.

`The Pentagon', as the old SPC Headquarters buildings were known, had been the headquarters of the American armed forces stationed in New Caledonia during the Second World War, and was offered by France in 1949 to the SPC as the site for a permanent headquarters for the newly-born regional organisation.

Time increasingly worked its ravages on the pre-fabricated buildings, and the economic importance of tourism progressively made its location on the beach-front at Anse Vata more and more attractive as a site for commercial re-development.

After some years of difficult and often mistrustful discussion, France, the Territorial government and Australia agreed, in 1992, to fund the construction of a new Headquarters, on a site adjacent to the former one, at a total cost of CPF 1.6 billion. Work began in 1993 and the new complex opened two years later.

Is it straining too hard to see a permanent shift in the strategic interests of the major powers mirrored in the move to a permanent home, as the engagement of external interest in the region wanes in the post-Cold War world? The UK, indeed, formally announced its intention to withdraw from the organisation at the Conference, and budget problems in the US Congress indubitably foreshadowed greatly reduced levels of American financial support for the SPC in the future. France and Australia, however, despite the acrimony and strain in their bilateral relations at the time, occasioned by the resumption of French nuclear testing at Mururoa atoll, seem yoked firmly to long-term cooperation with each other in partnership with the island states and territories.

Perhaps, too, there is an abiding significance in the shift from `the Pentagon' to a great assembly hall designed and constructed to incorporate the oceanic environment of the Pacific islands and the seafaring skills of their ancient navigators.

The majestic new Conference Hall and Library is a building of architecturally inspiring originality and tranquil beauty; its high vaulted ceiling spanned by great laminated wooden ribs,instantly evocative of the inside hull of a ship in the days of sail; its wall-planks caulked and hand-sewn together in the ancient manner by Kiribati craftsmen, and the whole edifice bathed from below in the shifting patterns of reflected light on water which shine through the glass floor edging the bottom of the chamber wall.

In a rapidly changing world and as the region assumes greater direct responsibility for its own future direction and development, it is appropriate that a temporary headquarters gave way to a permanent home, and that `the Pentagon' has been succeeded by a sea-going traditional kenu.

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