Independent filmmakers fear a slow erosion of Māori and Pacific content at Television New Zealand has begun.

Their fears have emerged after the role of commissioner for Māori and Pacific programmes was removed from a full-time commissioning role in recent restructuring by TVNZ.

The move has left some within the film and television industry shocked and questioning whether it is ignorance or arrogance.

“Given that we are an increasing demographic, this seems like a mad racist move,” said Joanna Paul (Ngai te Rangi), an independent television producer who was one of the pioneers of the Māori Television Service.

“That TVNZ considers this a part-time job is arrogant and ignorant enough, but given there is more Māori and Pacific programming on air than ever before beggars belief,” Paul said.

She told Pacific Media Watch in August she had “nothing to lose” in bringing TVNZ’s moves to light and calling the public broadcaster to task.

“The only way to stop TVNZ and find some justice is to be open and be transparent to the media.”

Victim of restructure
The role was previously included in the factual entertainment, Māori, Pacific and children’s commissioner role, but recent developments have seen the position reduced from a 0.5 position to a 16-hour-a-week “commissioning consultant” role.

This is despite an internal document provided to Pacific Media Watch, dated June 16, 2017, which stated the role of the commissioner “is a part-time role, which is in line with our current output”.

The commissioner for Māori and Pacific programmes is responsible for the commission of Māori and Pacific language programmes from the initial “sell” of the programme, right through to production, delivery and its fine-tuning throughout the shows tenure on air.

As the “most senior voice at TVNZ as a Māori”, the commissioner also provides guidance on tikanga Māori across TVNZ’s content team and output, former commissioner Kathryn Graham (Ngati Koroki Kahukura) said.

In the position for 13 years before her exit in July, Graham told Pacific Media Watch the commissioner was also responsible for developing and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders including NZ On Air, Te Māngai Pāho and Ngā Aho Whakaari, along with Māori and Pasifika communities.

But one independent Māori producer who did not wish to be named said the way the new role was proposed had potential negative impacts for both Māori content and independent Māori producers.

“It limits the ability of the person in the 0.4 position to truly participate as an integral member of the content team as they will not be present full-time and therefore cannot be involved fully in broader commissioning decisions.

Independent producers affected
“For independent producers making Māori and Pacific content, not having a commissioner available to them full-time is a potential disadvantage as often decisions need to be made quickly, and feedback is required promptly.

“They will have to work around the part-time availability of their commissioner which may impact on their ability to be agile and nimble in their programme making,” they said.

The producer also expressed concern at the disestablishment of the Kaihautu role and Māori programmes department, which they described as a “scaling-down” of TVNZ’s commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and true partnership, and the “de-prioritising” of Māori and Pacific content.

However, TVNZ spokesperson Georgie Hills said in a statement in response to Pacific Media Watch’s questions that TVNZ was not scaling back its commitment.

“The changes we’ve made to our content team this year do not change our commitment to continue providing New Zealand’s most watched Māori programming.

“Under our new structure, we have created a dedicated role with a singular focus. The new consultant position sits within our content team and specifically oversees TVNZ’s Māori and Pacific content,” Hills said.

Hills added the public broadcaster was proud of its Māori language content, responding to claims it was “scaling-down” its commitment to Te Tiriti.

TVNZ’s ‘scant concern’
“We’re proud of our dedicated Māori language content and we embrace the everyday use of te reo Māori in TVNZ’s broader local content offering.

“We typically air nine hours each week of dedicated Māori programming – 483,000 viewers tuned into at least one of these programmes a week during the financial year of 2017,” she said.

However, Pacific Media Watch’s industry sources claimed TVNZ had scant concern for their statutory obligations.

Under the Broadcasting Act 1989, New Zealand’s Broadcasting Commission is required to reflect and develop the country’s identity and culture, which includes the promotion of Māori language and culture.

“Our commitment to reflecting Māori perspectives is enshrined in legislation, such is the fundamental importance placed on the role we fulfill,” Hills responded to industry criticism.

Although the role is advertised as “commissioning consultant”, Hills added TVNZ was open to the time being 0.4 or 0.5 and that the title of the role was “immaterial in the big picture”.

“It will depend on the skills and capability the individual candidate brings to the role. We’re flexible. If our output increases, so will the role.”

‘Unrealistic job description’
But despite TVNZ’s assurances, some remain fearful the role will be disestablished.

“I predict they will scrap the role entirely using the reason they cannot find a suitable candidate,” Graham told Pacific Media Watch.

This was criticised by both Paul and Pacific Media Watch’s anonymous source, who said an “unrealistic job description” illustrated a lack of respect and priority for the role, placing “inherent limitations” on potential applicants.

“The commercially sensitive nature of the role makes it very difficult for anyone to juggle this with other production work, either for TVNZ or any other broadcaster.

“Creating a position which will likely struggle to attract the kind of candidates they are asking for does suggest a lack of respect and priority for the role,” one source said.

TVNZ first advertised the role on November 7, but it has been readvertised and the closing date has been extended from November 28, December 8 through to January 15, 2018.

“It’s a key role and it takes time to find the right candidate with the highly specialist skills we’re after. We’ve advertised, put the call out to our own network of contacts, the production community and have taken recommendations from within the industry,” Hills stated.

‘Conflict of interest’
Since Graham’s exit in July, the role has been overseen by the general manager of content creation, while Scotty Morrison (Ngati Whakaue) has been available to provide expert advice and guidance.

This is not the first time the general manager has overseen Māori and Pacific programming, one source told Pacific Media Watch.

A former TVNZ staffer who did not wish to be named said that for 15 years Māori and Pacific programmes had no commissioner at all and had successfully been overseen by the general manager.

“We count ourselves immensely fortunate to have somebody of Scotty’s skills to call on. His te reo and tikanga expertise have been invaluable to our content team,” Hills said.

However, Morrison and TVNZ have been criticised by Pacific Media Watch’s industry sources for a “conflict of interest”.

This is due to the fact that Morrison, along with his wife, fellow broadcaster Stacey Morrison, does consultancy work for shows with Māori content.

With the role of Māori and Pacific programmes commissioner hanging in the balance, Pacific Media Watch’s industry sources say TVNZ’s restructuring means a conduit for Māori and Pacific voices is being lost.

TVNZ ‘devaluing role’
“TVNZ is devaluing the role and putting it aside. It is symbolic of chipping away at Māori programming,” Pacific Media Watch’s independent Māori producer said.

“The lack of a commissioner is a another kind of door shutting. It’s a total disservice to Māori,” Graham reflected.

Ngā Aho Whakaari did not respond to several requests for comment.

The Directors and Editors Guild of NZ declined to comment.

Kendall Hutt is contributing editor of the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

Being a journalist in the Philippines has become a lot tougher, riskier and traumatic in the face of  President Rodrigo Duterte’s so-called “war on drugs” which has seen more than 7000 people killed in the Philippines in the last 18 months, says a leading media researcher and advocate.

In a narrative “singularly dominated by the police”, says Malou Mangahas, executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), the face of journalism in the Philippines has begun to feel the impact.

Mangahas told the audience of the ‘Journalism under duress in Asia-Pacific’ panel during the Pacific Media Centre’s 10th anniversary event one of the “freest” and “most rambunctious” media in Asia was facing serious challenges.

“The media in the Philippines right now is suffering from severe psychological trauma for seeing dead bodies, observing the terrible grief of family members of those who have been killed in the war on drugs by our president of only 16 months,” she said.

Mangahas said journalists in the Philippines had become “first responders” in a war which had seen institutions falter and the rule of law challenged.

“The rule of law is weak in the Philippines. This happens, this aberration – Duterte, the war on drugs, the martial law on Marawi – because we have many broken institutions in the Philippines.”

Although impunity was a problem in the drug war, Mangahas said accountability was a “twin problem” which the media had failed to uphold in a story “written and dramatic in numbers”.

‘Nobody owns up’
“People are getting killed but nobody owns up. Nobody gets jailed for what he has done. Cases are not even filed or pursued in court up to prosecution and conviction.

“I think we have gone wrong, we have not reported enough about our people,” she said.

Mangahas said that reporting on justice and rule of law, a “very difficult thing for a journalist to do”, had become harder under Duterte’s drug war, as journalists had to retrace their steps.

PCIJ’s executive director said that the drug war had called attention to the role of the journalist in the Philippines, which a “virulent social media community” had seized upon.

The war on drugs had seen “trolls” call out reputable media organisations such as Rappler and the Philippine Daily Inquirer as “fake news”.

Mangahas said she did not like to see journalism diminished by the “loose term” and warned fake news was a form of misinformation, propaganda, spin and hate speech.

“People never think about what it includes, what it excludes.

‘Open to opaqueness’
“News is never, ever fake,” she said.

Mangahas said a general shift from “open to opaqueness” now characterised media freedom in the Asia-Pacific region.

“Historically in the last 20 years, nations of the Asia-Pacific region have moved from open to opaque.

“In many parts of the region what we’re observing is a general push-back.”

Johnny Blades, a senior journalist at RNZ Pacific, spoke about the media and Melanesia, especially Indonesian-ruled West Papua.

Among a handful of New Zealand journalists to travel to West Papua, Blades explained that despite President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s best intentions of loosening media restrictions, there was a lack of cohesion about Widodo’s “Papua policy” in various state agencies.

“Out there in Papua it’s not Jokowi running the show, it’s more likely to be the military and the police.

‘Unlikely to quell discontent’
“His focus on development is unlikely to quell the discontent with Indonesian rule among Papuans and that, to a large degree, relates to their historic core grievance about what they see as an illegitimate self-determination process,” Blades said.

Despite the “dominating” presence of security forces and an “uneasy reality” and “terrible tension”, Blades said he was grateful for the chance to have gone there.

“I never thought I’d get to West Papua.

“I was really blown away by the beauty of West Papua. It’s indigenous people are truly magnificent people,” he said.

Introducing the panel, the chair, PMC director Professor David Robie, said how both the Philippine crisis and the Indonesian human rights violations in West Papua had been virtually ignored by the mainstream media in New Zealand.

He said the PMC’s media products Pacific Media Watch freedom project and Asia Pacific Report had tried hard to balance these blind spots.

A minute’s silence was held to remember the victims of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, while protesters held “Stop the killing” placards.

At the start of the panel, AUT graduate Sasya Wreksono introduced her special video to mark the anniversary, saying “I hope you get the feeling of the commitment, the drive and the passion that goes into the Pacific Media Centre”.

Evening MC Alistar Kata, an honours graduate and former Pacific Media Watch editor, added: “I would imagine, Sasya, it wasn’t easy to fit 10 years of stuff and content into two and half minutes!”.

• Pacific Media Centre turns ten, talks media freedom under violent threat
• PMC journalists, academics, students and mentors celebrate 10 years
• Philippines reporting risks grow under ‘The Punisher’, says PCIJ advocate
• PMC photojournalism book offers ‘window’ into Pacific culture, issues

By Kendall Hutt in Auckland

The Pacific Media Centre kicked off its 10th anniversary celebrations last night with the launch of an investigative photojournalism book.

The book, Conflict, Custom & Conscience: Photojournalism and the Pacific Media Centre 2007-2017, was launched by Professor Berrin Yanıkkaya, head of AUT’s School of Communication Studies.

“We celebrate the launch of Conflict, Custom & Conscience. The book is an honest and moving account of some of the biggest issues in the Pacific region. It’s a fitting milestone to mark this important day,” Dr Yanıkkaya said.

READ MORE: The new photojournalism book

The book, co-edited by Jim Marbrook, Del Abcede, Natalie Robertson and David Robie, features the work of 15 photographers throughout the Asia-Pacific region, from Gil Hanly to Russian photographer Vlad Sokhin, who have been involved with the PMC since its founding in 2007.

Marbrook, an award-winning documentary maker, told Asia Pacific Report the title speaks to three major themes in the book.

“It speaks to custom – the customary and indigenous world, while conflict defines a lot of news coverage in the area,” he said.

Marbrook explained the idea of “conscience”, however, came through clearly on the part of the photographer.

‘Telling stories that weren’t being told’
“It’s the commitment to telling stories that weren’t being told before and in a respectful, ethical way.”

Conflict, Custom & Conscience is also divided into four themes – culture, environment, women, and politics, protest and conflict – through which Marbrook hoped the richness of the region would come through.

“Hopefully it gives a window into women’s rights issues, climate change, and the intersection between traditional culture and modernity, which is really interesting in the Pacific,” he said.

Marbrook also hoped people would gain an insight into the region and be “charmed” by the photographs.

“Some of the photographs are quite horrific, but I’m hoping they can tell stories that don’t often come through in a couple of column inches in a daily paper. I’m hoping it will pique their curiosity and they’ll go and look for more images from these photographers,” he said.

Professor Yanıkkaya also launched the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review.

Those gathered also honoured the work of PMC founding director Professor David Robie and the photography of Pacific Journalism Review designer and TOKTOK newsletter editor, Del Abcede, which was on display.

‘Forefront of journalism’
“Professor David Robie has been the face of the centre since it opened. We applaud his energy, his dedication and commitment to the ideals of the centre and to keeping it running at a high level of professionalism,” said Dr Yanıkkaya.

“Since the centre was opened by Luamanuvao Winnie Laban in 2007, it has been at the forefront of journalism and human rights activism, reporting human rights violations in our region,” Dr Yanıkkaya added.

Luamanuvao Winnie Laban, who opened the PMC 10 years ago as Minister for Pacific Island Affairs, reflected:

“The spirit of the PMC is our ability to keep together and hang together. The reality is no canoe is on its own.

“The word Pasifika, the word Oceania, will tell you it is very important we honour that sacredness and connection that we have with each other, whether we are from Melanesia, Polynesia – which is Aotearoa New Zealand – and Micronesia.

“I particularly wanted to acknowledge Professor David Robie. For his vision and the team on the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Pacific Media Centre.

“Congratulations to your team and all of the beautiful frangipanis that you have developed that are now on our screens and on our radio,” Luamanuvao said.

“It’s indeed an honour to attend this celebration. To see the Pacific Media Centre in good heart 10 years on, still working hard to ensure that we have a quality, free, free media in the Pacific that continues the tradition you have established for critical thinking and shining a light into the dark spaces, telling the stories that need to be told.

‘Voice of humanity’
“I remember people saying, and as you know, there’s sometimes numerous shutdowns of the media and universities in the Pacific. People said when they heard the voice from here and Radio New Zealand, ‘it’s like the voice of humanity and hope when everything else has been closed down’.

“But today, the title of today’s programme and celebration is ‘Journalism under duress in Asia-Pacific’. This is evidence the Pacific Media Centre is still doing the important work that started a decade ago.

“You’ve continued to contribute to the economic, political, cultural and social development of our region by providing informed journalism and media research, raising awareness, showing respect for the cultures and environment of our region that we love so very much and in empowering our peoples of the Pacific.

“Thank you so much for your service, for your vision and leadership to our region and good luck for the next 10 years.”

• Livestream link 
• Media freedom under the spotlight in PMC anniversary event

By Kendall Hutt in Auckland

In 2010, gas exploration in Australia’s Northern Rivers region of New South Wales sparked protest and rallied a community into becoming a broad-based social movement.

The exploration by Sydney-based company Metgasco faced a five-year-long opposition from the NSW Northern Rivers community.

The battle climaxed at a final showdown in the peaceful farming community of Bentley, where a 2km deep well was to be drilled on an old dairy property. Several weeks before the planned drilling operation in 2014, thousands set up camp on a neighbouring property in a protest which made headlines and was dubbed the Bentley Blockade.

The blockade is the subject of multi award-winning feature-length documentary The Bentley Effect.

“The documentary chronicles my community’s response to the threat of unconventional gas mining and the industrialisation it brings.

“Although gas mining is the vehicle, it’s more about what community can do when it comes together.

“In this case, the community drew a line in the sand, came together en masse and said ‘No we don’t want to live in a gas field’.

Power of community
“It’s an inspiring celebration of the power of community,” says director Brendan Shoebridge.

Shoebridge has been in New Zealand since late September screening his documentary across the country.

He spoke to Asia Pacific Report ahead of the documentary’s last screening in Auckland at an event organised by Greenpeace, 350 Aotearoa and Fossil Free UoA.

Shoebridge said he hoped the spirit behind The Bentley Effect inspired a similar stand in New Zealand.

“New Zealand’s unique and precious beauty holds a special place in everyone’s hearts and I’m hoping the film will inspire local audiences to keep it safe and ‘pure’,” he said.

Asked why this was the case, Shoebridge told Asia Pacific Report it was due to “massive threats” to the country and its “brand”.

These threats included prospecting by New Zealand Oil and Gas in a potential gas project 60km off the coast of Oamaru and proposed oil and gas exploration off the coasts of Canterbury and Taranaki in the habitats of endangered Hector’s dolphins and blue whales.

Risk versus profit
“Really the last thing we need is more methane and another fossil fuel industry.

“Locals here have to ask the question ‘Who is going to bear the risk and who is going to take the profit?’ These are the questions we all have to start asking,” he said.

However, Shoebridge said New Zealand’s response to the documentary had been “fantastic” and it seemed to resonate with Kiwi audiences.

“New Zealand has a rich, proud heritage of protest.

“There is so many examples of successful non-violent civil disobedience.

“I think the story really does resonate quite powerfully here” he said.

Shoebridge said The Bentley Effect built on the threat posed by natural gas exploration in Josh Fox’s 2010 documentary Gasland.

Bentley Effect ‘solution’
The Bentley Effect not only showed the problem of exploration, it showed what the world could do about it, he explained.

“What viewers will see is a social movement from start to finish.

“It’s on a smaller, localised scale but what was achieved was a fully-fledged social movement, a broad-based social movement which involved everybody, all walks of life.

“Audiences can see for themselves how people mobilise. How ordinary, everyday people took a lead and made massive contributions in their own way.

“That was a key aim in showcasing what happened in Bentley – communities aren’t powerless, they can push back on these things.”

Shoebridge said at the time of the blockade, 50 wells had already been drilled.

However, due to the broad-based social movement’s opposition, Shoebridge said, the State Government was not prepared to pay the political price, despite earlier being “hell-bent” on pushing its gas plan through.

Exploration licences suspended
In May 2014 the State Government suspended Metgasco’s gas exploration licence and in December 2015 it bought back petroleum exploration licences covering more than 500,000 hectares across the Northern Rivers region.

“To get that overturned and those wells decommissioned and the licences removed was a real achievement,” Shoebridge said.

Shoebridge said Bentley’s stand against big business and its own government had set an “amazing” precedent in the war against natural gas.

“I think a lot of communities around the world will draw strength from what was achieved” he said.

Bentley’s story was also “universal”, Shoebridge said, as similar battles were happening across the globe.  

“These battles are happening everywhere and they’re playing out on all sorts of different fronts, but it’s essentially the same battle.

“When people come and see the film, I think they are drawing a lot of strength and probably seeing that the same strategies can be superimposed onto any of our battles, whether it’s the fight for clean water or the complex challenges arising from big dairy, 1080, fluoridation, or logging.”

Youth involvement key
Shoebridge said a “big chunk” of the solution in battling such environmental and social injustice issues was the “grouping up” and people taking a lead with their skill set in their landscape.

“I think if everyone did that we’d smash our problems pretty quickly.”

Youth have a particular role in “smashing” problems in a world where political will on “climate chaos” was lacking, Shoebridge added.

“From our experience politicians don’t respond to education they only respond to pressure.

“That’s where the youth can come in. They can talk from the heart and talk about what it feels like to have your future robbed from you.

“Naturally the youth are going to feel varying degrees of despair and powerlessness, but we can’t afford to give up hope and we mustn’t.

“Anything that tops up their tanks and inspires meaningful action is a good thing,” Shoebridge said.

Although his work is largely about hope, Shoebridge warned the world needed to come together in order to face the “tough times” ahead.

“I know we all have to start thinking in terms of a global village rather than national borders because we’re all in this together and we’re all going to pay the same price if we don’t meet those challenges.”

The Bentley Effect screens tomorrow 4pm to 7pm at LibB28 at the University of Auckland and includes a Q+A with Shoebridge and key members of the documentary.

• The Bentley Effect: Film Screening
• More New Zealand stories
  

Black-and-white photographs are aiming to start a conversation and dispel myths around former refugees and asylum seekers in New Zealand.

Transplanted: Refugee portraits of New Zealand showcases two-metre tall, black-and white-close-up portraits of former refugees by award-winning photographer Alistair Guthrie.

The portraits are currently on display in a ten-day exhibition at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery in Wellington.

“Refugees lives have been pulled up from the roots and transplanted on new soil,” explains curator and journalist Tracey Barnett.

“I created Transplanted because I wanted to show the regeneration of lives, that these people can become our future – carpenters and teachers and insurance brokers and our art gallery directors just like anyone else.

“In New Zealand about roughly 45 percent of our quota intake are children. They grow up to be Kiwis in every sense of the word.

“You may not even recognise that they began life as a refugee because they speak with a Kiwi accent, eat pineapple lumps, and cheer for the All Blacks on a Saturday night just as loudly as anyone else,” Barnett said.

Refugee ‘talking space’
Transplanted opened with a talk by former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer on Friday and continues until Sunday, November 5 with insights from former refugees and international diplomats.

The gallery exhibition is also a “refugee talking space”, intended to turn the tide on negative perceptions of refugees, both globally and closer to home.

“It has been incredibly saddening and worrying to see the label of refugees become so disrespected.

“These people have overcome tremendous odds and tremendous difficulties to get to safety, something any of us would aspire to,” Barnett told Asia Pacific Report.

Barnett, who serves on the executive board of the Refugee Council of New Zealand, said the media was partly to blame.

“Unfortunately the media shows these people always in the worst moments of their lives, but the reality is that it’s just one short chapter of a much bigger life.”

A highlight has been the ‘Human Library’ sessions, Barnett said, where former refugees speak one-on-one with the public.

Lives in limbo
“It’s been incredibly moving, enjoyable and informative I think for everyone who’s participated and it’s a real highlight.”

But while some refugees lives have been “transplanted on new soil” in New Zealand, the lives of asylum seekers in one of Australia’s offshore detention centres remain in limbo.

“These refugees have every reason to be afraid and every reason to be worried that they will not be protected and they will not be safe,” Barnett said.

The words of Wage Peace NZ’s founder come as a 2013 offer by New Zealand to take in 150 refugees a year from Australia’s detention centres remains “nixed” by Australia.

This means asylum seekers on Manus Island, around 600 of whom are refusing to leave the now closed centre, are being forced to relocate to several sites in nearby Lorengau – including the Manus Refugee Transit Centre – or “trade one hell for another” for the “other prison island” of Nauru where human rights abuses are rife, Barnett said.

Many of the single men who remain on Manus fear for their lives, with reports locals have allegedly already looted the centre.

Barnett said “there have been worrying and frightening outbreaks of violence” in the past.  

Manus supplies cut
These outbreaks of violence include a shooting on April 14, 2017 in which bullets were directly fired into the refugee centre by security forces.

All power, water and food supplies have stopped at the refugee processing centre.

A notice posted by Papua New Guinea’s Immigration and Citizenship Service Authority stated all staff had left and the site would be returned to the Defence Force today.

“This is the last communication you will receive at this location,” the notice stated.

The closure of Manus Island comes after PNG’s Supreme Court ruled last year the centre was illegal and unconstitutional.

Barnett said New Zealand’s new Labour-led government should also be applying “huge pressure” and push to renegotiate its 2013 deal with Australia.  

“This makes a perfect opportunity for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to stand back and say ‘I’m a new government, this is a new possibility, let’s talk about doing this as a one-off instead and helping you evacuate the camps, but you must agree to not reopen them’,” Barnett said.

Examine NZ offer
Ardern has said she would renew the offer after examining the proposal Australia continues to reject.

