In July 1989, Social Alternatives published a special issue on Australia and the South Pacific, subtitled ‘Trouble in Paradise’. In 1989, ‘trouble’ seemed to be an appropriate label, with two recent coups in Fiji, an uneasy truce in New Caledonia between Kanaks, French settlers and the French State, and a long civil war about to break out on Bougainville Island. In the preceding decade, the Solomon Islands, FSM, Marshalls, CNMI, Vanuatu, Tuvalu and Kiribati had joined the already independent nations of Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.