The cliché of the South Pacific as a tropical paradise is contradicted by the hellishness of the Melanesian/Polynesian political scheming that characterises most of the region. It is a form of scheming that would make Byzantine politics appear like the polite equivalent of an election for office in the Country Women’s Association. From Port Moresby to Suva, political élites hide behind a fraying façade of democratic governance while slyly engaging in corruption, crime, venality and spite in their dealings with each other and with the citizens they pretend to govern. Many are adept at manipulating the language of anti-colonialism to colonise their own peoples. The ramshackle states they have constructed cannibalise public resources, including resources donated by overseas governments and aid agencies. The South Pacific is becoming a zone of indefensible human suffering. This can be seen in the collapsed ‘state’ of Nauru, the recent violent civil conflicts in the Solomon Islands and Bougainville, and the looming governance crisis in Papua New Guinea. Fiji illustrates the South Pacific’s ‘hell in paradise’ theme vividly with its two coups in 1987 (led by Sitiveni Rabuka) and the even worse misfortunes of the Chaudhry Government in May 2000 at the hands of the notorious George Speight.