“I want to look at the detail of the offer that was made and the obligations that we’ve set out that we would take on,” she said.

“Of course that would be within our refugee quota, and within existing intent that we’ve shared with the UN around taking UN mandated refugees.”

Green MP Golriz Ghahraman, herself a former refugee from Iran, has recently labelled New Zealand’s alleged silence over the past four years as ‘complicity’.

Ghahraman will be speaking this evening at the exhibition on the ‘I am not a label: Young refugee voices’ panel.

Manus Island’s closure also provides an opportunity to provide “fresh eyes” on New Zealand’s own refugee policies, Barnett said.

“New Zealand has never pulled its weight when it comes to our quota.

‘We can do more’
“Unfortunately we rank 95th worst in the world per capita for the total number of refugees and asylum seekers we host.

“If you measure it by our relative wealth, our GDP, it’s even worse and we rank 121st worst in the world.

“That isn’t good enough and we can do more,” Barnett said.

Although it was “wonderful” New Zealand’s quota was going up to 1500, Barnett stated it would be a while before refugees felt its impact.

“The quota is only reviewed every three years and we’ll be changing our quota in 2018. It will be several years again before we hit that 1500 mark.

“I’m hoping that the government will consider changing that number earlier and faster to make a bigger impact.

“We can do more and we should.”

• Transplanted: Refugee Portraits of New Zealand
• More Manus Island stories 

How Indonesian society manages in the face of natural disasters is the focus of a global research collaboration as part of the Indonesian government’s World Class Professor programme.

Spearheaded by the Universitas Gadjah Mada’s Centre for Southeast Asian Social Studies (CESASS), the WCP collaboration centres on ecological communication.

“We tried to find a topic which would facilitate us working together, and two other universities have specifications in tsunami mitigation and focus on maritime coastal disasters,” said CESASS director Dr Hermin Indah Wahyuni.

These are the Universitas Syiah Kuala’s (Unsyiah) Tsunami Disaster Mitigation Research Centre (TDMRC) and Universitas Diponegoro’s Centre for Coastal Rehabilitation and Disaster Mitigation Studies (COREM).

The Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and its director, Professor David Robie, are also part of the maritime disaster issues research project.

Speaking to Asia Pacific Report, Dr Wahyuni said CESASS and its partners wanted to highlight the “social aspect of maritime disasters” and were interested in three aspects of ecological communication.

“We would first like to know how the society communicates about disasters; understanding about the environment and why media is important in constructing reality and making disasters important; and how infrastructure has developed.

Environment ‘unimportant issue’
“We have the feeling society does not categorise what is happening around a disaster,” she said.

Dr Wahyuni said the problem may lie in people’s perceptions and the mentality surrounding natural disasters.

“It’s unlucky, as as a society we don’t think the environment is an important issue.

“We never discuss about why, for example, the fish are dying. It’s happening, but it’s out of focus for us.”

In an attempt to understand Indonesia’s thinking and hopefully turn the tide on Indonesia’s poor environmental record, Dr Wahyuni and her team are in the midst of investigating the social, political and economic impacts of natural disasters.

The team revealed the findings of their early research at a PMC hosted seminar series while in New Zealand earlier this month.

The focus of CESASS’ Dr Budi Irawanto’s research is how the stories of natural disaster survivors are told by Indonesian media.

Focus on survivors
“The focus of my research is how the media deals with tragedy through the narratives of survivors,” he said.

Although venturing into a “new kind of territory”, Dr Irawanto said his research interest came about after discovering there were a lack of studies on the relationship between natural disasters and the media.

Focusing on weekly magazine Tempo and using the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the 2006 earthquake in Yogyakarta and 2010 Mount Merapi eruption as case studies, Dr Irawanto’s early research revealed survivor narratives are underrepresented in the media due to a focus on the economic impacts of natural disasters.

The suffering of survivors was brought closer, he said, but “compassion fatigue” existed. 

Dr Wahyuni reflected such a focus on economics may be due to the makeup of Indonesian society.

“The dynamic of our society is mostly in the political system…Business interests are more important than how we conserve our environment.

“With this research we would like to more deeply explore this problem from many perspectives – media, anthropology, economy.”

‘We need journalists’
However, Dr Wahyuni acknowledged the media had a large role to play in bringing environmental issues into focus.

“We need journalists that can translate, for example, climate change. It is very difficult to translate the concept to ordinary people as climate change is very hard to understand,” she said.

Further research by CESASS academics has provided insight into the communication of natural disasters in Indonesia.

Analysing over 45,000 tweets between 2014 and 2015, Dr Bevaola Kusumasari’s research focused on how people use social media platform Twitter during disasters.

Focusing on the Asia-Pacific region, Dr Kusumasari’s research revealed how different sectors of society – government, non-governmental organisations, media and celebrities – use Twitter.

Dr Kusumasari discovered NGOs use Twitter for relief coordination, while media and government participate in second-hand reporting and celebrities encourage the public to donate to relief efforts.

Although tweets came from outside the disaster zone, Dr Kusumasari found Twitter’s speed of reach could mean it is the ideal platform for relief coordination.

Future collaboration hope
Dr Wahyuni said she hoped the research collaboration marked the beginning of an ongoing academic relationship between CESASS and its partners, and that the research has real-world effects.

“We are starting with the academic, the university, the student awareness about what we can do to attempt to change this situation.

“We will support the effort to look after the environment better.”

PMC director Dr Robie, who has specialised in environmental journalism and launched the Bearing Witness climate project in 2016, heads to Indonesia next week as part of the WCP programme.

• PMC’s monographs launched on Tuwhera in ‘exciting initiative’ 
• ‘Asia-Pacific uniting, working together’ – Gadjah Mada team arrives in NZ
• More Indonesia stories

The Pacific Media Centre’s peer-reviewed research monographs have been launched on the Auckland University of Technology Library’s open access publishing platform Tuwhera.

Pacific Journalism Monographs, first published in 2012, is now freely available on Tuwhera in a move described by PMC director Professor David Robie as a “tremendous step forward”.

“Tuwhera is one of the most exciting initiatives in the university,” he said as the platform celebrated its one-year anniversary.

Pacific Journalism Monographs serve as a research companion to Pacific Journalism Review, publishing longer research projects in an online and booklet format.

Since its launch in 2012, the monographs have covered a diverse range of journalism research, from media freedom and human rights in the Asia-Pacific region to climate change.

The latest edition was a report about self-censorship in Fiji researched and written by prominent Suva journalist Ricardo Morris.

Luqman Hayes, AUT Library’s scholarly communications team leader, also spoke at the launch and reflected on the Tuwhera platform’s significance.

He told visiting academics from the Universitas Gadjah Mada’s Centre for Southeast Asian Social Studies (CESASS) Tuwhera meant “be open” in te reo Māori and sought to share knowledge and promote scholarship through an “indigenous set of lenses”.

Such Māori knowledge paradigms and perspectives as mātauranga (knowledge) and whenua were central to the open access platform’s principals, Hayes said.

“Tuwhera’s not just a publisher, but an incubator which has seen philosophical realignment.

“It’s opening up communication in isolated parts of the world,” he said.

CESASS director Dr Hermin Indah Wahyuni spoke about the centre’s journal IKAT and how happy she was that the research centre would be collaborating with the PMC’s Pacific Journalism Review and Tuwhera on a major project involving ecological communication and maritime disasters in the Asia-Pacific region.

“We are really happy and welcome the collaboration,” she said.

Although described by Dr Wahyuni as “a young journal”, IKAT’s first volume was published in July and two further volumes are planned for 2018. Each volume of the journal also comprises six thematic articles, she said.

It is hoped the July 2018 volume on environmental issues in Southeast Asia would align with the collaboration with the PMC, Dr Wahyuni said.

“We hope we can make this journal ready and fulfill international journal standards to become an international journal.”

IKAT also has an international advisory board, which comprises several academics from the US, Japan, Germany, Australia and the Republic of Korea.

PMC director Dr Robie is also a member.

“We are also very happy we have international advisers, including David Robie,” Dr Wahyuni said.

“We are here to read, discuss, write and be productive,” she added.

Dr Wahyuni and her CESASS team teach up to 11 different subjects with classes of over 40 students, along with fulfilling research responsibilities and supervising community service.

This hard work and dedication, however, has earnt them the title of a centre of excellence, the only one in social sciences, by the Ministry of Higher Education.

Dr Wahyuni said the centre was “blessed”.

The CESASS team also gifted the PMC with several Indonesian cultural artefacts.

Proudly on display in the PMC is a handcrafted, silver phinisi model, received on behalf of the research centre by Dr Robie.

The phinisi, or pinisi, is a traditional two-masted sailing ship from South Sulawesi, originally built by the Konjo tribe.

The Gadjah Mada team are in New Zealand from October 2-13 and will be presenting research on the relationship between the media and natural disasters in Indonesia, attending workshops and professional exchanges.

• ‘Asia-Pacific uniting, working together’ – Gadjah Mada team arrive in NZ
• Pacific Journalism Monographs go live on Tuwhera digital platform
• Pacific Journalism Monographs at Tuwhera

Academics from the Universitas Gadjah Mada in Indonesia have arrived in New Zealand in a major research initiative.

In the first communication and research publication collaboration of its kind in the country, the “advance guard” – Dr Bevaola Kusumasari, Dr Budi Irawanto and Dr Muhamad Sulhan – have been welcomed by staff of Auckland University of Technology’s School of Communication Studies and Pacific Media Centre.

The team of six academics from Gadjah Mada’s Centre for Southeast Asia Social Studies (CESASS) – including director Dr Hermin Indah Wahyuni, Andi Awaluddin Fitrah and Apriline Widani, who arrived today – are being hosted by AUT’s communications school and the PMC for a two-week exchange which is part of the Indonesian government’s World Class Professor (WCP) programme.

“Welcome to the visitors from afar,” said Tui O’Sullivan, acting PMC Advisory Board chair, as she opened the exchange with a mihi.

“It’s great to see this collaboration and the Asia-Pacific uniting and working together. It’s great and I hope you enjoy your stay,” said associate professor Tony Clear, associate dean (research) for AUT’s Design and Creative Technologies Faculty.

PMC director Professor David Robie said the centre was “delighted” to host the delegates.

“It’s a real delight for us to have the opportunity for you to visit us here. It’s going to be a really exciting two weeks. Thanks very much for making the journey to join us,” he said.

Dr Robie is going to Indonesia at the end of this month for two weeks as a WCP visiting professor.

Those gathered also expressed their hope that the exchange would mark the beginning of a promising, rewarding and long partnership between the universities.

“We’re also very much looking forward to having some conversations on the way in which we can work together,” said Professor Geoffrey Craig, head of research for the School of Communication Studies.

The school’s head, Professor Berrin Yanikkaya, also gave a strong message of encouragement for the collaboration.

The significance of the exchange was also echoed by Gadjah Mada’s Dr Budi Irawanto: “On behalf of my colleagues from CESASS, Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, we really thank you for the warm welcome. We really want to collaborate and also do some research, probably a joint publication with the Pacific Media Centre and other colleagues from AUT.

“This really is a good opportunity to bring closer the relationship between Asia and the Pacific. It’s a good start to work and collaborate with AUT,” he said.

Dr Kusumasari, Dr Sulhan and Dr Irawanto then joined Pacific Media Watch freedom project editor Kendall Hutt and senior communication studies lecturer Khairiah Rahman on a tour of AUT’s media facilities.

The Gadjah Mada team also explored the television studios and student radio station Static 88.1 on the tour.

The spirit of the academic exchange was also reflected on PMC’s weekly radio programme Southern Cross, broadcast live on 95bFM at the University of Auckland.

LISTEN: PMC’s 95BFM Southern Cross podcast on Monday

“We see this is a really great collaboration to conduct research and, in the future joint publication about media, climate change and the environment,” Dr Irawanto said.

The Gadjah Mada team are in New Zealand from October 1-13 and will be presenting research on the relationship between the media and natural disasters in Indonesia, attending workshops and professional exchanges.

• Gadjah Mada University academic talks to Southern Cross about NZ visit 
• The CESSAS academic team from Indonesia coming to AUT’s PMC
• PMC’s Professor Robie and Gadjah Mada team in Indonesian academic exchange

Loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise, and longer, more intense heat waves. The observable effects of climate change on the environment are well documented and continue to make headlines.

But climate change also carries serious and fatal risks to human health.

“Under climate change conditions, the health and safety of humans are as vulnerable, eventually if not immediately,” the World Health Organisation (WHO) notes.

With rates of Type 2 diabetes and obesity among the highest levels in the world, the health of Pacific island communities in the face of climate change is grim.

In its 2015 report ‘Human health and climate change in Pacific island countries’ the WHO’s Western Pacific Region notes:

“The Pacific will experience some of the earliest and most severe impacts of climate change.

“These effects will include detrimental impacts on various aspects of human health and development.”

This is due to the fact climate change is regarded as a “health risk multiplier”. Put in simpler terms, climate change acts as a trigger and amplifier of pre-existing health risks.

For the Pacific, these include vector-borne (mosquito and tick), waterborne and foodborne diseases, injuries and deaths as a result of extreme weather events, and compromised food security and malnutrition.

‘Highest priority’
These health risks are also regarded by Pacific Island countries as the “highest priority” to be addressed in health adaptation strategies.

Seia Mikaele Maiava, an organic farmer from Nukunonu, Tokelau, and a 350 Pacific Climate Warrior told Asia Pacific Report:

“Impact of climate to food security is growing in the Pacific. Islands like Tokelau, Kiribati and Tuvalu have salt water intrusion into their soil from rising sea water levels.

“This brings a huge challenge in planting their crops, therefore people will depend on imported foods that are unhealthy.”

Maiava said the salinisation of food crops was leading people to become dependent on imported “high fatty” and sugary food, increasing non-communicable diseases (NCD’s) such as diabetes.

Speaking to Asia Pacific Report from Samoa, Viliamu Iese, a research fellow in climate change, food security, and disaster risk management with the University of the South Pacific’s Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development, said the impact of climate change on food production was strong.

“It reduces access to food, increases malnutrition and reliance on imported processed foods, therefore increasing the risks of NCDs,” he said.

‘Killed the crops’
Maiava and Iese’s statements have been echoed by young journalism student Semi Malaki of Tuvalu, who told the Bearing Witness project: “With the impact of salt water intrusion and sea level rise, the salt water came up and killed the crops.

“People now are not much dependent on root crops, they’re dependent on imported foods from overseas and its had lots of impact on our diets.”

This phenomenon is sometimes known as “over-nutrition” and the Asian Development Bank regards climate-induced changes in food supply as one of the major risks posed by climate change on human health.

“Climate change in the Pacific will have both direct and indirect effects on food security.

“The most direct effect, particularly in the smaller atoll countries, will be further reduction of already declining output per capita as a result of increasing natural disasters and rising sea level in the longer term.”

The WHO notes in its report: “Many participants in the vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning process around the Pacific were firm in their belief that climate change would lead to a worsening of the NCD crisis.”

Though the situation may appear grim, it does not mean Pacific Island countries are not adapting and mitigating to the health impacts of climate change.

‘We are fighting’
Although health adaptation finance may be a problem – climate change impacts on health only serve three percent of current adaptation funding targets according to the WHO – the Pacific has continued its “we are fighting” approach to climate change.

“Throughout their history, Pacific communities have long demonstrated a high degree of resilience to environmental challenges,” the WHO stated.

The Pacific’s national adaptation programmes of action, assessed in the WHO’s report, provide clear pathways for effective adaptation and mitigation.

Maiava also said people in the Pacific were becoming more aware and using innovative ideas to grow healthy, organic food.

“Many people are doing good work to raise awareness of growing your own food and eating healthy. I am part of good organisations doing this. Also, we have a keyhole garden project happening in Tokelau that will help each family to grow their own food,” he said.

The WHO notes that as early as the 1990’s “The health impacts of climate change had been given some consideration in many Pacific Island countries and areas as part of their early work on climate change adaptation, even before these policy documents that specifically address the health impacts of climate change were adopted by the health sector in the region.”

Such praise comes despite the unprecedented rate, scale and impact of climate change in modern human history.

World support needed
However, the WHO notes “whole-of-government” and “whole-of-society” approaches are needed to address climate-sensitive health risks.

With COP23 fast-approaching, it is clear whole-of-world support will be needed to address the human cost of climate change.

• NZ climate change approach must ‘transcend government’, says report
• ‘Live, thrive in a new place’ – financing Pacific climate adaptation 

By the end of the 21st century, sea levels are expected to rise by a maximum of 1.5 metres as a result of climate change. Tropical cyclones will increase in frequency, intensity and severity. Climate change is also projected to leave 150 million people displaced by 2040.

In the Pacific alone, the London School of Economics estimates 1.7 million people could be displaced by 2050 and in the Pacific, this is already happening.

Whole islands, communities, and villages are relocating in a move which is viewed as a form of climate change adaptation. Some 27,000 Carteret Islanders have relocated to nearby Bougainville, the people of Kiribati plan to relocate 2000km to nearby Fiji in 2020 after buying 6000 acres in 2014, and in Fiji itself, approximately 45 villages have been earmarked for relocation.

Julianne Hickey, director of Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand, says climate finance plays an important role in the Pacific.

“It’s critical because we need to have adaptation and mitigation measures in order to respond to the challenges of our changing environment in this region. We need to find alternative ways of doing things, cut our carbon emissions but adapt to the many changes that are around us.”

Data by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme’s (SPREP) Pacific Climate Change portal reveals the Pacific currently receives climate finance from approximately 10 funds which are both bilateral and multilateral. The European Union (EU), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the United Kingdom are the central players.

Stefano Manservisi, director-general of International Cooperation and Development of the European Commission (DEVCOM), told Asia Pacific Report in April climate change was the key focus of the EU’s continuing relationship with the Pacific. “Having consulted already with national level authorities on how we can step-up support, notably on climate change, we are 100 percent backing determination to do more,” he said.

However, New Zealand also plays a role in funding mitigation and adaptation projects in the region. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) says it is serious about addressing climate change in New Zealand and in the Pacific.

At COP21, NZ$200 million was pledged in climate related support over four years and the government has contributed three million dollars to the UNFCCC’s Green Climate Fund. One of MFAT’s focuses is switching Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to a low-carbon economy, although New Zealand has been criticised for the lack of its own clean energy revolution and commitment to the Paris Agreement.

‘Most in need’
However, strong climate finance in the region has not always been the case, Hickey said.

“A few years ago there were very little climate finance flows. They were through more bilateral arrangements but now we’re seeing the multilaterals…we’re starting to see an impact but it’s more at the national government level and it’s not always reaching those who are the most in need.”

Independent website Climate Funds Update notes: “The region’s most vulnerable countries, particularly the small Pacific Island states, receive very little funding.”

Speaking at the annual conference of the Australasian Catholic Press Association (ACPA) last week, Hickey said it was important to “speak truth to power” and ask where climate finance was going.

“In the beginning, none of the climate finance was reaching the Pacific, let alone the vulnerable on the margins and those most impacted. What we’re now seeing is the core of the climate finance is flowing, but we need to make sure we keep asking the questions,” she said.

Asked to expand on this when talking separately to Asia Pacific Report, Hickey explained climate finance in the region is geared towards large projects which may not be reaching the most vulnerable.

“There’s a lot of money available for climate change. For mitigation and adaptation, our biggest concern is that it’s about reaching those on the ocean edges and at the grassroots. It’s about reaching the poor and the vulnerable,” she said.

Climate funding benefits
However, one community to benefit from climate change funding is the Fijian village of Tukuraki. Located in the mountainous highlands of Ba, Viti Levu, the village was all but destroyed following a fatal landslide in January 2012.

In the same year, the village was hard-hit by Cyclone Evan and in 2016 was devastated by Cyclone Winston, scattering the community far and wide across the northwest of the island.

Thanks to an EU-funded project in 2014 of F$600,000 (NZ$415,000) and land gifted by a nearby clan, the village, made up of 10 families, was able to relocate to a new site in July 2017. The relocation project has provided the village with 10 new homes, a community hall which doubles as an evacuation centre – it can withstand a category five cyclone – and a Methodist church. The villagers were also given access to clean, running water, showers and flush toilets.

A source from the Ministry of Economy’s Climate Change Unit stresses relocations are not possible without such external funding because they are a long and expensive process.

“It can only be possible with the help of donor funds, financial institutions, and co-finance with the community itself.”

When the Bearing Witness project visited in April, Vilimaina Botitu and her family were one of three families living in the partially built village – one house was still to be built, along with the Methodist church.

She told the Bearing Witness project: “Staying over here, it’s good. A source of water, everything, is just here inside the house. Especially good for us women, is the bathroom and toilet…Before we had to struggle, living the old Fijian lifestyle.”

The Green Climate Fund alone has seen 68 percent of its funding directed towards adaptation and mitigation projects. Of its 43 recent projects, six of these have been in the Pacific. The Solomon Islands, Samoa, Cook Islands, Vanuatu, Tuvalu and Fiji have received funding for adaptation and mitigation projects from hydropower development to urban water supply and wastewater management.

However, it is important to remember adapting to climate change can be bittersweet, Hickey said.

“When sea levels rise they lose their home, they lose their place of connection to the land, they lose connection to where their ancestors are buried, and often they lose access to their traditional food sources.

‘Whole new way of life’
“They need to learn a whole new way of life…to live and thrive in a new place,” she said.

For Botitu, the long, gruelling relocation process had cost Tukuraki its rich, but simple life, she said.

“The old Tukuraki, it was a nice village. The relocated site just gives us a place to sleep. There is no place to do the farming.”

So while relocations in the Pacific may be an effective, but bittersweet, form of climate change adaptation Hickey says, it is in danger. Hickey warns if the Pacific sees a fall in funding or loses it altogether, the region will suffer.

“If the Pacific does not build up its resilience within villages, communities and cities, we stand to see loss of life, we potentially will lose food and food sources and that ultimately will affect our health and our wellbeing.

“The unpredictability of climate change means that if climate finance were not able to reach the Pacific or go to other places, the overall health or wellbeing of us as individuals and communities will be severely impacted.”

• NZ climate change approach must ‘transcend government’

Auckland University of Technology has launched a “first of its kind” Indonesia Centre in a cultural diplomacy initiative.

“This is both a celebration and a step forward into the future,” AUT’s Vice-Chancellor Derek McCormack said at last night’s launch.

“The centre is an acknowledgement of the strong relationship enjoyed between the government of Indonesia and AUT, and the acknowledgement of both parties to strengthen that relationship,” he said.

Significantly, AUT’s Indonesia Centre was also a “world first partnership”.

“This is the first centre of its type in the world. The Indonesian government sees the establishment of this centre at AUT as a significant move in cultural diplomacy and assuming that this pilot is successful…it is likely to be repeated in other cities around the globe,” McCormack added.

This was echoed by Indonesia’s ambassador to New Zealand, Tantowi Yahya, who said:

“The Indonesia Centre is a pilot project for promoting Indonesia in New Zealand…It is quite an ambitious undertaking and if it succeeds it will be replicated in other cities around the world. If it succeeds, it will also be the opening door for Indonesia to work with many countries through culture.”

Centre cultural addition
It was hoped the centre will be an addition to both the cultural life of the university and Auckland, the delegates also acknowledged.

“I’m very hopeful that every visitor to this centre will be enchanted by the richness of Indonesia’s cultural diversity and it is also hoped it will become a window for New Zealanders, for Aucklanders, to know more about Indonesia and will one day get to the point of wanting to visit Indonesia and to learn.

“I’m also hopeful that cultural interactions will also take place so that it will enhance better understanding and deeper friendship between Indonesians and New Zealand people,” Yahya said.

Indonesia’s cultural diversity was on full display at the opening, where dancers performed several traditional Javanese dances and the orchestra took up wooden mallets to play on the full royal Javan Gamelan donated by Indonesia’s Ministry of Education and Culture.

Vice-Chancellor McCormack described the Gamelan as a taonga, or treasure.

“We’re getting something that is extremely special to be housed in, and be a part of, the work and the cultural events at the Indonesia Centre,” he said.

AUT’s Indonesia Centre, dubbed AUTIC, will see people able to learn Bahasa Indonesia and take part in summer schools across various areas, such as culinary art and filmmaking, in an annual program which will continue to be collaborated on, delegates said.

Engage with Indonesia
Vice-Chancellor McCormack also highlighted other AUT engagements with Indonesia, including a Pacific Media Centre partnership.

The PMC will be hosting two weeks of workshops and collaborative research with four Indonesian communication researchers from the Centre for Southeast Asian Social Studies (CESSAS) at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta early next month.

Centre director Professor David Robie has been selected to visit the Yogyakarta university as part of the Indonesian government’s World Class Professor (WCP) programme later in the month.

Lester Khoo, director of AUT’s International Relations and Development reflected:

“We have to be engaged with Indonesia, we have to be engaged with ASEAN, otherwise we risk being irrelevant. It’s very important that we have this as a first step of a longer-term vision of being connected with Indonesia.”

• AUT’s Office of International Relations and Development

Engaging with the Pacific and its stories of climate change is key to tackling the global issue, Catholic organisations have highlighted.

“It’s about listening, it’s about the margins and the peripheries,” said Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand director Julianne Hickey.

Speaking at the Australasian Catholic Press Association’s (ACPA) annual conference in Auckland last week, themed “Communicating for Our Common Home”, Hickey said it was integral that the media carried stories and messages of hope, no matter how different these stories were.

“Climate change is affecting everyone in the world, but we all have different stories about how it is affecting us.

“In some places it’s floods, in some places it’s fire, in some places it’s losing your home, in some places it’s about food and water.

“We have to realise that we’re interconnected and we need to be able to tell those stories and we need to be able to tell those stories of hope,” she said.

John Pickering, director of communication for the Archdiocese of Suva, Fiji, told ACPA members Pacific culture provided answers and a “window of understanding” in the search for better solutions.

‘Equal balance’ responsibility
The greatest vehicle for this, he said, were provincial chiefs.

“A chief’s responsibility is to ensure there is an equal balance of Mother Earth.

“When a chief accepts that first bowl of kava, what he promises to do is become the guardian, the protector, the custodian of people, of land, and sea.”

A further potential cultural source of climate change mitigation came in the form of totemism, Pickering said.

“Every Fijian has an animal, a fish and a wood and they identify themselves in terms of these.

“The point of that is respect, for the fish, for the wood, for the animal.”

Pickering also highlighted what was at stake for the Pacific if more was not done to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Identity, place, space
“Thirty four villages in Fiji are in danger of being swamped by water and they will have to be relocated. That changes the whole dynamic of understanding identity, place, and space.”

Ultimately, Pickering said, the world was faced with a question:

“What sort of future will we leave for our children?”

Questions about the future were also centred on the media.

Lincoln Tan, New Zealand Herald’s diversity, ethnic affairs and immigration senior reporter, said New Zealand’s media was at a “crossroads” as it attempted to find the right model.

The downside of this transition, he said, was a “continued lack of ethnic diversity”.

New Zealand media’s “major issue” was subsequently a lack of cultural diversity, Tan added.

Pacific coverage lacking
Echoing Tan’s concerns, Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre, said one of the enduring problems with New Zealand media was the lack of depth and breadth of coverage of the Pacific.

“Coverage has actually declined in the New Zealand media in the past two decades in spite of the growing complexity of issues and problems facing the region,” he said.

Dr Robie was on the programme as one of the speakers but was unable to attend because of a recent serious accident.

Speaking separately to Pacific Media Watch, he said the lack of in-depth reporting, with the notable exception of Radio NZ International, meant that when something happened like a coup in Fiji, the New Zealand public was caught by surprise.

“Lack of coverage of the West Papuan human rights situation, Papua New Guinea’s slide into dictatorship and climate change in the Pacific are just some examples of the appalling gaps in the New Zealand media.”

Reflecting on ‘Communicating Truth in a Post-truth Environment’ Dr Gavin Ellis, a senior lecturer in media and communication at the University of Auckland, said the media’s over-reliance on social media had harmed good journalism and the media’s role of reporting truth.

“I’m worried about a number of things that interfere with the pursuit of truth. First of all, social media being treated as legitimate primary sources. Twitter and Snapchat being used as journalistic publishing platforms,” he said.

Media ‘tipping point’
In this post-truth environment, Dr Ellis reflected the media, and the world, may be headed towards a “tipping point”.

“I believe in what I call ‘cathartic moments’ and maybe we will reach a cathartic moment. Now of course a cathartic moment means you could go two ways, but I can only hope that common sense will prevail.

“We collectively need to start being heard in terms of ensuring we do not polarise our society. Most societies are happy in the middle and that’s where we need to be.”

But there was still hope, he said, if the media “stick with the elements of journalism”.

“My strongest advice is to ensure there is real-time oversight by senior staff to ensure that in the fight to survive in the digital world, we don’t lose sight of the values and practices that define journalism and its pursuit of truth in the public interest.”

• Australasian Catholic Press Association

The estimated 226,000 people who lost their lives in the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been remembered in Auckland.

In a commemoration organised by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) Aotearoa, members of the public and nuclear-free activists gathered in the Grey Lynn Community Centre to remember those who died on August 6 and August 9, 1945.

Seventy-two years on from the end of World War II, calls for the abolition of nuclear weapons and a halt to militarisation have not waned in efforts by women to bring world peace.

Professor Kozue Akibayashi, the international president of WILPF, led such calls last night.

“It has been my source of energy to be connected to women in many parts of the world who share a similar concern of the usage of power, the masculine idea that puts more importance in the use of force to solve disputes or to gain superiority of others.

“It has been my source of energy to work with women in other parts of the world to bring about a more equal world and to bring gender equality, which we feel very strongly can bring world peace so threats do not exist or nuclear power, because the use of nuclear arms are not justified,” she said.

Dr Akibayashi, who teaches at Doshisha University’s Graduate School of Global Studies in Osaka, Japan, highlighted the significant number of US bases on the island of Okinawa and the ongoing tensions surrounding the Korean peninsula to reinforce the absence of demilitarisation globally.

International community responsible
“The larger international community is responsible for bringing peace to the region and ending the grave human rights issue in North Korea,” she said.

The US has maintained bases on Okinawa since World War II and 70 per cent of its forces in Japan are centralised on the island in a move Dr Akibayashi described as “colonialism”.

This concentration of forces may have enabled the US to wage wars in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, but it has had an adverse effect on Okinawans, she added.

“No year passes by without sexual assault by US soldiers on Okinawans. It’s ongoing and they have the power.

“Their safety and wellbeing has been undermined and destroyed by the presence of the US military.

“They want to live in an Okinawa which is free from military bases and militarism,” she told her audience.

Soka Gakkai International New Zealand youth leader Soumya Puri reflected:

Value of human life
“I find the horrific events that unfolded 72 years ago on August 6, 1945 and August 9, 1945 during the heights of World War II deeply upsetting and forces me to question the value placed on human life and humanity as a whole.

“The survivors of these nuclear bombs, known as Hibakusha, have shared their stories that clearly illustrate the pains and sufferings they’ve had to endure and overcome to lead a somewhat normal life. It was a price they never should have paid.

“The bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki possess a great reminder that any technological breakthrough or advancement should be used for constructive purposes that pushes the human race forward, which is the ability for everyone to do more than they ever could.

“However, the opposite was achieved with the creation of nuclear bombs as they pose a constant threat to our existence, our most fundamental human right,” he said.

WILPF and its supporters also held a candlelit vigil in the form of a peace symbol to remember the approximately 226,000 people who lost their lives.

Despite the wind and the rain, and thanks to the persistence of the younger generation, the peace symbol remained lit for some time.

The Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty, signed by 122 countries on July 7, 2017, provides some hope for future generations, although the fight is not over, WILPF Aotearoa president Megan Hutching reflected.

Treaty ‘significant step’
“This treaty is a significant step towards nuclear disarmament, but it is only a step. We all need to be active and continue to work towards complete nuclear disarmament. WILPF would also say complete disarmament, no weapons.

“We hope that this treaty banning the last legal remaining weapons of mass destruction will provide the ethical momentum to banish them to history and for that to happen sooner rather than later.”

• Listen to WILPF international president Kozue Akibayashi on Southern Cross
• ‘We shouldn’t rest on our laurels,’ warn NZ nuclear free activists 

Deported New Zealand missionary Douglas Tennent will hopefully be returning to Papua New Guinea in the next week.

This comes after the court ordered immigration services to issue Tennent a new visa last month which will see him return by or before August 8.

Tennent is scheduled to fly out on Friday, but is not confident his visa will come together in time.

“It doesn’t look like that’s happening,” he said.

Tennent was deported on June 12, 2017, over an alleged breach of visa conditions.

Authorities claim Tennent was deported due to “blatant abuse” of his special exemption/religious worker visa after engaging in “sensitive landowner issues in East New Britain Province”.

Tennent was deported after some landowners lodged a complaint regarding his involvement in such “sensitive landowner issues”.

‘Just doing his job’
It is believed the complaint comes due to Tennent’s involvement in remedying a special agricultural business lease regarding Malaysian multinational Rimbunan Hijau’s Sigite Mukus oil palm project in West Pomio.

Both Tennent and Archbishop Francesco Panfilo hold firm to the belief Tennent is “just doing his job”, however.

Returning to Papua New Guinea in the coming week will mark a seven week absence from his duties as the administrator for the Archdiocese of Rabaul.

Tennent told Asia Pacific Report the actions of immigration and the acting chief migration officer therefore have put not only himself, but Archbishop Francesco Panfilo under undue stress as the Archdiocese continues to settle disputes.

“The Archbishop is getting very stressed out. He’s had to put off a very much-needed holiday at 75 until I get back.”

“It’s just a matter of picking up the pieces,” Tennent said of negotiations with Rimbunan Hijau.

Tennent’s deportation has also “knocked off track” the giving back of 160 hectares of land to four local communities which was purchased illegally.

‘It needs to be sorted out’
The case was due to be heard in court on July 11, but that never happened due to Tennent’s absence.

“It needs to be sorted out in court and this has had adverse effects on the Kokopo community,” he said.

Despite criticisms he should be suing immigration for damages, Tennent is just looking forward to returning to work.

“The Archbishop and I have decided we’re not in to that. We just want to get back, carry on with the job.”

But Tennent will be making submissions to the Ombudsman, Constitutional Law Reform Commission and immigration calling for a change in the deportation process.

“I don’t want this sort of thing to happen again. If you’ve got a concern about somebody, you go to them firstly and you let them respond. That was not done at all.

“I think we’ve got a moral obligation to try and address that.”

Tennent said he would like to see potential deportees given fair notice around the reason for their deportation and ensure associated evidence is provided to them so they are allowed to respond to the allegations.

He would also like to see careful and thorough investigation carried out by immigration before people are deported and says reasonable time needs to be given for them to sort out their affairs.

“The number of deportations are not large in PNG, so there’s no excuse for not getting them right.”

• Missionary Doug Tennent’s PNG deportation – ‘a reality check’
• Deportation of NZ missionary ‘will not be taken lightly’, says archbishop
• Juffa blasts PNG for ‘hypocrisy’ over deportation of NZ missionary

Concerns have emerged New Zealand may not meet its obligations under the Paris Agreement if a law on emissions is not enacted and soon.

This is the view of New Zealand’s Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, which was revealed in her final report ‘Stepping stones to Paris and beyond: Climate change, progress, and predictability’ released this week.

“There is no direct link between New Zealand climate policy and reaching the Paris target,” she says.

“My chief concern in this report is not the level of our targets, but the lack of a process for achieving them.”

Dr Wright therefore believes the government should take a note out of the UK’s book and implement a climate change act which puts emissions targets in legislation and sets up a process for reaching them.

This is because between 1990 and 2015 New Zealand’s emissions have risen by 64 per cent, while the UK’s have fallen by 38 per cent in the same period.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, New Zealand’s emissions should be 11 per cent below those of 1990 levels by 2030.

Paris target unreachable
But if the concerns raised in Dr Wright’s report are anything to go by, that target may not be reached.

Dr Wright herself acknowledges our 2030 greenhouse gas target may not be “ambitious enough” so charting a pathway to that target and beyond is the “bigger issue”.

So what would such a pathway look like?

Firstly, New Zealand’s emission targets would become law, with “carbon budgets” approximately every five years ensuring these targets are met.

An expert body would also be established to provide successive governments objective analysis and advice about how their targets are tracking and what steps could be taken to improve.

But Dr Wright warns this legislation must transcend the current government.

“Support across political parties is vital. Climate change is the ultimate inter-generational issue, and governments change.”

Climate ‘transcends governments’
As a result, Dr Wright sees the implementation of this act being via a “apolitical long-term approach”, which means businesses largely pick up the baton from government.

“Climate change transcends governments and our approach must do the same,” she says.

However, New Zealand currently has no strong policy on emissions or mitigating and adapting to climate change, Dr Wright says.

“Currently, New Zealand has no climate change target in law.”

This is also something climate change minister Paula Bennet herself has acknowledged.

She told The AM Show: “We’re just not quite there. I don’t think the time is right for us to be doing the legislation.”

New Zealand’s climate change policy is seen by some as ad hoc, so much so that a 26-year-old law student took the government to court in June over its climate policy “failure”.

Government ‘shirked responsibilities’
“So far the New Zealand government has shirked its responsibilities, set unambitious and irrational targets, and justified it all by saying we’re too small to make a difference,” Sarah Thomson told Asia Pacific Report.

“I’m young and I’m terrified of a time when I might have to look my kids in the eye and explain to them how we let this happen.”

Currently, the Emissions Trading Scheme is New Zealand’s main policy for making the much-needed transition to a low carbon-economy.

However, with no restrictions on the number of carbon units New Zealand purchases from other countries, New Zealand’s emissions can appear more rosy than they actually are.

13 years shy of reaching its Paris target, the “clean energy revolution” taking place across the globe does not appear to have reached New Zealand’s shores yet, but it could.

A 2013 report by Greenpeace New Zealand ‘The future is here: New jobs, new prosperity and a new clean economy’ reveals New Zealand could have an economy based entirely on renewables by 2050.

New Zealand is already a world leader in geothermal energy, but if the country invested more in smart electricity and smart transport over 25,000 jobs would be created while New Zealand’s carbon footprint would reduce to 1.8 million tonnes.

Clean, green reputation
Currently, 50 per cent of the country’s jobs rely on New Zealand’s “clean, green reputation” while 70 per cent of its exports rely on that same reputation.

If New Zealand makes the switch and invests more in renewable sources, those percentages are sure to climb.

Already, 70 per cent of New Zealand’s electricity needs are met by renewable sources.

“Only a small proportion of New Zealand’s electricity is generated by burning coal and gas,” Dr Wright acknowledges.

Along with the Asian Development Bank, she has recognised the opportunities for more renewable energy in the region.

“New Zealand is rich in geothermal energy, and with the best wind in the world, we have a great opportunity for decarbonising transport.”

In a July 2017 report, the Asian Development Bank note: “The rapidly decreasing costs of wind and solar power generated clearly indicates that consumption and production of the future could be driven by renewable energy sources.”

Lack of policy
It is, however, difficult to pin down the “when and where” of this transition, they note.

This may be the case for New Zealand due to a lack of government policy, says Amanda Larsson, an energy campaigner with Greenpeace New Zealand.

“We in New Zealand are falling behind due to a lack of government leadership. Not only is our government doing next to nothing to incentivise clean energy, they have sat on their hands while energy companies have extended the life of coal-fired power at Huntly.

“They have stood by while lines companies have introduced unfair charges on solar customers that discourage the uptake of clean solar power. And they continue to spend millions of taxpayer dollars inviting the oil industry to look for more oil that we cannot afford to burn.”

If New Zealand continues down its current “business as usual” path, the outlook for the country and its neighbours in the Pacific is bleak.

“The scientific understanding, and our daily experience, is that climate change is happening at a faster rate than was appreciated at the time of the Paris Agreement,” the 13 nations of the Pacific Small Island Development States (PSIDS) said in a joint July statement.

Sea levels around the world are expected to rise between 75cm and 1.5 metres by the end of the century and none are more at risk than the low-lying coral atolls and islands of the Pacific.

Sea swallowing land
Already, the people of Kiribati are expected to relocate 200km away to Fiji by 2020 as stories across the Pacific region have emerged of the sea swallowing land.

In Palau, at its peak, high tide is 30cm higher than when the President of Palau, Tommy Remengesau, built his house in 1989.

In the Torres Strait, the cemetery on Boigu Island faces inundation while roads are being washed into the sea because the seawall is “already failing”.

For the people of Masig Island, there are fears they may have to abandon their ancestral home.

In Vanuatu, the islands of Nguna, Espiritu Santo and Tanna are facing water scarcity, food shortages, and an increase in natural disasters.

As Vilimaina Naqelevuki of the village of Narikoso on Ono Island in the Kadavu Group told the Bearing Witness project: “We’re going to lose our land, we’re going to lose our culture, our identity, if we don’t do anything about climate change at all.”

‘Survival of our people’
There are also concerns that even under the Paris Agreement, in which global warming is limited to 1.5 to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the Pacific will not survive.

“For Pacific Island countries, because of our vulnerable ecosystems, we can manage up to 1.5°C, but beyond that we’re going to start losing our ecosystems and livelihood, our resources, and then the survival of our people,” Dr Morgan Wairiu, an expert in food security and climate change with the University of the South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), told Asia Pacific Report.

Many feel New Zealand’s lack of political leadership on climate change is a “real betrayal” of the Pacific.

“Our Government knows that fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal drive climate change. They know that climate change is threatening to put whole nations underwater.

“Our Pacific neighbours are in the middle of a climate emergency and there is no excuse for pursuing an energy policy that prioritises oil, coal and gas at the expense of clean renewables,” Larsson says.

However, it is important to remember Pacific Island countries are fighting.

As PSIDS themselves note: “Our solemn obligation and responsibility is to ensure that the international community takes immediate and decisive action to address the underlying causes of global climate change.”

Pacific’s ‘solemn obligation’
Perhaps the greatest evidence of this “solemn obligation” is Fiji’s presidency of COP23 in Bonn, Germany, in November this year.

But the importance of clean energy in New Zealand cannot be more clear, both for the country and the Pacific region.

As Dr Wright asks: “What will our responsibility be towards our neighbours who live on low-lying coral atolls?”

Forty minutes of solidarity marked New Zealand’s stand with refugees imprisoned in Australia’s offshore detention centres across the Pacific today.

More than 60 people stood outside Australia’s Auckland consulate to protest over more than 1000 refugees stuck in limbo in processing centres likened to open-air prisons.

“The Australian government’s policies are inhumane, so we want to highlight the human. That the impact of Australia’s ill-treatment of people seeking asylum and refugees amounts to torture, but remind people that these refugees are humans too,” said Margaret Taylor, Amnesty New Zealand’s activism support manager.

“We’re humans standing out here to put a human face to the torture and highlighting how inhumane Australia’s policy is.”

Amnesty New Zealand’s Auckland spokesperson Meg de Ronde told Asia Pacific Report before the protest this morning:

“We’re sending a clear message to the Australian government that after four years the offshore detention centres have to close.

“The men, women and children who are on Manus and Nauru have to be evacuated now. We have more than 8000 New Zealanders who believe human rights abuses need to end,” de Ronde said.

8000 signature petition
In Wellington, more than 40 people also stood in solidarity while a petition with more than  8000 signatures was delivered to the Australian High Commission in a sister event also organised by Amnesty International New Zealand.

Since 2013, Australia has controversially and forcibly deported asylum seekers who have attempted to arrive in the country via boat to Manus and Nauru islands.

Therefore for four years, Amnesty International says, some of the “most vulnerable people in the world” have been subject to human rights abuses – physical abuse, sexual assault, poor living conditions – at the hands of Australia’s government.

De Ronde says the purpose of this morning’s protest was to ensure Australia has not forgotten the human rights abuses it is carrying out in its own backyard.

“We hope they’ll hear New Zealanders haven’t forgotten that for four years Australia’s been holding people on Manus and Nauru, people that have a right to be resettled and have a right to flee and seek safety.”

It is Australia’s reported human rights abuses which drew people of all walks of life to the protest.

Armed with placards calling for the closure of Manus and Nauru’s centres, the group of men, women and children silently protested outside the consulate while passing motorists tooted their horns in a show of support.

‘Ridiculous’ detention centres
Alex O’Connor of Lush Cosmetics said it was “ridiculous” detention centres even existed.

“I think it’s just ridiculous they still have these detention centres when there’s all these human rights abuses happening.

“I also think it’s just ridiculous that people don’t have access to basic human rights when they’re fleeing war-torn areas.”

Marika Czaja is so disappointed in Australia’s refugee policy she intends to return her citizenship papers.

“I’m going to say ‘no thank you’. I don’t want to be part of it, not in my name’.

“I’ve got no option but to protest. One of the more powerful countries in the world is boasting how it took in half a million or so refugees after World War II and now they can’t take in a few thousand. It’s just despicable. I really haven’t got the words to explain how I feel about it all,” Czaja said.

The youngest protester was four-year-old Atlas de Ronde.

‘Issue for everyone’
His father, Edwin de Ronde, said the detention centres on Manus and Nauru were an “issue for everyone”.

“We feel for what it must be like for people with children stuck in some of these concentration camps and I think everyone needs to understand that it could be them one day too, so they’ve got to stand up against what’s going on.”

Echoing earlier calls by Amnesty New Zealand executive director Grant Bayldon, de Ronde called on New Zealand to condemn Australia’s actions and remain firm in its commitment to resettle 150 refugees a year – a commitment Australia is currently reluctant to indulge.

“New Zealanders – neighbours of Australia – need to stand up in this region as the voice of what needs to be done.

“I hope the Australian government understands that they’re out of step with the rest of the world and what they’re doing is simply wrong and it’s against international law.”

Takapuna Grammar students Alba Garcia and Anna Jacobs were also some of the protest’s younger participants.

They told Asia Pacific Report the proximity of the issue to New Zealand was “shocking”.

Close to home
“It has just kind of shocked everyone how close it is to home,” Jacobs said of her school’s Amnesty Club.

“Everyone needs to be aware of it because it’s not very far away from us,” Garcia added.

But in calling for the closure of Manus and Nauru on the streets of Auckland today, de Ronde thanked protesters for not forgetting the islands’ refugees, but also encouraged them to make New Zealand politicians and political parties more aware of the issue.

“Ask our Prime Minister, our government in this election year to carry these messages.”

Joining hands in solidarity may have marked the end of the protest today, but with Broadspectrum’s contract up in October – the company responsible for administering the offshore processing system – protest to these centres is sure to continue, Amnesty said.

Krishna Narayanan, a food science student with the University of Auckland, is certain widespread protest will continue until Australia reverses its policy on Manus and Nauru detention.

“Refugees are just locked up and they feel incredibly isolated and depressed. They escaped war and tried to come to a place of safety, but they’re not safe.

“My message to those inside the Australian consulate here and Australia’s government is accept refugees or at least let other nations accept them.

“Don’t cover this up.”

• Closure of Manus Island will leave refugees in ‘limbo’, says Amnesty
• Amnesty blasts foreign companies over ‘profiting’ from Nauru refugees abuse

By Kendall Hutt in Auckland 

Student journalists from across the Pacific region have wrapped-up their 2017 internships.

Brandon Ulfsby, Joshua Lafoai, Linda Filiai, Safia Archer and Shivika Mala say their internships have “opened their eyes” to one another’s journalism cultures and opened future doors.

“The contacts you gain are the most beneficial for the future,” says Archer, a final-year journalism student from Massey University in Wellington.

Organised by the Pacific Cooperation Foundation as part of its media programme — now in its third year — three journalists from the Pacific and two journalists from New Zealand were given the opportunity to experience one another’s media cultures.

WATCH MORE: PCF interns at the America’s Cup Parade

Travelling to Apia and Suva respectively, Ulfsby and Archer say they enjoyed the “slower pace” of the newsrooms they visited.

“They process stories a lot more slowly, but that ups the quality of the storytelling,” says Ulfbsy, a Bachelor of Communication Studies journalism major at Auckland University of Technology.

“In New Zealand there are commercial pressures that can alter the telling of the story.”

Highlight ‘was the people’
While in Samoa, Ulfsby interned with TV3 Samoa, Samoa Observer, Talamua (Radio Samoa) and Savali and says the highlight “was the people”.

“I’d say Samoa is the people, that’s how I see it. Going there for a media exchange, it’s really about getting to know the people and understanding the cultural context that they’re in — their stories, their perspectives — and presenting it in a really authentic way.”

Despite an apparent lack of resources, Ulfbsy says, “journalists in the Pacific have a sense of freedom we don’t have in New Zealand. Freedom in the sense that they can select the stories that they want to write about, cover, and they can present it in a way they feel best represents it”.

Ulfbsy’s thoughts were similarly echoed by Archer:

“The resources that the journalists are using, we’re so spoiled here. We can do things so easily. They do things when they’re relatively under-resourced compared to us, but they still manage to produce good content in a relatively timely manner.”

For Archer, however, the highlight of her time in Fiji was spending a day in the village of Nayavutoka in the northern province of Ra.

She says the village of 57 families was “ground zero” for Cyclone Winston in 2016.

‘They’re still rebuilding’
“It’s three hours on a dirt road, barely accessible, and had been completely ravaged by Cyclone Winston and 17 months later they’re still rebuilding.”

Interviewing villagers with the crew of MaiLife magazine “was amazing”, Archer says.

“The whole major part of me wanting to do this internship was actually to give, or see, that human side of climate change and development that we don’t see.

“We just see the high-level talks, so having access to the villagers through a magazine that they trusted, people that they trusted, they warmed up to me and were able to speak to me about their experiences.”

Archer also interned with CFL Radio, FBCTV, and Fiji Television.

But while Ulfsby and Archer enjoyed the slower place of newsrooms in the Pacific, Filiai, Lafoai and Mala say they enjoyed the switch to New Zealand’s faster-paced industry.

“We were all over the place. We did print, radio, television,” says Lafoai of the National University of Samoa.

‘That was intense’
“We did a week’s work in our first two days at NZME. I did three stories alone, that was intense.”

Filiai reflects New Zealand’s fast-paced media industry also plays into access of information and sources.

“In the Pacific, if we were to work on a story it would take days, weeks, even up to a month because we find it really hard to chase our sources. It’s so hard to get information out of the government ministry.

“Here, I find it really interesting because you send an email and they will respond to you and you can work on your story in a day or a few hours.”

Filiai, Lafoai and Mala all agree they will be taking what they have learnt over the past two weeks back to the Pacific.

“We have a really big challenge ahead of us. We need to match up, we need to step-up our game in journalism. Not just in writing or reporting, but in also how we do our job,” says Lafoai.

Cultural, media experience
For young journalists thinking of covering the Pacific region, Ulfbsy advises them to snap-up the PCF’s unique opportunity, both for its cultural and media experience.

“For me the exchange is more of a cultural experience as opposed to a media experience, but that’s essential to being a journalist who wants to cover the Pacific.

“Go to the Pacific itself and gain that perspective and that understanding so that we can authenticate our stories.”

• See Brandon Ulfsby‘s work while at the Samoa Observer here and here. Read his Talamua (Radio Samoa) stories here and here. Ulfsby’s Asia Pacific Report internship stories are here and here.
  
• See Linda Filiai’s NZ Herald story
• See Shivika Mala’s NZ Herald stories here and here.
• Watch the Filiai, Lafoai, and Mala’s Tagata Pasifika broadcast
• Pacific exchange journalists begin NZ media ‘awareness’ internship
• Pacific media internship offers chance to follow regional issues

By Kendall Hutt in Auckland

The deportation of a New Zealand missionary from Papua New Guinea last month has prompted calls for a new government.

With elections firmly underway in Papua New Guinea, Rabaul Archbishop Francesco Panfilo says the deportation of New Zealand missionary Douglas Tennent remains an issue, whatever government is in power.

“I want to inform all [sitting] candidates and aspiring candidates for national elections that neither the Archdiocese of Rabaul nor the Catholic Bishops’ Conference will take this matter lightly as it seems to imply that to work for justice is outside of a ‘religious worker’ status.”

His call comes after Tennent, who has been working as an administrator for the Archdiocese of Rabaul since June 2014, was deported on June 12, 2017, over an alleged breach of visa conditions.

Authorities claim Tennent was deported due to “blatant abuse” of his special exemption/religious worker visa after engaging in “sensitive landowner issues in East New Britain Province”.

However, both Tennent and Archbishop Francesco Panfilo hold firm to the belief Tennent is “just doing his job”.

Tennent was deported after some landowners lodged a complaint regarding his involvement in “sensitive landowner issues”.

Palm oil involvement
It is believed the complaint comes due to Tennent’s involvement in remedying a special agricultural business lease regarding Malaysian multinational Rimbunan Hijau’s Sigite Mukus oil palm project in West Pomio.

Archbishop Panfilo states Tennent is only involved in settling these disputes on his behalf.

“Mr Tennent was providing legal advice to the archbishop, who was asked by the people of West Pomio to speak up for them.”

The actions of immigration authorities – Foreign Affairs Minister Rimbink Pato and acting Chief Migration Officer Solomon Kantha – have also raised questions about the innocence of Prime Minister Peter O’Neill’s government in the matter.

“Any ordinary person knows that orders of this kind cannot be given unless there are powerful and wealthy institutions and personalities behind.

“For the sake of the ordinary and innocent people of Papua New Guinea, we ask the Government to come clear once and for all,” says Archbishop Panfilo.

“Let us pray that the upcoming National Elections may give us leaders who are committed to the achievement of a just and peaceful society,” he says.

Religious workers role
Tennent told NZ Catholic in their latest edition last Sunday his deportation had pitted Papua New Guinea’s government against the Catholic Church.

“I think they didn’t realise when they did the deportation that it wasn’t about me. It was about the whole role of religious workers,” he said.

This is echoed by Archbishop Panfilo:

“To advocate for the vulnerable and powerless, which is the situation of the people of West Pomio, is a gospel mandate, just as it is to educate and care for sick people.

“It is the duty of any religious worker and of any Christian for that matter, to give effect to the teachings of Christ in word and action. One wonders why those who expose these evil practices should be deported and not the ones who commit them”, Archbishop Panfilo said.

Tennent remains in New Zealand, anxiously awaiting news from authorities in Papua New Guinea about whether he can return.

He is currently in the process of re-applying for a new visa and is planning court action against the government.

• Juffa blasts PNG for ‘hypocrisy’ over deportation of NZ missionary

Pacific exchange journalists kicked off their two-week internship in New Zealand with a visit to the Pacific Media Centre.

Sponsored by the Pacific Cooperation Foundation (PCF), Shivika Mala, Linda Filiai and Joshua Lafoai will take an inside look at local media organisations during their stay.

Mala and Filiai from the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, along with Michelle Curran, project manager of PCF’s media programme were welcomed by Pacific Media Centre (PMC) director Professor David Robie.

“Kia ora and great to have you here with us,” he said.

Dr Robie then went on to explain the work the Pacific Media Centre does in the Asia-Pacific region, and its place within the university.

“We’re the university that specialises in the Pacific, a lot comes out of this tiny little place,” he said during this week’s visit.

Curran said: “Thanks for having us, the girls are looking forward to it and they’ve got their questions all ready for you. The best way to kick off their internship.”

Inside look
The award-winning students then joined Pacific Media Watch freedom project editor Kendall Hutt on a tour of the Auckland University of Technology led by TV and radio technician Scott Creighton, where they had an inside look at AUT’s School of Communication Studies’ media facilities.

The students explored the television studios, where they discovered the ins-and-outs of a green screen, and student radio station Static 88.1.

They also visited the Media Centre and spoke to Te Waha Nui web editor Natalie Brittan about the student newspaper and the number of journalism students at the university.

Curran told Asia Pacific Report while on the tour that the PMC served as the right opening for their internship.

“Every time we’ve been here the students have really enjoyed it, learnt a lot and just taken in the exceptional facilities AUT offers. It’s great to have that connect for the students coming from the Pacific,” she said.

Curran said the aim of the internship was to raise the media’s consciousness about the Pacific and in turn enable student journalists to learn about another country’s industry.

“It’s to create awareness about Pacific media, so New Zealand journalists will be more aware of what is going on in the Pacific and Pacific journalists coming into New Zealand will be more aware of how we do things here and hopefully learn things to take back to the Pacific,” she said.

Awareness of Pacific
This was also reflected by Mala and Filiai on PMC’s weekly radio programme Southern Cross.

Mala and Filiai told host Amanda Robinson their motivations behind applying for the internship. They both recognised the opportunity they had been given to take an inside look at New Zealand’s media industry.

“If we were to compare New Zealand to the Pacific, we are less fortunate, so we are so eager to take up this opportunity to experience, to learn and to share these experiences with our classmates and journalists in Tonga and the Pacific,” Filiai said.

Yesterday the team was working at Pacific Media Network, but will spend time with Tiki Lounge Productions, NZME, TVNZ and Tagata Pasifika over the course of their internship.

• Brandon Ulfsby, a final year Auckland University of Technology Bachelor of Communication Studies student journalist,  is on a two-week Pacific Cooperation Foundation internship in Samoa as part of the exchange. His first story is here.
• Pacific Cooperation Foundation internship
• PMC to host visiting Pacific exchange student journalists
• Pacific media internship offers chance to follow regional issues

As international talks at the United Nations on the ban of nuclear weapons draw closer, New Zealand nuclear free and peace activists warn there is a lot of work to be done before the world will be safe from a nuclear war.

“We’ve still got a lot of work to do in the world,” Auckland Mayor Phil Goff reflected at Devonport’s Depot Artspace during a weekend event organised by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) Aotearoa and Devonport Peace Group.

Their warning comes as New Zealand celebrates 30 years since the country’s Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament and Arms Control Act came into force on 8 June 1987.

Described as a “David versus Goliath” stand by Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie, the Act and the “grassroots, groundswell” movement behind it, saw New Zealand become the first Western nation to legislate to be nuclear free.

Goff said: “The Lange Labour government came along with the courage and the commitment, first of all to say to a powerful ally: ‘No, we are not going to go along with the nuclear umbrella. No, we are not going to support your possession of nuclear weapons.

“We are a small nation, but we are a proud and independent nation and we are going to make our country nuclear free’. And we did,” Goff said.

Maire Leadbeater of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament said: “Everything was against us, but we did it.”

‘Ahead of the game’
However, it was also important to remember the Pacific’s contribution to New Zealand’s anti-nuclear campaign, said Dr Robie.

Not only did this come through the fact that the Pacific was “ahead of the game” – Palau, Vanuatu, and Tahiti’s largest municipality, the airport suburb of Fa’aa, declaring themselves nuclear free – but also through opposition to French nuclear testing.

As revealed in John Pilger’s latest documentary The Coming War On China, Dr Robie said, the “total yield of the nuclear experiments on and around the Marshall Islands was equal to 7200 Hiroshima bombs, meaning the equivalent of more than one Hiroshima bomb was exploded in the area every day for 12 years.”

He also said: “The French committed shameful acts in defence of nuclear colonialism” — such as the 1985 assassination of Kanak leader Eloi Machoro and the 1988 Ouvea cave massacre of 19 young militants.

But the “reunion”, as Goff himself described it, of many of the activists who were on the frontlines of New Zealand’s nuclear free movement, was ultimately overshadowed by apparent inaction by “nuclear states” over nuclear disarmament.

“We fought the battle in New Zealand, we made a mark on the international stage, we told the powerful and the strong that we would stand up for ourselves and we would stand by our values. But our world has not become a safer place. If anything, it has become a less safe place,” he said.

Leadbeater said: “Things really haven’t changed in terms of the international scene.”

‘Still much work to be done’
WILPF Aotearoa’s president Megan Hutching also reflected:

“We should not rest on the laurels of the 1987 Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament and Arms Control Act because there is still much work to be done before we can live in a safe, nuclear weapons free world.”

This is due to the fact there are currently 15,000 nuclear warheads in the world, Goff said.

Of greater concern still, he said, was countries such as North Korea joining the nuclear arms race.

“Alongside the five nuclear weapon states we’ve had India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea all gain possession of nuclear weapons and the missile systems to launch them.”

Leadbeater said the world was still living in fear of a “nuclear war by accident”.

“We still live in a very dangerous world… The world is crying out for so many other important needs. It’s a shameful thing and a dangerous, dangerous thing.”

Youth involvement needed
In light of this, many of the activists reflected it was time for New Zealand’s youth to pick up the baton, although it would be a challenge, they acknowledged.

“The greatest challenge is trying to get the youth to continue with the struggles so that we can pass on the baton to them, especially in the nuclear movement” said Fijian peace activist and researcher Ema Tagicakibau from the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement.

“In that, the challenge remains and the struggle continues.”

“Things are just as serious as they ever were, but we don’t unfortunately have that same sort of momentum among the community,” Leadbeater said.

Visual Artists Against Nuclear Arms (VAANA) member Margaret Lawlor Bartlett reflected: “We need a group of young, dedicated anti-nuclear people.”

The youth of today, however, do provide a sense of hope for the future, Leadbeater concluded, reflecting the general feeling of many in the room.

“In remembering these great times and the wonderful excitement of so many other people, let us hope that it does strengthen us to carry on and to perhaps now take our leadership from the young and find ways to carry on.”

A former WILPF Aotearoa president, Pauline Tangiora, a kuia of the Rongomaiwahine from Mahia, cut the 30th nuclear-free anniversary cake. She was nominated in 2005 among 1000 peace women activists globally for a “collective” Nobel Peace Prize.

The United Nations conference to negotiate a nuclear weapons ban will continue on June 15 until July 7.

• Southern Cross: 30 years of N-free Aotearoa – Pacific leaders seek healthier oceans
• Images: NZ peace activists pay homage to 1987 nuclear-free law campaigners
• Flashback to NZ’s nuclear-free law 1987: Challenging Goliath

Seasoned journalists and academics have warned “fake news” could invade New Zealand’s media if journalists do not remain vigilant.

“It’s about using those principles, experience and judgment built up over time ” said TVNZ’s One News political editor Corin Dann.

“That will more or less likely filter out fake news.”

Dann’s “Fake news and the 2017 General Election” fellow panelists Chlöe Swarbrick, moderator Dr Gavin Ellis, Dr Maria Armoudian and Mark Jennings also told the audience at the University of Auckland this week current trends in journalism worldwide — business models, rise of social media — were driving fake news.

“Clickbait rather than substance are at the heart of fake news,” Greens List MP Chlöe Swarbrick reflected.

Mark Jennings, the journalist behind the launch of Newshub during his 27-year tenure with MediaWorks and now a co-editor of the independent Newsroom, said “media getting sucked into matching” was the door for fake news.

“If the first one gets it wrong, then both get it wrong.”

‘Nowhere near as bad as the US’
If a media organisation was to accidentally publish fake news, Jennings said the organisation should address it “fast in a fulsome way”.

However, if fake news were to invade New Zealand’s political sphere, it would be “nowhere near as bad as in the US,” Jennings said.

Dr Armoudian, a lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of Auckland, explained this was because “here we still talk policy” while the US was witnessing a “polarised” and “personalised” invasion of politicians in the news.

“We’re seeing fake news as an extreme version of that.”

“We’re not going to suddenly get fake news,” Dann countered.

What New Zealanders might see, however, was “pressure” for information during elections.

It is important to remember, however, that fake news was not a new phenomenon, they stressed.

Fake news beyond ‘borders’
Dr Armoudian claimed the world had seen fake news during “manipulation” of the situation in a lead up to a coup in Chile in the 1970s because the US government “put newspapers on the payroll”.

“It’s very clear that fake news travels past Pacific oceans and borders.”

One audience member, Malcolm Evans, an award-winning independent cartoonist, agreed, saying that what the world was continuing to see was propaganda.

During a lecture at the University of Helsinki last year, Eddy Hawkins, an independent journalist with Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle reflected on the prevalence of disinformation, propaganda and fake news in the political sphere.

Hawkins noted disinformation had been hugely enabled by social media and the way media was currently consumed, namely “quickly and without question”.

“Be critical, analytical, beware of appeals to emotion masquerading as fact and logic,” he told  the journalism and political students gathered.

The Auckland panelists, however, also identified a lower capacity for fact-checking in newsrooms due to the fact job-cuts had come about.

Fact-checking central
“We’ve lost some of the capacity for fact-checking,” Jennings admitted.

As a remedy to such occurrences, ABC in Australia has resumed a fact-checking service with the RMIT University journalism programme dubbed “RMIT ABC Fact Check.”

The Conversation also runs a fact-checking programming on its stories.

Swarbrick suggested part of the solution to fake news could be education.

“We need to see proper, informed citizens.

“Social media is the ‘Wild West’ at the moment, so it’s up to citizens to discern fake news.”

In closing Dr Ellis, a former New Zealand Herald editor-in-chief and now a senior lecturer in media and communication at the University of Auckland, reflected the “cure” may well be with citizens.

“We need to think with our head not our hearts. Think critically, not what we want to believe.”

Australia’s offshore refugee detention centres in the Pacific are facing further controversy as the gradual closure and demolition of the institution on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea begins.

Following the announcement of Papua New Guinean authorities last month, one compound has already been closed, with another planned for June 30.

The closure and demolition comes after PNG’s Supreme Court ruled in April last year the centre was illegal and unconstitutional.

It is expected to be fully demolished by October 31 when Ferrovial’s contract expires – the company accused of profiting off refugees’ suffering.

However, Amnesty International says the move will not end the suffering of the 829 refugees on the island.

“These people are to be left in limbo,” Kate Schuetze, a Pacific research and policy adviser with Amnesty International based in Australia, told Asia Pacific Report.

Despite the apparent hope provided by Papua New Guinea’s announcement on the surface, Schuetze said the reality for refugees was “a lot darker”.

‘No plans to resettle refugees’
“Essentially refugees are being shifted from one camp to another.”

Papua New Guinea authorities say refugees will be repatriated or settled in the nearby town of Lorengau, where the Manus Refugee Transit Centre is located.

Shuetze said Australia’s ultimate goal with this announcement is what it had always been — pressure for refugees to return home.

“I mean, there were no plans to resettle these refugees in Papua New Guinea to start with.”

The centre’s closure and demolition – described by Shuetze as a “phasing out” – also means refugees will endure worsening conditions, as many are moved to other compounds within the centre.

“Essentially this means harsher conditions for refugees.”

Shuetze said there would be no air conditioning and communities, forged over four years, would be disbanded. “There is no rationale behind this added torture.”

‘It’s not safe’
Grant Bayldon, executive director of Amnesty New Zealand, believes things are more unclear.

“It’s very unclear what the planned closure means at this stage. Clearly it’s not safe for the refugees and asylum seekers to be settled into Papua New Guinea,” he said.

“It’s therefore essential that the Australian government comes up with a plan to resettle refugees back to Australia or safely in a third country like New Zealand.”

Bayldon fears the centre’s closure will also not remove its fundamental problems.

“Refugees are not safe and there’s really no hope for them in being able to restart their lives and living in safety due to the minimal protection they’ve been offered.”

Amnesty International fears refugees may also be sent to Australia’s other refugee detention centre on Nauru, which reportedly has the second highest rate of mental illness of any refugee population in the world.

Security before empathy
The move by Australian and Papua New Guinean authorities has increased calls by Amnesty International New Zealand for the government to stand by its 2013 offer to resettle 150 refugees a year from Australia’s detention centres.

Australia’s Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has in the past rejected New Zealand’s offer claiming Australia’s national security has to come before its empathy.

Turnbull claimed in 2016 resettlement in New Zealand would be used by people smugglers as a “marketing opportunity”.

Despite such statements, New Zealand should renew its offer, Bayldon said.

“It doesn’t look like the Australian government’s going to do the right thing any time soon, so it’s really important that other governments — including New Zealand’s — put up their hands and offer to safely resettle refugees so that they can restart their lives.”

Bayldon believes New Zealand has remained silent on Australia’s detention centres for far too long.

“Through two different New Zealand foreign ministers and two different New Zealand prime ministers, we are yet to hear the New Zealand government properly call out Australia for its abuse and illegal treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.

‘New Zealand needs to speak out’
“It’s absolutely incoherent for it not to call out Australia with appalling abuses going on in its own neighbourhood, right here in the Pacific. New Zealand needs to speak out more strongly than it has so far.”

Primary responsibility, however, rested with Australia, he said.

“It’s the Australian government which put people in these abusive detention centres in breach of international law and it’s the Australian government’s responsibility to get them to safety.”

Despite this, Manus Island refugees have written to New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English seeking asylum.

“We can understand why they’ve written to the New Zealand government, and while the primary responsibility lies with the Australian government, this really is an opportunity for the New Zealand government to stand up for its own values and do the right thing,” Bayldon said.

“What we see from refugees and asylum seekers is what they want is to be able to get on with their lives. They want to be able to work, they want to be able to contribute, and New Zealand is a place where they could do that.”

• Amnesty blasts foreign companies over ‘profiting’ from Nauru refugees abuse

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs” has sparked further controversy in New Zealand at a public seminar delivered by Filipino human rights defender Wilnor Papa.

Heated debate erupted between several Filipino citizens, Papa and members of the audience at Papa’s “On the frontline” talk at the University of Auckland last Thursday.

Organised by the NZ Centre for Human Rights Law, Policy and Practice, Auckland University of Technology’s law school and Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand, debate culminated around how many people had been killed since Duterte took power on June 30, 2016.

Papa said between 4000 and 9000 Filipinos had been murdered in what members of Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand described as a “harvest” against poor people.

This was challenged by Filipino citizens Allan Jacob, Rex Yap and a Filipino student in the room who were concerned about Duterte being painted “negatively”.

Jacob and Yap told Asia Pacific Report they attended the talk to “present a balanced view” of Duterte.

“There are killings, yes, because there are heightened operations to get rid of the drug menace in the Philippines. What we don’t want to see is the administration being painted as a despot, just killing people.”

9000 people killed
The Filipino student from the University of Auckland accused Papa of quoting from “fake media” — such as leading national news media the Philippine Daily Enquirer and Rappler — although data on the number of deaths is continuously being gathered by both official and human rights sources.

The Human Rights Watch cited “more than 7000” in its comprehensive report in March, License To Kill, which names victims and details evidence.

“I am a Philippine citizen, so I think I have every right to comment about what is going on in the Philippines,” he said.

“In the previous administration, there were 9000 to 14,000 deaths. So now you say 9000 people have been killed because of the drug war. Do you mean that the present administration are carrying out killings at an exponential level?”

Papa said in response a number of suspected drug dealers had been killed in a very short space of time.

“I think during the time of Duterte, from after he won the election, in less than a year there are already 9000 dead.”

Papa later emphasised, however, that Amnesty International, where he is campaigns manager for the Philippines, is trying to establish a clearer figure, but stressed this was difficult due to intimidation of people on the ground.

“They’re giving us conflicting numbers, but we’re talking to as many organisations as we can,” Papa said.

Most vulnerable targeted
Amnesty International began monitoring data after Duterte took power.

However, Papa, Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand’s Margaret Taylor and the director of the NZ Centre for Human Rights Law, Policy and Practice, Rosslyn Noonan, admitted the human rights organisation has been unable to keep up with the killings “from day one”.

According to an undated Human Rights Watch report, more than 6000 Filipinos have been killed to date — the vast majority of whom are poor, urban slum dwellers — but this figure was at variance with its own License To Kill report in March of more than 7000 killings.

Repeated changes in police statistics have also confused the issue. Vice-President Leni Lobredo stated “more than 7000 killings” in a video shown to the Washington-based Drug Reform Coordination Network (DRCNet) Foundation on 17 March 2017. But the Philippines National Police has since claimed that not all the extrajudicial killings are drug-related.

Papa and representatives of Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand said it was important to remember the “most vulnerable” people in the Philippines were being targeted and emphasised that whatever the number, one death was too many.

“What we’re imploring is that regardless of differing numbers, whether it is 9000, 5000 or 4000, the killings should stop.”

This statement came despite acknowledgement that killings in the Philippines are not a new phenomenon.

“It has never been a new phenomenon, but on this scale. 9000 in a few months?”

‘I will kill’
Papa, whose father was tortured for three months and who has never found an uncle thrown in prison under former President Ferdinand Marcos, said Duterte’s motives could not be questioned.

“He made a campaign promise: ‘I will kill.'”

Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre, said this was the notable difference between Duterte’s “war on drugs” compared with extrajudicial killings by previous elected governments since the Marcos dictatorship ended in 1986.

“The major difference that I see is that it’s an overt government policy on a scale that has not been seen before.” He said mere “suspects” with frequent wrong identifications were being routinely killed.

Noonan also picked up on Duterte’s tactic of dealing with alleged drug dealers.

“The truth of the matter is, this is the first time a president has got up there and actually said ‘I think we just need to kill these people’. Duterte’s not just said it once, he’s said it more than once.”

Despite the controversy, all parties agreed the killings of a vulnerable faction of society – suspected drug addicts – were fundamentally wrong.

Poorest, marginalised killed
“We’re seeing the very poorest and most marginalised being killed.”

In closing, Kris Gledhill of the Auckland University of Technology’s law school, said:

“If there is unnecessary killing, whether it’s 9000, whether it’s 12,000 – it is still a breach of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is the bedrock of the rule of law and respect for human rights in the world.

“So when we’re arguing about numbers, which is perfectly proper to have an argument as to how bad the problem is, if there’s more than one unnecessary killing there’s still a problem and I’m sure that’s something we can all agree on.”

• The global monitoring agency Human Rights Watch reported more than 7000 killed in its comprehensive report on the killings in the Philippines since Dutertre came to power in its March report License To Kill.
• In Numbers: The Philippines’ ‘War on Drugs’ — Rappler
• Vice-President Leni Robredo’s message on extrajudicial killings
• Philippines ‘war on drugs’: Credible and impartial investigation needed – Amnesty International
• Philippines: ‘If you are poor, you are killed’
• Amnesty International reports on the Philippines this year
• ‘Respect human rights’ warning

Political support in New Zealand for an independent West Papua is growing after a “historic declaration” was signed during free West Papua advocate Benny Wenda’s visit to the country this month.

Several politicians from across four political parties signed the Westminster Declaration, which calls for West Papua’s right to self-determination to be legally recognised through a vote.

Green MP Catherine Delahunty – who has been a vocal supporter of West Papuan independence throughout her political career – told Asia Pacific Report the meeting at Parliament by the IPWP was “amazing”.

“We had a really amazing evening at Parliament with the Westminster Declaration. We had a number of MP’s – nine MP’s on the night – including others subsequently signing the declaration, which as you know calls for a referendum, supervised independently by the UN for West Papuans to talk about and identify their views on self-determination.

“That was a really powerful moment. Benny said it’s very important for him travelling the world that he can actually meet the politicians and that the politicians actually – from a number of parties in this case – and sign up to the declaration.”

West Papua was controversially incorporated into Indonesia through a so-called “Act of Free Choice” in 1969 – only 1,026 selected West Papuans out of a population of 800,000 voted to become a part of the country – under duress.

In 2016, politicians from across the globe signed the declaration, first launched in the United Kingdom by Labour leader and co-founder of the International Parliamentarians for West Papua (IPWP), Jeremy Corbyn.

11 MPs signed up
Eleven members of Parliament from across four political parties – Greens, Labour, National and the Māori Party – have signed the declaration.

Green MPs Catherine Delahunty, Barry Coates, Mojo Mathers, Jan Logie and Steffan Browning have signed, along with Labour MPs Louisa Wall, Carmel Sepuloni, Adrian Rurawhe and National MP Chester Burrows.

Co-leader of the Māori Party Marama Fox and Labour MP Aupito S’ua William Sio have also signed.

Delahunty is certain this number will grow, as the declaration is now circulating through caucus, she said.

“Not everyone could make the event, but there are people who are keen to sign up.”

However, National MP Chester Burrows was the only member of National to sign the declaration, reaffirming Delahunty’s belief a change of government is needed for the issues in West Papua to truly gain traction politically.

“It’s frustrating because dreadful things are happening everyday and we’re not getting the political leaders of this country to take it seriously in the government.”

This is because support of West Papua would not come from National, Delahunty said, although she is hopeful.

‘Real core of support’
“We have got a real core of support for that declaration from across the House. Of course we haven’t got the government’s political support, but that’s what we’re working on.”

Delahunty said the rest of Benny Wenda’s visit to New Zealand was also “very lively”.

“In dire weather conditions, about 30 people marched to the Indonesian embassy. For the first time the embassy – the Indonesian officials – actually came out.

“They came out to tell us we were wrong about our views and to hand out propaganda to the university students about how everything is great in West Papua and that West Papuans are leading their own country.

“I challenged them back pretty hard … that was quite a lively experience.”

Speaking with Asia Pacific Report earlier this month, Benny Wenda said the purpose of his visit to New Zealand was to hopefully gain the country’s commitment to West Papua independence:

“West Papua’s hope is Australia and New Zealand. This is a regional issue, this will never go away from your eyes and this is something you need to look at today. Review your foreign policy and look at West Papua.”

During his visit, Wenda also met with Ngāti Whatua, unions, aid agencies, and students while in Wellington, echoing the solidarity found at his talk in Auckland, organised by the Pacific Media Centre.

“There was a very powerful dialogue with some young Pasifika and Māori students, and some young people expressing their support,” Delahunty said.

“I think it was useful and consolidated a lot of relationships, Benny being here. I think it helped us ride a wave of growing awareness which is slow, but steady, and we do see more and more people taking stock of this issue.”

• ‘We’ll not be safe with Indonesia,’ says West Papua’s Benny Wenda

Investigative journalist and author Nicky Hager has taken journalism students inside the process behind the controversial book Hit & Run, outlining an example of investigative journalism.

He described Hit & Run as a book which “reconstructs a crime scene” five or six years after a botched raid by New Zealand’s SAS allegedly killed six and wounded 15 innocent civilians, as opposed to the fighters believed responsible for killing a fellow soldier in a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in 2010.

But more importantly, Hager told students and staff at Auckland University of Technology last week, Hit & Run — co-authored with independent journalist Jon Stephenson — concerned “local business”.

“This is about us as New Zealanders and our military, that we pay for, and works on our behalf, whether it is sticking up for the values and beliefs and playing the role that we would want our country playing in the world, which we’ve got every right as New Zealanders to have opinions about, and feel strongly about,” he said.

“This is our business.”

1000-piece jigsaw puzzle
Hager described investigative journalism as a “related trade” to more traditional, everyday journalism, which is the “bloodstream of democracy”.

Hager told the third-year journalism students investigative journalism – sometimes a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle – could take “weeks, months, years” and explained it differed from regular journalism due to a few, key “ingredients”.

“Investigative journalism is actually just the people who put the time into chasing up that issue and sticking with it until they crack it.

“In other words, there’s no reason why anybody can’t be doing the work I’m talking about. Who has that public interest motivation, who likes research, and has some determination to stick at something until they crack it. Those are the ingredients.”

Hager also said drawing information together “is one of the vital components of investigative journalism”.

“It’s trying to crack the facts.”

More importantly, Hager stressed, investigative journalism is about protecting sources.

‘Am I hiding my sources?’
“When I’m writing, I’m always asking myself: ‘Am I hiding my sources well enough?’ Half my brain is in source-protection mode.”

This was true of Hit & Run, Hager said.

“From the very first meetings, I had to make sure that there were no connections between us, so for when the inevitable witchhunt came, nobody would be able to find a connection. No metadata.

“There is no story which is worth ruining someone’s life for.”

Speaking with Asia Pacific Report after the talk, Hager said this was highly important in New Zealand, where a culture of persecuting whistleblowers exists.

“New Zealand is very unkind to whistleblowers. Apart from an occasional, very brave, determined person, hopefully near the end of their career who speaks up, I usually would never recommend someone to be a whistleblower in the sense of being open.

‘We’re going to skin them alive’
“I think it’s much safer for people to leak. We’re a small society where the ‘old boys’ network’ can punish people too much.”

Hager said this was disappointing, given New Zealand’s “long and honourable history” in which people from every sector of society quietly talk to journalists and politicians.

But the ‘old boys’ network’ will not be a deterrent, Hager affirmed.

“As long as we’ve got a country where people want information, there will be people leaking information, that’s guaranteed. We’ll keep going.”

However, he added the military’s actions after the release of Hit & Run prove it has every intention to “punish whistleblowers”.

“They’re having an inquiry right now and the inquiry’s called: ‘Which bastards spoke to them, and we’re going to skin them alive.”

Hager said Hit & Run was the “real story” behind New Zealand’s military role in Afghanistan, in which the SAS had been involved in a “misguided, disastrous raid”.

‘Unscrupulously covered up’
“It struck me that if we could take one incident from a war, out of all the incidents, and write it really carefully and fully, then somebody who bothered to read that would actually – hopefully – get what a war is like: Real people, in a real situation, where people are fighting on sides and trying to kill each other. Who are these people?”

He also told Asia Pacific Report his thoughts on the military’s decision to hold no inquiry on the claims made in Hit & Run, the origins of which have been “unscrupulously covered up”.

“The military’s reaction to Hit & Run is nothing more than a continuation of a cover-up. This is what a cover-up looks like. They are dodging and weaving. Their arguments are weak, but there’s an underlying determination not to be scrutinised.

“In a normal government world, if someone had been accused of serious things, which they thought weren’t true, they’d want there to be an inquiry, they’d want someone to look at the facts and say, ‘those scurrilous authors were wrong and our reputations have been impugned’. But they don’t want that because we’re right. So what we’re seeing is them desperately trying to avoid being caught out.”

More importantly, the claims made in Hit & Run, Hager said, reveal a problem at the heart of the New Zealand military — secrecy.

“We’re seeing the inevitable results of an organisation which is too secretive. That believes it can keep all of its activities secret. This comes out in all sorts of dodgy, and petty, behaviour inside the Defence Force, because they’ve got used to never being properly scrutinised.

“We’re seeing a systemic problem in a secretive organisation which shouldn’t be so secret.”

On a more positive note, however, Hager closed his talk with a final piece of advice for the aspiring journalists in the room:

“We should be absolutely trustworthy.”

• Innovation and collaboration key to success: Nicky Hager
• Authors of new book call for full inquiry into SAS ‘betrayal’ claim
• SAS soldier backs up Afghan raid claims – Herald calls for inquiry
• Hit & Run review – a painstaking and dangerous book challenge
• Hit & Run reply: This is what a military cover-up looks like

By Kendall Hutt in Auckland

Journalism students from across the Pacific will have the opportunity to understand one another’s news cultures as the Pacific Cooperation Foundation’s media programme enters its third year.

Two final year student journalists from New Zealand will head to the Pacific next month, while three Pacific-based student journalists will travel to New Zealand for the two-week internship.

Michelle Curran, project manager of the PCF media programme, says the exchange aims to offer a regional perspective to participating interns.

“Our hope is for interns to gain a broader awareness of how media operates in different countries, the differences in resources available, and to broaden their network.

“The ideal outcome is to produce journalists with an in-depth regional perspective and knowledge of Pacific issues.”

One of these journalists is Auckland University of Technology’s Brandon Ulfsby, who is bound for Samoa.

Ulfsby says his motivation for applying stems from the fact Pacific news is an area which can be expanded on.

‘Make Pacific mainstream’
“I definitely think there is a lot more room to kind of build on existing platforms and really make the Pacific the mainstream, because I feel at the moment it’s quite situated in itself, that it’s separate news, it’s Pacific news that only people who are interested in it sort of focus on it.”

This absence is something the PCF has identified, Curran says.

“These students will eventually help raise the standard of journalism in the region, and increase the awareness of Pacific issues in New Zealand.”

Ulfsby, who is of Cook Islands descent, says he is looking forward to highlighting the human face of the Pacific.

“Really delving into the lives of people is something I want to cover.”

Having the ability to network and work alongside senior journalists and editors is also an important opportunity, Ulfsby says.

“It’s just experiencing a different newsroom culture and at the same time I want to elevate Pacific stories and give those people a voice, so that other people can hear them and possibly influence change.”

‘Every day reality’
For Shivika Mala and Linda Filiai, both from the University of the South Pacific, bringing awareness to climate change while in New Zealand will be key.

“I will try to inform New Zealanders about the effects of climate change in the Pacific. I do understand that New Zealand and the Pacific Islands prioritise different issues.

“It’s important for the people in New Zealand to know that some people in the Pacific Islands are suffering from extreme weather events such as cyclones, coastal erosion, droughts, and water shortages.

“Sea level rise is one of the greatest challenges,” Filiai says.

Mala, however, is determined to convey that climate change is an every day reality for the Pacific.

“It’s funny how some people are not aware about climate change and how the Pacific Island countries are vulnerable to its effects.

“It is our everyday reality and people must know about it because sadly, we are the ones who contribute to it.”

Filiai and Mala acknowledge they have been given a rare opportunity.

“This is a great opportunity for us in the Pacific to experience how news media operates in a developed country like New Zealand.”

Joshua Kiruhia of Divine Word University in Papua New Guinea will join Filiai and Mala in New Zealand, while Massey University’s Safia Archer will also head to the Pacific.

The Pacific Media Centre at AUT will host the Pacific regional students for half a day on their New Zealand programme.

The PCF media programme will take place between June 26-July 11.

• PCF student interns gain new perspectives
• Storytellers of the Pacific challenge old societal norms

Climate change is at the heart of a unique regional study into journalism culture in the Pacific.

The study, focusing on journalism’s role in democracy amid cultural, economic, environmental, political and technological changes throughout the University of the South Pacific’s 12 member states, aims to assess journalists’ understanding and reportage of climate change.

“The goal is to assess journalists’ capacity for reporting climate change to help formulate approaches to training programmes in this area,” says USP’s senior journalism lecturer and programme leader Dr Shailendra Singh, the study’s project manager and one of its lead authors.

Climate change journalism
Researchers hope to learn how prepared journalists are in reporting climate change, which is one of the most imminent threats facing the Pacific.

Dr Singh says the media’s role in accurately conveying this threat will also be considered by the study.

“Journalists play a very important role in educating the population about the science of climate change, and how it may affect them in their daily lives.”

More importantly, the study is one of only a few to address the issue of climate change in the context of Pacific journalism, Dr Singh adds.

“This study will therefore contribute valuable knowledge about journalists’ understanding of climate change, allowing us to identify potential training requirements.”

The study, a partnership between the University of the South Pacific (USP), Pacific Islands’ News Association (PINA), Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and the Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PACMAS), also aims to involve young researchers.

“Besides the lead researchers, we have a team of young USP tutors who are doing the field work and gathering data. This is part of their development. It’s part of capacity building for our upcoming academics and researchers.”

‘At our doorstep’
Eliki Drugunalevu, a teaching assistant in journalism at USP, is one of the researchers. He says having the opportunity to be involved in a project which focuses on climate change means a lot.

“Climate change is at our doorstep. And reporting, highlighting it is critical in telling the stories of people who are affected by climate change.

“Not only in that, but helping people, particularly people in influential places, such as policy makers, fully understand that every decision that they make has consequences to those that are on the ground.”

Drugunalevu, who works as both a research assistant and research coordinator for the study, says the regional project is unique in its focus on climate change because it focuses on the issue from a media, rather than scientific, perspective.

“People have this perception that doing research on climate has to do with the sciences – measuring the rise of the sea level, rainfalls and so on – but this project is quite different by looking at it from the media’s perspective and how much attention the media gives to climate change in a vulnerable region like ours.”

Drugunalevu explains he and his fellow researchers are attempting to grasp journalists’ levels of understanding in what he says is “actually dissecting a story that deals with climate change rather than just looking at it as another climate change story”.

He says the current trend on climate change is reporting it “as it is and then moving onto the next story”, which is alarming.

Greater recognition needed
“Climate change means loss of land. It means loss of livelihood. It means potential loss of identity. We’ve heard of stories of people being relocated from a place where they have been settled for generations.

“While it may not mean much to the outside world, to us and to those who experience this, it means the world to them having to move from a place they have called home for generations to a new place. It can quite be an overwhelmingly emotional experience having to witness it and read it as well.”

Drugunalevu and his colleagues would like to see an understanding of how journalists’ report climate change come out of the project, but also hope their findings encourage greater recognition of climate change on the political scale.

“Getting policy makers and people in influential places to recognise the role of the media and see the bigger picture and the impact of the decisions they make on the people on the ground and with regards to climate change is important.”

The study is expected to be completed within the next two years, with research on Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu carried out by the end of this year.

Research on Samoa and Tonga has already been completed.

Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt have been in Fiji for the Bearing Witness project. A collaborative venture between the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme, the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), the Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and documentary collective Te Ara Motuhenga, Bearing Witness seeks to provide an alternative framing of climate change, focusing on resilience and human rights.

A lifelong campaigner for a free and independent West Papua has issued a stark warning to New Zealand politicians as he visits the country this week.

Benny Wenda, a tribal chief of West Papua exiled to the United Kingdom by Indonesia, told Asia Pacific Report that time was running out for West Papua if governments such as New Zealand do not act.

“If we live with Indonesia for another 50 years, we will not be safe. We will not be safe with Indonesia.”

He said the purpose of his visit to New Zealand was to highlight the importance of West Papua returning to its Melanesian family.

“We really need Pacific Islanders, our sisters and brothers across the Pacific – particularly New Zealand and Australia – to bring West Papua back to its Pacific family. Then we can survive. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to survive with Indonesia,” he said.

Since Indonesia took over West Papua following a controversial Act of Free Choice – dubbed by critics as an “Act of no choice” – in 1969, Wenda said his people had suffered.

“Everyday someone is dead, or has been killed, and someone has been stabbed, but no one is brought to justice.”

Human rights violations
In its rush to claim former Dutch colonies in the Asia-Pacific region following West Papua’s self-declared independence from the Netherlands in late 1961, Indonesia has subjected West Papua to continued human rights violations.

Many West Papuans have been imprisoned for non-violent expressions of their political views and widespread allegations of torture have been consistently made against Indonesian authorities.

Raising West Papua’s flag – the Morning Star – can incur 15 years in prison.

Wenda, the 42-year-old founder of the Free West Papua Campaign, has himself been imprisoned, accused of inciting an attack on a police station — despite the fact he was not even in the country at the time.

With foreign media all but denied access to West Papua – despite apparent lifting of restrictions by President Joko Widodo in 2015 – much of Indonesia’s atrocities remain secret, hidden.

It is for these very reasons, Wenda said, that West Papua was fighting.

“We are fighting for our independence, but we are also fighting for our land, our forest, our mountains.”

New Zealand support sought
Wenda is calling for the New Zealand government’s integral commitment to the campaign for a free West Papua.

He said this was because New Zealand had a duty, as a part of the Pacific, to raise awareness of the atrocities in West Papua.

“West Papua is a very close neighbour, so that’s why I hope the New Zealand government will speak more about the human rights situation in West Papua.”

Wenda said it was high time for New Zealand to pull away from its business, trade and investment focus with Indonesia and speak about Indonesia’s human rights abuses.

New Zealand “needs to do more” as a country, he said, because New Zealand is a country which is meant to value human rights, respect the rule of law, freedom of speech and the right to self-determination in other parts of the world.

It is therefore time for New Zealand’s foreign policy on West Papua to change.

“West Papua’s hope is Australia and New Zealand. This is a regional issue, this will never go away from your eyes and this is something you need to look at today. Review your foreign policy and look at West Papua.”

‘We are the gatekeepers’
“Australia and New Zealand need West Papua. We are the gatekeepers, and for security reasons, West Papua is very important,” Wenda said.

Catherine Delahunty, a Green Party MP who has campaigned strongly for West Papua on New Zealand’s political front, echoed Wenda’s views.

“They are insistent – the New Zealand government – that West Papua is part of the territorial integrity of Indonesia, so we can’t get past that critical issue.”

She said she therefore did not have much faith in the current government to step up and was looking for future leadership, such as through the Labour-Greens alliance, to move the campaign for West Papuan self-determination forward on the home front.

“I really do think we need a different government that actually has some fundamental commitment to human rights over and above trade and being part of the US military complex around the world. We have to have change to get change. It’s not going to happen through these guys.”

In her eight years in Parliament, Delahunty said the situation in West Papua was the toughest she had had to face.

“This issue, for me, has been one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever worked on. It’s been one of the most horrible and one of the most powerful examples of the cynical use of power and the way in which people can just completely close their eyes.”

Mainstream media role
Both Wenda and Delahunty said in light of the resounding silence surrounding West Papuan media freedom during Indonesia’s hosting of World Press Freedom Day last week that raising awareness of West Papua was key for the world to finding out about the atrocities there.

The mainstream media had a large role to play in this, both acknowledged.

“West Papua really needs the media in terms of the publicity. Media publicity is very important,” Wenda said.

Wenda said it was time for New Zealand’s mainstream to pick up the baton from smaller, independent news agencies and carry stories of West Papua’s atrocities themselves.

“I really hope the mainstream media here carries this. It’s very important. We need more mainstream media. They really need to pick up on this issue.”

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has reported that it was not unusual for both local and foreign journalists in West Papua to be threatened anonymously or by authorities. Data by the Alliance for Independent Journalists (AJI) has revealed there has been an increase in the number of assaults on journalists in the region over the past two years.

There were 78 violent attacks on journalists in 2016, up from 42 attacks in 2015 and 40 in 2014.

The AJI found only a few attackers from those 78 attacks had been brought to justice.

Only last week, independent photojournalist Yance Wenda was arrested and beaten by police while covering a peaceful demonstration, prompting condemnation from RSF that Indonesia was ‘double-dealing’ over media freedom.

‘Everything swept under the carpet’
Wenda said there was deep-seated inaction on Indonesia’s part because of its prejudice in prosecuting people who have attacked and tortured and beaten both West Papuans and also West Papuan journalists.

“Indonesia is getting away with impunity. Nobody is brought to justice. Everything is swept under the carpet.”

Delahunty reflected, however, that the world was seeing the lack of free and frank reporting play out in West Papua.

“We see the consequences of nearly fifty years of no honesty about West Papua and it’s just up the road. It breaks my heart, but it also fires me up because I really believe there are some very, very brave young people, including journalists, who are committed to this issue and I guess it’s that thing: if you have a voice, use it.”

This was Wenda’s call to an audience gathered at his talk at the Pacific Media Centre-hosted Auckland University of Technology on Tuesday evening.

“Today you are the messengers for West Papua.”

Wenda highlighted a “united” Pacific was key in raising awareness of the “Melanesian genocide” occurring in West Papua.

‘United’ Pacific key
He called on his “brothers and sisters”, but was deeply thankful of the support given already by several Pacific nations for West Papua’s cause.

These nations raised grave concerns regarding human rights violations in West Papua at the 34th session of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council in March.

Recent declarations by both the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu were also acknowledged by Wenda.

“We cried for 50 years, but then these countries sacrificed to take on this issue.”

Wenda told the Solomon Islanders and the people of Vanuatu gathered they should “be proud” and that their action was something to “take away in your head and heart”.

Wenda also told the remainder of his audience it was “ordinary people” and “mostly young generations” who were needed to continue the fight, with social media being their greatest tool.

Delahunty added people power and the growing solidarity movement across the globe were also central.

“The only way they’ll speak and respond to this issue at all is if we have growing public pressure and that’s the job of all of us, both inside parliament and outside parliament to raise the issue and to make it something people will feel accountable for, otherwise we just ignore the plight of our neighbours and the killing, torture, environmental desecration and human rights abuses continue.”

Wenda and Delahunty both closed their interviews with a clear message for Indonesia: “Start talking, start listening, and stop thinking that you can ever brow beat people into the dust because you want their resources because in the end, the human spirit doesn’t work like that and these people will never give up. It’s up to us to support them.”

Kendall Hutt is contributing editor of Pacific Media Watch.

• Benny Wenda – advocating for a Free West Papua
• Rave hospitality, but Indonesia fails West Papua with media freedom hypocrisy
• Indonesia is ‘double-dealing’ on media freedom, says RSF
• Calls for safety of Indonesian, West Papuan journalists to be prioritised
• Leader calls for New Zealand to stand with West Papua

New Zealand’s Commerce Commission has denied a move which would have seen two of the country’s largest media outlets merge.

Commerce Commission chairman Dr Mark Berry, in a statement, described the merger as harmful to democracy because it would have seen NZME and Fairfax collectively own 90 per cent of the daily newspaper circulation and a majority of traffic to online sources.

“This merger would concentrate media ownership and influence to an unprecedented extent for a well-established modern liberal democracy. The news audience reach that the applicants have provide the merged entity with the scope to control a large share of the news consumed by a majority of New Zealanders.

“This level of influence over the news and political agenda by a single media organisation creates a risk of causing harm to New Zealand’s democracy and to the New Zealand public,” Dr Berry said.

Media plurality, diversity
More importantly, the merger would have spelled the end of media plurality and diversity in the country, the commission warned.

“Our primary concerns remain that this merger would be likely to reduce both the quality of news produced and the diversity of voices (plurality) available for New Zealanders to consume.”

This is due to the fact current, healthy competition between the media outlets would have come to an end.

“In our view, the merged entity’s competitors would not be able to constrain it in any real way from making cost-cutting decisions that reduce quality and plurality.”

The commission did, however, acknowledge that their decision left NZME and Fairfax in a precarious position. The media outlets currently face a challenging commercial environment as they seek to transition from traditional print products to a sustainable online model, the commission noted.

Job cuts looming
“In our view, without the merger NZME and Fairfax will be increasingly focused on their online businesses as their print products diminish in number and comprehensiveness over time,” Dr Berry said.

“We accept there is a real chance the merger could extend the lifespan of some newspapers and lead to significant cost savings anywhere between $40 million to around $200 million over five years. However these benefits do not, in our view, outweigh the detriments we consider would occur if it was to proceed.”

Several hours after the Commerce Commission’s decision, Fairfax’s stuff.co.nz reported job cuts with the owner’s regional papers were likely.

Fairfax’s acting managing director Andrew Boyle stated the no decision on the merger brought into stark reality the need to address what publishing model was sustainable for the company. He was quoted as saying: “Tough decisions will have to be made in terms on ensuring that ongoing viability.”

Declined decision welcome
The Commerce Commission’s decision to reject the merger has been welcomed by Auckland University of Technology’s Centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD).

“I think the decision is in the public’s interest if you think that there’s now no single company which controls most of the online and print news assets in New Zealand. So I welcome that decision,” said Merja Myllylahti, JMAD’s project manager.

“I congratulate the Commerce Commission on keeping their head cool and do the best available decision at the time.”

Myllylahti warned however that the decision was not entirely something to be celebrated.

“We should actually remember that there is no winner in this situation. We really shouldn’t gloat and celebrate this because the future of the New Zealand media is actually very gloomy.”

She explained this is because the industry is likely to face “drastic changes” namely in the form of job cuts and closures.

If the merger had gone ahead, Myllylahti said it would have affected media freedom.

“We would have had less competition, less voices, less diversity, less plurality in the market.”

More importantly, the merger would have meant “more junk food news”, Myllylahti added.

Dr Peter Thompson, a senior lecturer in media at Victoria University, shared Myllylahti’s views.

“I think it was absolutely the right ruling, so I congratulate the Commerce Commission in having the courage to uphold its draft determination.

“Ultimately the Commerce Commission has done the right thing in prioritising the interests of the New Zealand public over the interests of Australian shareholders.”

However, Thompson said the commission’s decision highlights that the media in New Zealand is in crisis.

Media in crisis
This was not only down to the fact regional and local papers were under threat from the decision, but also because of weaknesses in current legislation.

The rejected merger therefore represents the opportunity for the government to rethink its regulatory framework, Thompson said.

“This decision makes the Commerce Commission incumbent upon the current government to recognise that our news media are in crisis and they need to look at the regulatory levers available to remedy that.”

Thompson, who is also part of the Coalition for Better Broadcasting, added the controversy over the merger – an “absolutely ridiculous, completely unthinkable scenario” – speaks to the weakness of the Commerce Act.

Both Fairfax and NZME have 20 working days to appeal the ruling and if this happens, Thompson said, a virtual monopoly in the print media sector will be created.

“If it goes to court and the unthinkable happens and the ruling gets overturned, then it’s going to be a very dark day for our news media and it’s going to be a very dark day for democracy in New Zealand and it will underline the urgent need, regardless of the current decision, to revise and review the Commerce Act and to revise and review the overall media regulation settings in New Zealand.”

• Academics warn NZME, Fairfax merger would ‘spell disaster’ for NZ media

A group of Marshall Islanders is calling on the Pacific to stand with them in solidarity as they urge leaders to prioritise healthy oceans.

The Marshall Islands Student Association (MISA) delivered a talk at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji expressing concern about current political inaction towards addressing land-based contaminants in the ocean.

“The time to act is now. We have to act now,” said Brooke Takala, a MISA member and doctoral candidate who specialises in education for sustainability.

With the United Nations Oceans Conference set to take place in New York in June, MISA has launched a campaign called MISA4thePacific, where Pacific Islanders can submit poetry, dance, art and photos urging for action regarding Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14.1.

SDG 14.1 seeks to prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds by 2025, particularly from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution, the implementation of which is to be discussed at the conference co-hosted by Fiji and Sweden.

“If we don’t prioritise SDG 14.1, all of our other sustainable development goals are moot. There’s no point,” Takala said.

“If we have radiation leaking into our ocean and poisoning our food systems there’s no food security, there’s no water security, there’s no maternal health, there are no opportunities. This has to be prioritised.”

Widespread suffering
This call to action comes in light of widespread suffering still endured by the Marshallese following nuclear testing on Enewatak and Bikini atolls by the US during the 1940s and 1950s.

Nuclear testing in the Pacific has caused countless people in the region to suffer from the effects of radioactive fallout.

These include widespread displacement, loss of culture, and serious health issues including high rates of cancer and deformity.

More than 70 years on from the first nuclear tests, many islands and atolls remain uninhabitable.

Plutonium leakage
The members of MISA highlighted that there is an inability to address large quantities of plutonium leakage from the dome on Runit Island on Enewatak Atoll, which contains toxic waste left over from the 67 nuclear and thermonuclear bombs tested by the US.

Takala said she wanted the US to finally take stock of its “unfinished business” in the Marshall Islands and recognise that Castle Bravo, the 15-megatonne hydrogen bomb tested on Bikini Atoll in 1954, which had a blast one thousand times bigger than Hiroshima, was not simply an “accident”.

“For me personally as a mother of a young Enewatak boy whose land rights are on that island with a nuclear waste storage site, I want the world to know that the US has stolen my child’s future and that they need to be held accountable. And I think when we share that message that it is this child’s future, all of our children’s’ futures at stake, and that we cannot let this go.”

Data collected by the US which would fully determine whether the water surrounding Runit Island is contaminated is either still classified or redacted, she added.

This means the ocean surrounding Runit Island could be polluted, but no one knows for certain as radiation is difficult to detect without access to scientific equipment.

The atoll’s fresh water lens, which is present under the island and sits on the salt water, enters the dome from below every high tide as it is elevated, meaning as the tide rolls out radioactive isotopes are dispersed into the ocean, MISA says.

‘Radiation knows no boundaries’
“Radiation knows no boundaries. You cannot taste it, you cannot smell it, you cannot see it and it does not stop at our colonial boundaries, our country boundaries,” said Takala.

Danity Laukon, a member of MISA, said before radioactive nuclear waste was stored on Runit Island it was a beautiful place with prime fishing ground.

“It’s not the same anymore. On top of this climate change is happening.”

Takala said the Marshall Islands was at the forefront of climate change, so addressing the leakage of Runit’s dome was urgent.

This is because climate change for the Runit Islands is not a question of if, but when.

Climate change implications
“When those inundations come, and when sea level rises happening, and Runit Dome becomes underwater, it won’t just be a matter of it leaking into the ocean from the bottom, but the whole thing.

“So for those of us who live on Enewatak, whose families are from Enewatak, this is the most pressing matter for us. For the rest of us in the Marshall Islands, it affects all of us. But even on a larger scale for all of us in the Pacific.”

Maureen Penjueli, a supporter of MISA, reflected that it was now time for the remainder of the Pacific and the next generation to take up the baton in the fight for nuclear-free oceans.

She said the Marshall Islands had been fighting and endured enough.

“It’s a burden for the rest of us to bear.”

MISA said despite calls for Pacific solidarity, they remained determined to make leaders recognise the need to address the lingering effects of radiation in the ocean.

“Going to New York is the plan.”

Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt are in Fiji for the Bearing Witness project. A collaborative venture between the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme, the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), the Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and documentary collective Te Ara Motuhenga, Bearing Witness seeks to provide an alternative framing of climate change, focusing on resilience and human rights.

• John Pilger’s documentary on US nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands

The University of the South Pacific in Fiji has a colourful market which happens in the third week of every month for four days. Locals and students are both welcome.

There is music, food and clothes stalls, and also books and accessories at Suva’s Laucala Campus.

I snapped some photos while Julie Cleaver got b-roll for the climate change mini documentary we’re making.

We have several interviews lined up today, so watch for our stories over the next couple of days.

• Other Bearing Witness project stories

Market day at USP

1 of 8

Foreign companies are profiting off human rights abuses carried out at the Australian offshore refugee processing centre on Nauru, Amnesty International says.

In its new report, Treasure I$land: How companies are profiting from Australia’s abuse of refugees on Nauru, Amnesty International has detailed how Spanish multinational Ferrovial and its wholly-owned Australian subsidiary Broadspectrum have been reaping vast profits from  contracts on the island nation.

Broadspectrum’s three-and-a-half-year contract, set to expire in October, is worth A$2.5 billion, which has risen from A$350 million between September 2012 and February 2014, the Amnesty International report said.

“Broadspectrum is well aware of the conditions faced on Nauru by refugees and people seeking asylum and, in some cases, its employees and sub-contractors are directly responsible for neglect and abuse.”

‘Open-air prison’
Amnesty International describes Nauru’s refugee processing centre as an “open-air prison” designed to deter some of the world’s most vulnerable people from seeking safety on Australia’s shores.

“Australia’s offshore processing system on Nauru subjects refugees and people seeking asylum to a daily diet of humiliation, neglect, abuse and poor physical and mental health care.”

It said such suffering had come in the face of Australia’s efforts to deter people from entering the country irregularly, efforts the Australian government claimed were “necessary”, Amnesty International alleged.

This “necessary” deterrence by the government and the functioning of Nauru’s offshore processing system would not be possible without Broadspectrum’s involvement.

“It is Amnesty International’s view that Broadspectrum runs the refugee processing centre (RPC) on a daily basis and has effective control over the day-to-day lives of refugees and asylum-seekers at the RPC, and that it does so on behalf of the Australian government and with the government’s ultimate oversight and control,” the report said.

Such a statement comes despite Australia’s denial it has any responsibility for refugees and people seeking asylum after it forcibly deports them to Nauru.

Human rights abuses
The human rights abuses the report has detailed include physical abuse of children, sexual assault, and the fact refugees are living in poor conditions exacerbated by the fact there is significant environmental damage due to large-scale phosphate mining.

All of this is compounded by the fact employees must adhere to strict confidentiality agreements.

It is also a criminal offence for medical and welfare professionals to speak out.

The international media itself has also been continuously barred from the island by the Nauru government.

In light of the report’s findings, Amnesty International has also issued a stern warning for those thinking of picking up Broadspectrum’s contract and says it is putting them on notice.

“You will be complicit in an intentionally and inherently abusive and cruel system, you will be acting in direct contravention of your human rights responsibilities and you will be exposing yourself to potential legal liability.”

End ‘indefinite limbo’
Speaking to Asia Pacific Report from Brisbane, Kate Schuetze, a Pacific researcher and policy adviser with Amnesty International for the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, said Broadspectrum needed to end the “indefinite limbo” in Nauru as soon as possible before October and withdraw its services.

She said Amnesty International had “consistently called for Nauru to be closed” and “alternative arrangements” made for the some 1000 refugees on the island.

Amnesty International said the government of Australia needed to end its policy of offshore processing and detention and permanently close its centres on Nauru and Manus Island.

“It should change its policy” Schuetze said.

She said the report should “serve as a warning” for anyone else considering taking over Broadspectrum’s contract.

Broadspectrum, however, has denied all allegations by Amnesty International that it has committed human rights abuses.

“Broadspectrum does not agree with the multiple assertions that we have caused, contributed to, or are complicit in, human rights abuses.

“The care and wellbeing of asylum seekers and refugees is paramount in our processes and actions,” Broadspectrum said.

• Treasure I$land — the full Amnesty International report on Nauru
• Oppressive culture of secrecy

For those seeking an independent foreign policy, the time is now, says the organiser of a New Zealand independence movement in the wake of a “crumbling” United States empire.

Murray Horton, national coordinator for the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA), a Christchurch-based organisation which has been “flying the flag for an independent New Zealand” since the 1970s, told a public seminar at Auckland University of Technology last week that the US had reached its “tipping point”.

Horton highlighted how famous slogans such as ‘Make America Great Again’, repeated ad nauseam by a “Mussolini with hair” — President Donald Trump — provided the ideal opportunity for New Zealand to launch its own independent, non-aligned foreign policy.

“CAFCA thinks that gaining true independence from the American empire and becoming non-aligned is an idea whose time has well and truly come,” Horton said at the AUT Pacific Media Centre-hosted seminar.

“It is not ‘anti-American’ or racist or xenophobic for that matter …  We stand with the American people who are currently fighting back in their millions against the daily outrages being perpetrated by Trump and his reactionary billionaire cronies.”

Greater evidence still was the fact the Christchurch Press, which once “faithfully parroted the US and UK propaganda line” when owned by Rupert Murdoch, had urged in an editorial that ties with the US should be on New Zealand’s terms.

Horton noted this was “really quite extraordinary”.

China’s steady rise
Further evidence of America’s undoing was China’s steady rise as an economic and military power and the fact that the US had been “reduced to one player among many” in the Middle East, especially in Syria, said Horton.

“Putin’s Russia is sticking it to America across a whole spectrum of issues in a richly ironic turn of events.”

More importantly, however, Horton stressed it was time for New Zealand to grow up.

“Don’t muck around with the half pie solutions, go for the full pie solution. Get shot of Mother England and Uncle Sam. It’s called leaving home and living your own life and it’s what all of us do in the much-vaunted ‘real world’ and it’s called being independent.”

But there is some light at the end of the tunnel, Horton noted.

This was because New Zealand had taken steps towards an independent foreign policy regarding its nuclear free stance and presence of non-combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“For the first time ever we stayed out of someone else’s war.”

Nuclear-free pride
Horton said being nuclear free is “something to be really proud of”.

“It puts New Zealand well ahead of other countries.”

However, these foreign policy advancements were the exception and not the rule, Horton added.

“Things haven’t progressed from there and the powers that be both in New Zealand and the US have been actively working to nullify those facts on the ground, sending war ships out here for example, to get around them, to subvert them and render them irrelevant.”

This comes down to the fact New Zealand’s military continued to be “guns for fire” in other people’s wars and its ongoing participation in the “Five Eyes” intelligence network.

“We are the most loyal and junior satellite in the vitally important, covert ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance, slavishly doing the bidding of both the US government and American transnational corporations when told to do so.”

Such “loyal” participation had seen New Zealand’s military role in Afghanistan under the spotlight in Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson’s book Hit & Run, Horton said.

‘Own two feet’
But what would an independent, non-aligned foreign policy look like?

Horton seemed to leave no stone unturned as he explained what it should look like.

“An independent foreign policy means not being part of anyone’s empire, but standing on our own two feet and picking and choosing our friends and allies based on what is in our national interest and in the public interest,” explained Horton.

Although this would not mean New Zealand would be neutral or isolationist, Horton stressed.

“It would mean that New Zealand would pick her allies and, if necessary, our wars, on a case by case basis decided first and foremost by what’s in the interest of the New Zealand people, not the interests of foreign governments and/or corporations.”

This would mean cutting the strings that continue to bind us to the American Empire, namely closing the Government Communication Security Bureau’s (GCSB) “US National Security Agency (NSA) bases” and abolishing the GCSB itself, “which is simply a junior contractor for the US NSA”, Horton said.

New Zealand’s current foreign policy mindset means that the country was missing the boat on addressing key global challenges such as climate change, Horton said.

‘Much more activist’
Horton added New Zealand needed to be “much more activist” regionally in order to do so.

“Politicians have always said being in the club allows us to punch above our weight and eat at the big boys’ table. Good, let’s do something about facing global issues.”

“As a first world capitalist economy we’re part of the climate change problem that threatens the whole world and nowhere more imminent than for our tiny Pacific neighbours.

“There is clamour for New Zealand to take in refugees…The inhabitants of these doomed atolls need to be at the top of the list. All of them, if necessary … This is not a solution to the problem of climate change … it is merely a reaction to the problem, and recognition that we have a responsibility to help our neighbours who we’ve harmed.”

Horton said New Zealand would achieve all of these aims and an independent foreign policy through the Aotearoa Independence Movement, a campaign which will initiate and drive nationwide dialogue on what independent economic, military and political policy should look like.

“Let us provide the means for discussing, defining and deciding what would be involved in that and everything that would flow from it and decide what that would mean and how to get there I think you’ll agree is a discussion Aotearoa needs to have and that now is the time to have it.”

• LIVE: CAFCA’s Murray Horton on foreign policy and NZ’s independence 
• CAFCA calls on NZ to ‘pull the plug’ on American Empire

Kendall Hutt is the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project editor for 2017. 

Climate change is the central focus of the European Union’s continuing relationship with the Pacific, says the international cooperation chief.

Stefano Manservisi, Director-General of International Cooperation and Development of the European Commission (DEVCOM), says his organisation is fully behind the Pacific on raising awareness of climate change.

“Having consulted already with national level authorities on how we can step-up support, notably on climate change, we are 100 percent backing determination to do more,” he told Asia Pacific Report.

Manservisi is currently in the Pacific — due in New Caledonia today — meeting with leaders to discuss the European Union’s (EU) ongoing relationship under the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP)-EU Partnership Agreement, which is more commonly referred to as the Contonou Agreement.

Signed in 2000, the treaty between 79 countries from Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific is the “most comprehensive partnership agreement between developing countries and the EU,” according to the commission.

Aimed at reducing poverty, ensuring sustainable development and promoting democracy, peace and security, the agreement is set to expire in 2020.

“The objective is to reaffirm the full commitment of the European Union in the South Pacific, now, and in the future,” Manservisi said.

Climate change challenge
Part of this commitment would continue to be climate change, identified as a key concern under “global challenges” in several EU documents.

This was due to the fact that since the agreement’s 2010 revision, climate change had been referenced as the central point on which future relations should be framed.

This was because all the treaty’s partners were adversely affected by climate change, Manservisi said.

“Well, climate change is the agenda and the main issue our partners themselves are raising with us, because, you know, they are all islands which are at risk in terms of disasters, in terms of rising oceans, in terms of difficulty of having a prosperous agriculture sector for food production.”

Potential future investments and development in areas such as energy and increased interconnectivity were hindered because they “fall under the climate change umbrella and are linked to the vulnerability of these islands”.

This was unfortunate, given Pacific nations would like to see their vulnerability turn into something more sustainable through the development of such resources, Manservisi said.

“This is what our partners are asking us to do and we are working in order to respond.”

Post-COP21 world
Such commitment reflected a global trend in which world leaders were taking climate change seriously.

“COP21 would not have produced the commitment that it has, otherwise.”

More importantly, this was further evident in the fact Fiji was co-chairing COP23, Manservisi said.

“This will, let’s say, keep promoting the importance of the climate change agenda and to make pressure, in particular, seeing it from one of the area which is most at risk.”

This all comes despite US President Donald Trump’s announcement America will be unwinding several key climate change policies implemented under Obama’s presidency.

“I would say that I’m an optimist, so therefore I believe that since climate change is evidence-based, you know, our American friend will probably reconsider a certain number of things,” Manservisi said.

“In any case, what I noticed here so far in my talks is that if anybody has some doubts and in spite of some announcement from the US, this has boosted even more our determination to tackle climate change.”

Moving forward, the EU would also like to see the addition of a “Pacific pillar” to the agreement.

Pacific pillar
Although the treaty creates a powerful framework for engagement, Manservisi admits it does need some work.

“We suggest it be a bit more regionalised, closer to realities. A Pacific pillar of this new ACP framework will be able to address more specifically the specificity of the South Pacific to have its own governess and mechanics to make decisions.”

Ideally, this new pillar would encompass other European territories such as French Polynesia, and include Australia and New Zealand, he said.

“I’m here to talk about this and see how we can do it. But in the understanding that we want to consolidate our presence here.”

Manservisi said the EU’s main motivation behind its plans to strengthen relations with the Pacific, however, was friendship.

“We are here, and we are doing work and efforts for developments for decades, so therefore you know we have an old story of friendship and partnership with the islands. Therefore, you know, it’s our first thinking and duty to say ‘now look, let’s see how we can do better’.”

Manservisi spent the beginning of his “case for the Pacific” roundtable last week engaged in several talks with leaders from Australia, but missed speaking with leaders and Pacific academics in New Zealand due to unexpected weather.

Talks on how to do better also continued in Fiji on Friday, where Manservisi planned to meet with Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama and several government ministers.

Similar talks took place in Vanuatu on Sunday, and bilateral discussion with Pacific leaders are planned to conclude in New Caledonia today.

Kendall Hutt is Pacific Media Watch freedom project contributing editor for the Pacific Media Centre.

• European Union gives Fiji $28.5 million

In an ever-changing news environment, one academic and researcher has “gone backstage” at Switzerland’s public broadcasting company to better understand what “news” and “doing news” is.

In a talk “The making of a report for a news bulletin: when conflicting identities have to collaborate“, delivered at Auckland University of Technology, media discourse analysis researcher Dr Marcel Burger used a case study from 10 years of research to highlight the journalism practices behind broadcast news.

Dr Burger, a lecturer at the University of Lausanne’s Centre of Linguistics and Language Sciences, presented his findings on Friday to academic staff, students and multimodal researchers.

Focusing on the 2007 runway crash of Garuda Indonesia Flight 200, which killed about 20 people, including several Australian diplomats and journalists, Burger used the filmed interaction between two staff at channel TRS1 – a part of Television Suisse Romande (now Radio Télévision Suisse), one of the main French language networks in Switzerland.

The interaction was between a journalist and “cutter” (film editor) to show how, when and why antagonistic editorial norms may emerge.

“We focus on one moment, on one potentially critical context – the editing phase, when a journalist is engaged with a film editor to achieve a report.”

‘Fire and blood’
Burger detailed how an analysis of the cutter and journalist’s working relationship revealed their opposing styles and the prominence of negotiation in navigating this difference.

While the cutter was “amazed” by the plane crash footage captured by one of the survivors, he was rather flippant about its “fire and blood” nature, which did not sit well with the journalist who was conflicted because of his “civic concerns and tortured mind”, Dr Burger said.

Dr Burger noted much negotiation takes place because broadcast news reports are a “process, not a structure”, in which conflicting journalistic identities must collaborate.

“Negotiating in the editing phase is very common.”

The journalist and cutter only found themselves at odds because it was a slow news day, Burger admitted.

Slow news day
“This was the same day as a flu epidemic. Sixteen out of 20 journalists were sick in Geneva.”

Burger also explained how the newsroom had no other breaking news or fresh stories and the afternoon bulletin was fast approaching.

Moreover, many in the newsroom believed the crash was not in the public interest due to the small number of deaths.

This all changed when it was discovered a Swiss journalist was on board for the evening report, Burger explained.

When asked how often or rare such collaboration was, Burger said it all came down to timing.

“It depends. Most of the time on the timing.”

Dr Helen Sissons, a journalism lecturer at AUT, observed that having most of the morning for editing was rare.

“This is not long for the studied newsroom. There were constant bugs with the tech,” Dr Burger replied.

Good journalism practice
But more importantly, good journalism practice was also at stake.

“There are common contradictions by these sorts of reports: ‘shocking images, but don’t watch.’”

Dr Burger revealed that indeed the newsroom had been subject to public ridicule because of the footage’s graphic nature.

He also added in the Q and A session following his presentation that the case study sat as part of a wider body of research funded by a grant from the Swiss National Council of Science.

The Swiss National Council of Science sought a better understanding of public service broadcasting in Switzerland, Dr Burger said.

“How is it producing news accordingly, or not.”

Public service broadcasters such as SRG-SSR are required to promote Swiss identity and cultural understanding.

“We show how this is done or not done, achieved or not achieved.”

Newsrooms studied
Twenty journalists from three different newsrooms were studied between 2006 and 2016, with researchers conducting interviews with these journalists, sitting in on editorial meetings, observing interactions with fellow staff and analysing the reports and stories generated by the journalists themselves.

From this, Dr Burger has been able to highlight the identity, interaction and negotiation which takes place in news media.

By highlighting the media constraints, journalistic choices and properties of a news product, Dr Burger has been able to further reveal the processes which lie at the heart of informing the public on a daily basis.

“It’s a non-naïve, non-apocalyptic view on what journalists do,” he said.

“We wanted to make the link between what they say they do and what they actually do.”

Kendall Hutt is Pacific Media Watch freedom project contributing editor for the Pacific Media Centre.

• Radio Télévision Suisse

In light of news of President Donald Trump’s executive order today — undoing integral climate change policies implemented under former President Barack Obama — Greenpeace New Zealand has brought forward the timetable for its new boat.

Greenpeace New Zealand’s executive director, Dr Russel Norman, says the boat, recently named Taitu, will aim to be out on the water next week.

“The naming ceremony is on Saturday, so we’re hoping to head off sometime after that. It’s all weather dependent.”

Norman would not give an exact date when pressed, however, in order to preserve the element of surprise.

“Of course, we’re not going to reveal all of our tactics.”

Norman says Taitu, formerly the MV Friendship, will be used to confront the Amazon Warrior, and therefore big oil, led by the “CEO of the global oil industry” – Trump.

Norman explains this is because we are “in a war for the survival of humans and civilisation” in the face of a global climate crisis, a fight Greenpeace “takes extremely seriously”.

“It’s so we, our kids, the people of the Pacific, have a future.”

‘First mission’
The world’s largest seismic surveying vessel, the Amazon Warrior is currently in New Zealand searching for oil.

Greenpeace campaigner Steve Abel echoes Norman’s statement, saying Taitu’s “first mission” is to confront the 125-metre ship, here on behalf of international oil giants Statoil and Chevron.

“The main thing we’re focused on right now is the immediate oil campaign.”

The Amazon Warrior is currently surveying the Wairarapa to Wellington Basin, and does so by blasting the sea floor every 8 seconds with compressed air guns.

At 200 decibels per blast, Greenpeace has raised concerns about the effects on whale and dolphin populations in the area.

Abel says it is therefore important to “get out there”.

“It’s really important for us to send that message that that exploration is not welcome here and those guys have been out there for weeks and months now seismic blasting the ocean, which both torments whales and dolphins, but also they’re looking for oil we can’t afford to burn.”

The newest member of Greenpeace’s fleet, Taitu was bought last week after supporters crowdfunded $100,000 in just 7 days.

Greenpeace received around 3000 suggestions for a new name after it put out a call for public submissions, with the country voting on a final three up until midday today.

‘The People’s Boat’
Abel says the purchase of the boat entirely through crowdfunding and ‘people power’ reflects an important part of its identity and makes the nickname ‘The People’s Boat’ apt.

“It’s a real affirmation of public support for what we’re doing and it also shows how passionate New Zealanders are about looking after our oceans and our coastlines and our environment in general.”

Abel says the 15-metre kauri-hulled boat has led a relatively quiet life until now, although much of its 81-year history remains relatively unknown.

“It must have done all sorts of things and we’ve still got to find out exactly what all of those things are. We’re getting bits and pieces of information from everywhere.”

Abel says Greenpeace is therefore still “piecing together the history”, but does know it was a postal delivery boat in Queen Charlotte Sound, ferrying mail and people around the Sound.

Greenpeace also understands the MV Friendship may have worked as a pilot boat in Wellington, guiding larger ships into port, as it was built as a pilot boat for the Marlborough Sounds.

Tradition, legacy
The purchase of the vessel also marks a bit of a Greenpeace tradition, Abel says.

“What it means to us, I guess it’s a boat in the strong Greenpeace tradition of getting old boats and repurposing them.

It’s incredibly exciting to have a boat like this as part of the Greenpeace New Zealand fleet. We figured we need to have our own boat down here.”

Former original Rainbow Warrior first mate Martini Gotjé says this is a first for Greenpeace New Zealand.

“It’s not very often a national office buys its own boat. It’s new, especially for New Zealand.

“It’s good to see.”

Both Abel and Gotjé hope to see Taitu have a legacy, like the Rainbow Warrior before it.

“Any Greenpeace boat has to build up its legacy,” Gotjé says.

Abel adds: “The legacy goes both ways I think. It both taps into tradition, an incredibly proud and successful tradition of campaigning in New Zealand to become a nuclear free beacon of hope.

“I think the legacy is one of public participation and caring for our environment, our planet, and really to any degree this boat can assist us in successes for the greater good of the planet and society, then that becomes this boat’s legacy.”

Kendall Hutt is Pacific Media Watch contributing editor of the Pacific Media Centre. She also works for Greenpeace in a part-time capacity.

• Trump signs executive order unwinding Obama climate policies

A small, enthusiastic crowd gathered among the shelves of one of Auckland’s libraries earlier this week to listen to a lively and engaging talk on the practice of malu, the Samoan female tattoo.

The event, part of Papatoetoe Library’s regular “Tea and Topic” programme, was organised to celebrate Pasifika, when every March the diversity of cultures throughout the Pacific region is marked.

The talk was delivered by Leota Alice Meredith, a Samoan-New Zealander who discovered an appreciation for her home culture when she travelled to Samoa in her early 20s.

Her motivation behind the talk was “giving back to community”.

Meredith acknowledged she was not only inspired to speak about the malu, but to give her audience an opportunity to learn more about the Pacific and its people.

“I’m sure you have questions in regards to Pacific people and their mannerisms. I mean, look at what I’m wearing,” she laughed with her audience.

‘Main print’
Meredith described the malu, Samoa’s female tattoo, as the “main print or tattoo on the back of the legs” and readily showed off her own.

“Thank goodness, I managed to remember to shave my legs this morning.”

Tattooed in 1995 by the late Su’a Suluape Paulo – who was considered a master of his art – Meredith admitted she got through the four-hour ordeal by listening to the radio on her Walkman.

Meredith highlighted how the process of traditional tattooing involved three apprentices to the tattooist, some who begin training as young as seven or eight years.

“You learn by observation, so the sooner the better.” The first of these apprentices or assistants is responsible for pulling the skin taught so the tattooist’s tool bounces cleanly, while the second is responsible for diligently wiping away the blood.

The third assistant, Meredith jokingly added, was capturing the tattooist’s ashes “from the constant train of cigarettes” he supplied Paulo.

She outlined how the mix of blood and water, a result of cleaning the malu, was not a pleasant smell for Paulo, while cigarette smoke was.

But when asked by one audience member if it was painful, Meredith replied:

‘I wasn’t going to stop’
“Oh, yes, four hours and I was lucky. I wasn’t going to stop. As soon as he started I knew I wasn’t stopping. Because I knew if I stopped, that might be game over before you know it, and I was very adamant I did not want to wear tights for the rest of my life.”

But, as Meredith explained, the malu is not as painful as the male equivalent.

This is because the final part of the male tatau, or tattoo, consists of tattooing into the navel, which holds much spiritual significance because the umbilical cord symbolises life.

Importantly, malu also involves a journey, a journey Meredith explained must not be done alone.

“With the tattooing, you always go in partnerships. There’s always a pair of you. They say you don’t tattoo by yourself. It’s because when you journey through anything that is painful, you don’t journey alone. It’s something in all of us, in life in general.”

Malu also involves the “ritual” of cracking an egg over one’s head upon the tattoo’s completion “as a sign of renewal,” Meredith said.

Meredith also explained to the audience the numerous traditions and norms behind Samoa’s rich tattooing history, led by two families – Sa Su’a and Sa Tuluo’ena.

Revived the art
“The Su’a family literally revived the art of traditional Pacific tattooing, in the world,” Meredith said.

She also not only described how there are certain times to display the malu – less one becomes cursed – but how the female tattoo in the past involved a certain hierarchy.

“Originally, only a chief’s daughter could have the malu.”

But, inevitably, as time has passed, the malu – and tatau itself – has evolved.

Meredith explained how this has largely come due to the introduction of health regulations, which has seen the turtle shell and bone of traditional tools replaced with titanium.

Debate has also raged about whether non-Samoans are entitled to bear the malu and tatau, and if women are entitled to wear male tattoos and vice versa, a debate Meredith chalked down to “pushing boundaries”.

She could see where “traditionalists” were coming from, however.

“We’re surrounded by cultural protocols in order to map our cultural significance.”

Kendall Hutt is the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch contributing editor.

• The iconic Pasifika Festival celebrating its 25th birthday at Auckland’s Western Park this weekend. More than 220 performance groups and 60,000 people reportedly took part.

Young environmentalists were on the front lines of the fight against oil and gas exploration in New Zealand today with the People’s Climate Rally blockading an industry summit in New Plymouth.

Jesse Sheehan, a musician and Greenpeace supporter, and Poonam Maharaj, who has been fundraising with Greenpeace since late January, both took part in the blockade of TSB Showplace to peacefully disrupt the Petroleum Summit.

The People’s Climate Rally has been organised by a coalition of groups opposed to the expansion of the fossil fuel industry, including 350 Aotearoa, Break Free, and oil free groups from Wellington and Auckland.

Maharaj says she was “so excited” to be taking part in the rally, which was her first action.

“A day into the job I found out about the climate rally, and it’s something I would love to be a part of, actively making a change.”

Sheehan, who has kept his “toe in the water” volunteering with Greenpeace both here and in the United Kingdom since 2015, admits this wasn’t his first protest.

“I’ve stopped a coal train in the past.”

Similar motivations
Both Sheehan and Maharaj have similar motivations behind taking part in the rally.

“I hope that oil companies know that they can’t run and hide, and that they know there will be opposition to them being in New Zealand, because the government have sort of sold them this idea ‘come to New Zealand and you won’t have any resistance, you’re welcome and New Zealanders want you here.’

“So I hope they will realise that is not the case and they will reap resistance and it won’t be as easy as the government said it would be,” says Sheehan.

Maharaj, however, says she was protesting due to the harm seismic blasting and oil drilling had on marine life.

“My sort of main reason why I’m going is because of the impact it’s having on our marine life. It’s not very fair on the animals and they haven’t done anything wrong to deserve this.

“It’s not something I feel our government should be encouraging.”

Future in own hands
Amanda Larsson, a Greenpeace campaigner involved in organising the rally, speaking to Asia Pacific Report from Taranaki, says it is important to include youth voices in the fight against deep sea oil drilling.

“It’s their future that they’re fighting for, and again for them to have a future the oil industry can have no future, so it’s really important for young people to kind of take their future into their own hands.

“What we’re finding is that the government is not standing up for their future, so it’s really important for people like you and me and the young people of this country to take that responsibility into their own hands and ensure we put a stop to oil and gas drilling in this country.”

The People’s Climate Rally also recognises the work of local organisations in Taranaki, such as Climate Justice Taranaki, Ngatiawa ki Taranaki Trust, and Parihaka Papakāinga Trust, who have been opposing oil and gas activities including drilling, flaring and fracking for many years.

“This is their land, their territory, and their fight,” says Larsson.

“Now that that conference has moved to Taranaki with strong local opposition, it’s very important for us to support what people are already doing on the ground and to give them all the support they need to carry on here.”

Responsibility to Pacific
Larsson, Maharaj and Sheehan also agree New Zealand has a responsibility to its Pacific neighbours to amends its stance on oil and gas exploration in the country.

This is due to the fact Pacific countries bear the brunt of the effects of climate change.

“It’s often Asia-Pacific and the developing countries within the developing world that are hit the hardest by climate change, less so than Western countries,” says Sheehan.

Maharaj also feels New Zealand should be setting an example in terms of renewable energy solutions.

“We should be starting that now so our Pacific neighbours can start following suit and we can have an oil free country and world.”

Small island states such as Kiribati, Marshall Islands and Tuvalu have already been affected by rising sea levels, while fresh water and food supplies across the Pacific are affected by salt water intrusion.

Tropical cyclones have plagued the Pacific on an increasing basis since the 1970s as the effects of El Nino have drastically risen, the most recent effect being Cyclone Winston, devastating Fiji in early 2016.

“I think as a Pacific nation New Zealand has a responsibility to the people who are most going to be affected by climate change which is our Pacific neighbours.

‘Stand together’
“It’s really important for the New Zealand public to stand together with the people of the Pacific in opposing the oil and gas industry which is the main driver of climate change,” Larsson says.

New Zealand has been criticised on the world stage for its commitment to scaling back fossil fuels.

This is because New Zealand’s fossil fuel production subsidies have increased seven-fold since former Prime Minister John Key’s election in 2008.

The government has received four “Fossil of the Day” awards at climate change talks since 2012, the most recent being at the COP21 conference in Paris in 2016.

Since National came to power in 2008, over half a million square kilometres of land and sea have been proposed for release for international oil companies to search and drill for oil.

Multiple opposition welcome
Although the rally is considered a continuation and escalation of previous protest in Auckland and Wellington at the yearly summit, it is a “family friendly event” where people concerned about climate change can show their opposition in multiple ways, says Larsson.

“Some people will kind of choose to put their bodies on the line and engage in non-violent direct action. Other people might choose to just hold some banners, attend some workshops and display solidarity by just being there in support and this rally is sort of being about open to everyone to show their opposition in their own way.”

Sheehan will also be taking part in the protest as a musician “to keep spirits high” and “use my voice that way as well”.

Eight hundred people have registered to attend the rally, but organisers expect at least 200 people will take place in the protest activity across today and tomorrow.

Thursday’s focus is on solutions, with talks and workshops delivered by a host of researchers and industry professionals on sustainable energy, including former Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons and Ecotricity director Al Yates.

• NZ climate change protesters blockade oil conference

Bookstore owners, writers, authors, family, friends and a group hopeful of West Papuan independence squeezed into the Women’s Bookshop in Ponsonby last night to celebrate the work of young New Zealand author Bonnie Etherington and her novel The Earth Cries Out.

Not only is the novel being celebrated and praised for Etherington’s mastery of the written word, but because of its ability to make the public more aware of life in West Papua, a region controversially ruled by Indonesia since the 1960s.

Plagued by media freedom and human rights violations, many media freedom and human rights organisations and several Pacific nations have condemned the widespread arrests and imprisonment of West Papuans for non-violent expression of their political views.

These are issues Etherington herself acknowledged speaking with Asia Pacific Report earlier this week, saying she wanted to show readers West Papua’s rich and diverse history, not only its complex political situation.

“I really wanted to show multiple sides of West Papua because it is so often forgotten or stereotyped by the rest of the world.”

This is something those who have already read The Earth Cries Out praise.

Harriet Allan, fiction publisher for Penguin Books New Zealand, commended Etherington in a speech on her ability to provide insight into West Papua through the eyes of a child, that of female protagonist Ruth.

“As Ruth bears witness to what she sees, we too start to hear the voices that have been silenced by politics, sickness, violence and poverty.”

Like Ruth, we come away with a greater understanding of this country and its diverse people and also of ourselves and the bonds of love and friendship.”

‘Shed some light’
Although she has not had the chance to read her sister’s entire novel, Etherington’s younger sister, Aimee, says what she has read is very similar to how she and her sister experienced West Papua.

“With the descriptions, I felt like I was back there. She’s done a really good job of capturing how it feels, I guess.”

Aimee Etherington says she hopes her sister’s novel spreads awareness of West Papua.

“Most people that I’ve spoken to don’t really know that it exists, so it will be good to shed some light as to what’s going on there and, I guess, giving a bit of insight on how as New Zealanders and Australians we can actually do something about it.”

‘Almost experiencing it’
Like Harriet Allan, Women’s Bookshop owner Carol Beu loved Ruth’s voice.

“I think becoming aware of the situation in Papua through the eyes of this child, Ruth, is really quite special”, Beu told the audience.

“The way it’s revealed, it’s fascinating.”

Beu admits this was also “quite shocking”, due to Etherington’s ability to place the reader in the moment.

“You’re almost experiencing it.”

Bea also acknowledged those in the audience who were supporting the book on more of a political level, such as West Papua Action Auckland spokesperson Maire Leadbeater.

Bea told those gathered she found the politics of The Earth Cries Out “quite astonishing and wonderful”.

“It’s a book that makes you angry in many ways on a political level.”

Leadbeater herself, however, says she is looking forward to reading the novel.

Mister Pip comparisons
“I think looking at countries through a literary perspective can be very helpful at times. I can’t help thinking of the book Mister Pip, about Bougainville and how amazingly helpful that was I think in terms of people understanding the conflict.

“It’s done in a fictionalised way but it’s true to the situation, so I’m picking from what I’ve heard about the book it may achieve that as well.”

Leadbeater is not the only one to draw comparisons with Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip, however.

Tony Moores, owner of bookstore Poppies in Remuera, reached a similar conclusion.

“This is not Mister Pip, but the issues it deals with are quite similar, from a different perspective.”

Powerful, shocking
The Creative Hub founder, John Cranna, who also noted ties with Mister Pip, praised Etherington on her talent after listening to several excerpts read by Allan and Etherington herself.

“For such a young writer to be writing about such dramatic and shocking events, and to be pulling it off, is quite an achievement.

To write about violent death is … very hard in a reserved, powerful way, but she certainly did that very well.

• Publicity of Etherington’s novel continues this week in Palmerston North.
• Debut novel offers rare glimpse of grief amid life in West Papua

 By Kendall Hutt

Speaking to Asia Pacific Report in transit from the United States, author Bonnie Etherington says her early life in West Papua motivated her to write the novel The Earth Cries Out, but more importantly a desire to make the public more aware of the repressed Indonesian-ruled region.

“I really wanted to show multiple sides of West Papua because it is so often forgotten or stereotyped by the rest of the world,” she says.

Controversy has surrounded West Papua since its incorporation into Indonesia through a controversial Act of Free Choice — dubbed by critics as an “Act of no choice”–  in 1969.

Such controversy is compounded by the fact that the region is plagued by media freedom and human rights violations.

Despite President Joko Widodo’s lifting of restrictions on foreign journalists in 2015, harassment and assaults against journalists have continued, a Freedom House report shows.

“Access is not automatic, unimpeded, or granted quickly”, the report states.

Papuan independence silenced
The situation for West Papuans themselves is also dark, with Human Rights Watch World Report 2017 revealing dozens of Papuans remain imprisoned for non-violent expression of their political views.

More than 1700 Papuan independence supporters were detained in early May last year while showing solidarity with the International Parliamentarians for West Papua (IPWP) protest in London.

Many organisations and human rights groups condemned the arrests, whilst allegations of torture also emerged following the mass arrests.

Such events have prompted several Pacific nations to recently raise grave concerns regarding such human rights violations, at the 34th session of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council in March.

Calls by Pacific nations echo those of the Catholic Justice of Peace Commission back in May, whose report found no improvement in human rights violations, prompting the group to call on the UN to investigate human rights abuses.

These are all grave issues Etherington herself acknowledges.

“West Papua’s political situation is complex and its history is rich and diverse, and the novel shows just some parts of that,” she says.

“I really did not want to homogenise the region or its many peoples, but give a glimpse into its multiplicities.”

Loss, grief, pain
The Earth Cries Out does just that, following a Nelson family as they attempt to heal and atone through aid work after the accidental death of Julia, the sister of young female protagonist Ruth.

Dropping into a mountain village in West Papua (Irian Jaya, as it was known then) during a time of civil unrest and suppression, Ruth’s parents struggle with their grief.

Ruth, meanwhile, seeks redemption in bearing witness to and passing on the stories of others, of those who have been silenced.

Although never having lost a sibling, as Ruth does, Etherington says the main challenge she faced was gathering the courage to write the novel.

“In part, it was challenging because there are some experiences of grief that Ruth and I both share, and similar experiences of disorientation, witnessing, and survivor’s guilt”.

Etherington and her family moved to West Papua in the early 1990s, where her father partnered with a Papuan church to provide language, literacy and healthcare services.

She has spent roughly a total of 11 years in West Papua, between 1992 and 2007.

Despite four years living in Darwin, Australia, from 2000-2004, Etherington says she popped “back and forth quite a bit”, with the family also spending time in New Zealand.

Mass killings
It is therefore unsurprising Etherington’s experiences speak to the ongoing situation in West Papua, with the author declining to name the village where she grew up “in order to protect the people who still live there”.

With mass killings marring West Papua’s history under Indonesia, it is understandable why Etherington’s novel explores loss and grief.

“Death and illness were common parts of life in the village where I grew up.”

She explains this was largely due to high infant mortality rates and malaria.

Etherington’s first encounter with so much death came when she was just five years old.

“I was at the funeral of my best friend, a boy who had the same name as I did. He died from malaria … I remember how small his coffin was”.

Centrality of women
With young female protagonist Ruth at the heart of the novel, and West Papua seen through her eyes, women have a central place in The Earth Cries Out.

“To some extent, the novel is about relationships between women, especially mothers and their daughters, and the shades of loss and pain, as well as love that can colour those relationships,” Etherington says.

Harriet Allan, fiction publisher for Penguin Books New Zealand, agrees women have a central place in the novel.

“The novel gives voice to those who have been silenced, in particular, though not exclusively, to women.

The relationships between the young protagonist Ruth and her dead sister, her mother and her new friend Susumina are at the heart of the book.”

Allan, who first met Etherington at a creative writing workshop at Massey University five years ago, says the novel offers a window into life in West Papua – its people, harsh realities, vivid landscape, and the love and warmth of West Papua’s people.

“The novel is a compelling story and valuable insight into another country and into other people – but ultimately into ourselves”.

‘Home of my heart’
Reflecting on the “home of my heart” Etherington says she hopes she has drawn attention to the perseverance of West Papua’s people and that her readers are encouraged to listen more to others stories.

“I hope that the novel, on some scale, is about listening to those who have been marginalised on their own lands.”

However, when asked what she would like to see happen over the situation in West Papua, Etherington says it is not her place to say how the indigenous peoples of West Papua gain justice for themselves and their land.

“I support dignity and justice for the indigenous peoples of West Papua and their lands. How that should best come about is not my place to say.

“It is the place of indigenous Papuans to say, whether that takes the shape of full political autonomy from Indonesia or some other configuration of reconciliation and reparations.

I hope that their voices will be heard and respected.”

• The Earth Cries Out is being launched tonight at 6pm at the  Women’s Bookshop, Ponsonby.

The future of Tonga’s Democracy Coalition remains uncertain as next year’s election looms, a Nuku’alofa-based educator has concluded in a public seminar in Auckland last night.

Dr Michael Horowitz, academic dean of Tonga’s ‘Atenisi Institute, told the audience at his seminar titled Can the Democracy Coalition retain power in Tonga? the fate of the party – and with it the election due late next year — was impossible to predict.

This is largely due to the fact no survey research is conducted, continuing Tonga’s “big surprise” election-day tradition, Dr Horowitz said.

Dr Horowitz, also a visiting research scholar with Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre, said the Democracy Coalition may just hold on to power despite a bumpy term littered with controversy.

These controversies included a petition in 2015 for Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pōhiva to surrender his education portfolio over the so-called “raw marks” policy controversy and the “cloudy issue” of state-owned Tongan Broadcasting Commission head of news Viola Ulakai’s suspension over alleged false representation, which prompted questions about Tonga’s media freedom status across the Pacific.

‘Dragging feet’
Pōhiva stepped down as Education Minister last week following months of international condemnation by global media freedom groups, although the pressure was primarily over the educational marks controversy.

Pōhiva’s administration is the first democratic government led by a commoner in Tonga’s history and came to power by a narrow margin in the 2014 election.

Dr Horowitz also highlighted the fact that Pōhiva’s government had failed — like those before it — to address Tonga’s poor economic situation, noting it was “dragging one’s feet to change the situation”.

A host of figures cited from the Ministry of Finance attest to the situation highlighted by Dr Horowitz, revealing much of Tonga’s gross domestic product (GDP) is comprised of remittances from family members living overseas (22 percent to be exact), and foreign donations to the tune of US $116 million in the fiscal year 2015 to 2016, meaning Tonga remained “dependent on the people’s generosity”, Dr Horowitz said.

‘Sense of some hope’
Dr Horowitz did, however, note the Democracy Coalition’s term had not entirely been clouded by scandals and economic downturn.

“People have a sense of some hope, some improvement.”

The “change of style” introduced by the Democracy Coalition to Tonga’s politics was something the people could still support despite the “hiccups”, Dr Horowitz noted.

Dr Horowitz also speculated that if the Democracy Coalition should fall, he would not be surprised if another prime minister emerged from the ranks of the nobles, although he did contend highly qualified Finance Minister Dr ‘Aisake Eke and Deputy Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni could be in the running.

Lecturer and filmmaker Paul Janman, present in the audience and the man behind the popular 2012 education documentary Tongan Ark, shared Dr Horowitz’s views, noting “2018, no one can tell”.

Janman, who also teaches screen production at AUT, reflected following Dr Horowitz’s talk that it had been “quite a revelation”, with much of the information Dr Horowitz shared having been only anticipated by the filmmaker after Tonga’s transition to democracy.

‘Democracy gaining traction’
“It’s been very enlightening to see the latest.”

Janman also said “the idea of democracy that has been aired and advocated for by schools such as ‘Atenisi is gaining traction”, despite persistence by what he described as “reactionary elements” present “in all kinds of different areas”.

A massive question mark looms over the Democracy Coalition’s future and its outcome in the November 2018 election.

Dr Horowitz said “one doesn’t know” how the votes would go.

• Tonga’s ‘transparency’ prime minister violates media freedom over questions
• Condemning harassment of Tongan journalist Viola Ulakai
• Fifita new education minister in Tongan cabinet shake-up
• Vote of no-confidence a possibility in Tonga

Celebrating 100 years of oil shale mining may represent a proud moment for Estonia, but this doesn’t compare to what the country has lost, many environmentalists say.

The backbone of Estonia’s electricity production may have allowed the Baltic nation to escape from beneath the Soviet yoke and become energy self-sufficient post-independence in 1991, but most observers remember that this has come at a cost: the environment.

“In terms of ecology it’s a total disaster. From the point of view of state economy this is something to be proud of,” says Professor Mait Sepp, research fellow in physical geography at the University of Tartu.

“We have lost our wetlands, we have lost our streams.”

Many of Estonia’s environmental organisations agree, with more than 15 percent (504.6 km²) of the country’s Ida-Virumaa region severely damaged by the oil shale industry.

Mihkel Annus of the Estonian Green Movement says the sector still stamps the largest ecological footprint on the nation, despite European Union (EU) regulations.

’40 years like a volcano’
Perhaps the greatest reminder of this footprint will be the country’s ash mountains, huge piles of solid hazardous waste that mar Estonia’s relatively flat landscape.

“These will probably stay as the remnants of our fossil-fuel dependent past for centuries from now, as well as the land that has been excavated and already been exhausted,” says Annus.

Harmful to the environment due to the poisonous gases and various contaminants they emit into surface and groundwater, these mountains are not only viewed as an ecological disaster.

They have also dealt a blow to the country’s pockets.

It cost the government more than 36 million euros (about NZ$44.4 million) to close the infamous ash mountain in Kohtla-Järve, which stood approximately 170m above sea level before it was closed and made environmentally safe in 2015.

Estonia’s current environmental headache is the Kukruse ash mountain, which one official from the Ida-Viru County government describes as a 40-year-old “volcano”.

Hardi Murula, head of development and planning for the county government, says they have been engaged in ongoing talks for the past three to four years on how best to “neutralise” the mountain, but that no consensus has been reached.

“No one can guarantee during the restoration process that the pollution can be stopped.”

The closure of ash mountains throughout Ida-Virumaa is largely seen as positive despite the challenges, with one of the mountains in the former oil shale town of Kiviõli converted into an adventure centre in a joint industry-government project.

Piret Väinsalu of the Estonian Fund for Nature says the restoration of land is rather impossible, however.

“You can try to restore it into something, but it will always be there as a ‘heritage of oil shale age’.”

Legacy pollution
But government, industry and environmentalists do not see eye-to-eye on the source of this environmental damage.

Minister of Environment Marko Pomerants says much of the environmental impact is related to “legacy pollution” of the Soviet-era.

“Fortunately, most of the major negative effects are a thing of the past and the current oil shale sector has remarkably reduced its harmful practices for the environment.”

He says environmental concerns today largely involve emissions, although these have decreased since 2002.

Timo Tatar, head of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communication’s energy department, agrees.

“Talking about environmental damage, one can say, that oil shale environmental impact has significantly decreased due to heavy investments into new combustion technologies as well as emission control.”

Official 2014 data by the European Commission shows Estonia currently stands as the second highest emitter, per capita, of greenhouse gases in Europe, however, and its far from carbon-free history occupies a blight on their climate change record.

Although the EU’s Emissions Trading System allows the country to sell-off its emissions because they are lower than the country’s massive levels at 1990, things are far from rosy, especially in the wake of the 2015 Paris climate change agreement.

In light of this, environmentalists Annus, Väinsalu, and their colleague Aleksei Lotman, a marine conservation expert with the Estonian Fund for Nature, do not share officials’ view.

Although they agree the oil shale industry is “very much less polluting” than it was 30 years ago, they say making oil shale “environmentally friendly” is not enough.

To call current improvements by the oil shale industry so is “over-optimistic to say the least”, Lotman says.

A question of commitment
They are therefore critical of industry and government and feel both have failed to act effectively.

Väinsalu, who serves as the Estonian coordinator for the international non-profit network EKOenergia in her role with the Estonian Fund for Nature, says the government does “just enough” to be on a good list for Estonia’s European partners, while it simultaneously supports oil shale interests by lobbying for greater industry exemptions.

“Instead of understanding the need to find an alternative route and exit the oil shale era our government just supports the industry in every way possible.”

Eesti Energia, Estonia’s state-owned energy enterprise, refutes such claims and says it has taken several steps to reduce the environmental impacts of its operations.

“Today we can produce more energy from oil shale than in the past with less environmental impact,” says Eesti Energia.

Eesti Energia says introductions in new technology have been responsible, although physical changes have also occurred.

Among these was the 2008 closure of the ash field at their Balti power plant near Narva, in Estonia’s east.

The project took three years to complete and resulted in 570ha being made safe for the environment.

In 2013, Eesti Energia’s sister company, Enefit, opened a 17-turbine wind park on the former ash field.

“Our main focus lies in replacing fossil fuels with cleaner fuels,” Eesti Energia says.

The company adds it already does so through its use of water, wind, and biomass.

Annus, however, as a member of one of Estonia’s most influential environmental organisations, feels industry may not have been as cooperative as it makes out.

“Whether they would make their processes more environment-friendly voluntarily, is questionable.”

He says this is because the oil shale industry has been put under increasing pressure by tightening EU regulations.

“They have been forced to take action to meet the set concentration values of emissions, changing the technology of landfilling of solid and hazardous waste, limiting water pollution, and so on.”

Annus adds much of Estonia’s oil shale industry happens behind closed doors, which further calls into question their transparency.

“A lot of the region has also been blocked off from the public eye.”

Kaja Peterson, director of the Stockholm Environment Institute Tallinn Centre’s (SEI Tallinn) climate and energy programme, says Eesti Energia has, in fact, been rather open.

“I think Eesti Energia has been very flexible because they reformed and created a new sister company, Enefit Renewable Energy.”

She points out, however, that Eesti Energia is gradually transitioning to renewables and oil shale, unfortunately, still forms the majority of their operations.

Fossil free future?
This seeming unwillingness on the part of officials to divest from oil shale has led to serious doubts about Estonia’s renewable future.

While the government and oil shale industry remain positive, environmentalists and researchers are sceptical.

They claim there is no direct investment or clear political will in renewables by the government, only some will to diversify.

“There have been measures to promote sustainable energy, but the indirect subsidies for fossil fuels have still been greater,” Annus emphasises.

Annus feels Estonia is lagging behind a large portion of their EU counterparts and trendsetters, while Tatar and Pomerants celebrate Estonia reaching its Renewable Energy Directive target – 25 percent of renewables in final energy consumption – well before the 2020 deadline.

“Since the political target has been achieved there is no political motivation to increase that,” Peterson says.

Peterson’s colleague, Lauri Tammiste, SEI Tallinn’s director, says the shift to a low-carbon economy remains on the official agenda.

He highlights plans by the government to reach 50 percent of renewables and lower CO₂ emissions by 2030, although there will be a challenge.

“The main issue is, how to actually deliver these goals and ensure successful transformation with biggest possible environmental, economic and social benefits.”

When asked whether Estonia would have a fossil free future, Sepp was adamant he would not see change in his lifetime.

“No. Not in the near future.

It’s very convenient to use this old system. You have one system which works and to build a new one …. takes a lot of money and a lot of effort. Some very critical changes must happen to change this system.”

It seems clear, for the time being at least, that Estonia’s energy future remains far more carbon intensive than environmentalists would like.

Feature article by Kendall Hutt; photos by Essi Lehto and Lukas Rusk. The assignment was part of the Inclusive Journalism Project collaboration between journalism schools in New Zealand and Scandinavia.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference last year – more commonly referred to as “COP21”, may have been praised as a “historic turning point” in reducing global warming by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and world leaders alike, but many remain unconvinced world leaders actually care about climate change.

Speaking to Asia Pacific Report earlier this year, both Greenpeace captain Pete Willcox and colleague Sophie Schroder said that world leaders were still hiding behind fossil fuels.

Some may also say that journalism itself is guilty by omission due to what many educators see as poor coverage of climate change.

Such issues were the topic of conversation among panelists and delegates alike at the 4th World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC) when it entered its second day.

Professor David Robie of the Pacific Media Centre set the tone of the panel discussion, questioning what the role of the media and indeed media education was in a post-COP21 world.

He asked whether media currently was giving enough emphasis to the issue, but more importantly to the human rights issues that sit within climate change.

This was a theme readily engaged with by the panelists, Professor Crispin Maslog, chairman of the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre in Manila; Dr Hermin Indah Wahyuni of Universitas Gadjah Mada; National University of Samoa’s Misa Vicky Lepou; and Jose Maria Carlos from the Philippines.

Although speaking to journalism education and climate change in their respective countries – the Philippines, Indonesia and Samoa – all of the panelists said the media was failing in reporting climate change.

Current coverage lacking

Although coverage was not wholly lacking, the panel stressed, improvements are still needed.

Dr Wahyuni said this was the case as current framing centred on a “impact-victim frame” which only built a “easy causal relationship” between disasters and climate change.

Although Carlos also noted that this was the case in his discussion, he said that despite a “high level” of climate change coverage throughout Asia, gaps remained in the “depth of understanding” of the issue by the Filipino public.

He highlighted that this was a concern noted not only by academics and non-governmental organisations, but also journalists themselves.

Misa said the current lack in climate change coverage culminated in a “top-down” effect in newsrooms, in which editors refused to take notice of the issue because it was not “sexy” enough.

She highlighted that this seemed to be the case in Samoa, where climate change was the lesser covered topic in three of its newspapers compared to business.

Misa noted this “reflects the priorities” in the daily news agenda worldwide.

Calls not new
However, this is not the first time such issues have been noted, nor calls for new media strategies in relation to climate change made.

Several academics, journalists and non-governmental actors debated the issue in May for Asia Pacific Report.

Although unable to reach consensus on a precise strategy moving forward, all stressed the importance of changes being made.

Future solutions?
The panelists also did not simply lament the current state of climate change journalism.

Dr Maslog, Dr Wahyuni, Carlos and Lepou all posed possible solutions to the current crisis.

Dr Maslog said that “training on the job” should take place for media practitioners into environmental and disaster reporting.

Dr Wahyuni said the media should continue to act as an observer, but stressed that in doing so it should “keep up with science”.

Carlos agreed, saying “good principles” should continue to be stressed.

Misa said, however, echoing points made by her fellow delegates throughout the WJEC regarding student journalists being at the heart of improvements, said the introduction of a climate change module into the journalism curriculum would “bring life to journalism education”.

Both panelists and delegates agreed, however, that “so much needs to be done”.

In the face of a lack of “political will” from both politicians and journalists alike regarding climate change however, all acknowledged that it may be an uphill battle.

World leaders still ‘hiding behind fossil fuels’, says Rainbow Warrior skipper

Call for new media strategies for climate change journalism

Journalism educators from across the Pacific have raised concerns about the current state of journalism globally at the 4th World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC) at the Auckland University of Technology this week.

The panel of educators from across New Zealand and Australia agreed better practice in journalism is required in order to truly represent diverse communities and those seen as “minorities” and disadvantaged.

Bernard Whelan, manager of Whitireia’s journalism programme, Tara Ross of the University of Canterbury, Professor David Robie of the Pacific Media Centre, and Kathryn Shine of Western Australia’s Curtin University, all said better practice could be achieved through instilling improved methods with young and aspiring journalists. 

This echoed points raised by both Dr Lee Duffield and journalism educator Dr Philip Cass on Wednesday at the JEERA preconference that students were at the heart of developments in the industry.

‘Bicultural responsibility’
Whelan noted how the mainstay of American news values left no apparent room in the mainstream media to explore more “indigenous” and alternative models of reporting.

He stressed journalists, particularly in New Zealand regarding Māori, had a “bicultural responsibility” to at least consider these forms and hoped that through his PhD research a bicultural model for journalism education could be “deeply ingrained” into Whitireia’s programme.

Ross noted how students needed to report with and not on the community, which was not currently the norm as it was different from “normative” educational process.

She stressed the importance of students understanding the consequences of their stories and noted how they need a measure of accountability.

This evoked a vocal response from one of the delegates present, who stressed that a journalist’s stories are not momentary for those that are featured, as the story has a “lasting, lifelong digital attachment”.

Negative focus detrimental
Shine however, raised the important issue of the prevalence of negativity in the media and the media’s seeming inability to pull away from the “if it bleeds, it leads” mentality that continues to drive the mainstream news cycle.

She said such a negative focus might mean the media was “out of sync” with the very community it sought to inform. This echoed sentiments delivered earlier by Ross, who noted that what the media perceived as the community needing was not necessarily what it wanted.

Shine also highlighted the importance of pulling away from such negative stories and perceptions with her research into teachers’ perceptions of the news and journalists.

She found more than 80 percent of teachers believed coverage of their work was negative, while 60 percent said “sweeping generalisations” resulted in media coverage being biased.

More than half concluded that the media did not convey the realities of both schools and teaching, she said.

Such revelations were concerning, as it led the community to question the credibility of the media.

In the Q and A session following the panel, one delegate raised the concern that such issues in the coverage of education posed serious dilemmas for the potential influx of young journalists, as “teachers have a fundamental influence in students career choices”.

Independent media important
Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie drew on the examples of Pacific Scoop and Asia Pacific Report in a case study to stress the importance of the presence of independent, alternative media in journalism schools for students to explore their potential.

Dr Robie highlighted how such media demonstrated best practice as a “cornerstone of democracy”.

He said it was integral to involve students in such a process, and noted the “innovative” work that had been achieved by postgraduate students on the PMC’s Asia-Pacific Journalism Studies course over the past few years, including missions to the Pacific.

Students from the course had covered the the 2014 general election in Fiji — the first since the 2006 militrary coup — and had assignments involving climate change in Fiji, and the Pacific Islands Forum in the Cook Islands and Vanuatu.

Both the panelists and delegates noted that if changes were not made to dominant paradigms and mainstays of journalism soon that the “rubber would hit the road” leading to an internal moral crises within the industry.

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The president of Papua New Guinea’s media council has highlighted the ongoing challenges facing the government and media educators in a panel discussion during the preconference of the 4th World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC).

In touching on the challenges to journalism education in Papua New Guinea, Alexander Rheeney, also the editor-in-chief of the Post Courier, addressed pitfalls in the reportage of the shooting of several University of Papua New Guinea students by police last month.

Rheeney said the reportage was a question over quality from the media and highlighted the need for investigative reporting.

“It has been a good wake-up call for the industry and we need to pull up our socks.”

Rheeney’s comments come after this week’s “twist” made by the Supreme Court, ordering Parliament to reconvene to vote on the no-confidence motion lodged against Prime Minister Peter O’Neill regarding allegations of corruption

O’Neill told media he remained confident he would survive the motion scheduled for this Friday.

Rheeney also touched on challenges facing journalism educators in Papua New Guinea, namely the flow-on effects from a “drastic” decline in the quality of high school graduates over the past 20 years in areas such as literacy.

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Work by journalism students across the Pacific was at the centre of talks among educators during one of the panels at the preconference for the 4th World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC) held at the Auckland University of Technology which opened today.

Journalism educators from across the Pacific highlighted the important role young journalists play in the industry and the region in discussions of news production and research.

Professor Philip Cass, a senior lecturer in communication studies at Unitec, yesterday talked about the importance of student newspapers in journalism education for providing students with an outlet that allows them to explore their creativity as budding journalists as he discussed the evolution of student-run newspapers such as Felix Culpa and the award-winning Wansolwara.

He did however, stress the importance of having a lecturer “crazy enough” to make a student newspaper work.

‘Journalism as research’
Dr Lee Duffield of the Queensland University of Technology, highlighted the potential of student’s work to become “journalism as research” in his discussions of a case study in which six of his journalism students reflected on their coverage of New Caledonia and Vanuatu by “reading” into their stories.

Duffield’s talk engaged with the concept of journalism as the first rough draft of history, and the subsequent potential for journalists’ stories to become research in their own right.

A presentation by Eliki Drugunalevu and Irene Manarae of the University of the South Pacific (USP) reflected on the integral role Radio Pasifik has played in the education of USP’s journalism students.

Despite the rather ad hoc nature of the station’s funding, noted by both as a constraint and challenge, students have praised the practical skills the station provides, with one former student commenting it allowed them to practice at industry level.

Drugunalevu and Manarae revealed that the training facility intends to explore an “external broadcast footprint” to greater Suva and potentially invest in live streaming.

Media and mines
Research presented by freelance New Caledonian journalist Nicole Gooch was a slight departure from the topics of her peers, but revealed some important insights nonetheless.

Her research, the subject of a scholarship from the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JEERA), highlighted a lack among media worldwide to report on the ‘warning signs’ of a disaster in the face of a case study in to the coverage of Brazil’s Samarco mining disaster and that of New Caledonia’s Goro disaster.

Gooch found coverage of the disasters had been largely relegated to the business sections, which subsequently excluded the resettlement process and impact on families.

She said coverage was symptomatic of the media’s current trajectory in reporting global crises and highlighted the fact the media needed to “shine a spotlight” on the warning signs leading up to a disaster.

The World Journalism Education Congress opened today.

Do changes to climate change reporting need to happen? Does the media itself need structural change to face the new challenge? Kendall Hutt seeks some answers to the debate for Asia Pacific Report.

A worldwide call has gone out by academics and journalists for news media to change its approach on reporting climate change.

Current coverage of climate change leaves the public ill-informed on the issue and largely cynical, say some academics.

Also of concern is a tendency for media to frame climate change as an international rather than local issue, which leads it to be defined as a problem for others and not one of national sovereignty.

The need for improvement was highlighted at a public talk delivered at Auckland University of Technology last month, in which Professor Robert Hackett of Simon Fraser University discussed whether certain “touchstones” of journalism, such as objectivity and the public sphere, apply in covering what he dubbed a “climate crisis”.

The topic of a forthcoming book with several colleagues titled Journalisms for Climate Crisis, Hackett proposes several alternative reporting models that could potentially allow greater, more in-depth coverage of the climate change issue.

However, Dr Hackett concluded his talk by stating structured media reform was needed for climate crisis journalism to flourish. He stressed that the industry needs space to discuss such reform in order to foster change in defiance of a lack of political will.

Speaking with Asia Pacific Report, Dr Hackett has expanded on this conclusion, saying such structural media reform would “encourage and expand better journalism practices and coverage to the scale that is needed in a situation of global crisis”.

He added media reform would also reduce commercial pressures on journalists to generate clickbait and reduce concentrated corporate ownership.

But this is not a view shared by others.

Oxfam New Zealand’s senior campaigns and communications specialist Jason Garman rejects the idea of media reform.

“I think passing the buck that media should be solving this problem by doing better is not the way to go,” he says.

I think everyone needs to come to the reality that climate change is affecting all of us and we all should be playing a constructive part in making sure we have a world that’s liveable for everyone.”

Garman believes improvements to the way climate change is reported needs to come from – and return to – journalism’s fundamental role in educating and informing the public.

This is a view shared by science communication specialist and former journalist, Dr Jan Sinclair.

Dr Sinclair says it is mainly the media’s responsibility to inform the public of the extent and reality of the risks of climate change.

“It’s the journalist’s responsibility to tell people whether their lives or property are at risk.”

Like Garman, Dr Sinclair rejects Dr Hackett’s idea of media reform being the way for media to improve its climate change coverage moving forward.

Dr Sinclair is wary of reform due to the vested interests of fossil fuel industries and “sceptical lobby” which have plagued, and continue to plague, coverage of climate change.

She says such well-funded and powerful lobbying has promoted a culture of climate change being framed as “uncertain”, both within the media and social world.

Evidence of such lobbying can be seen by looking at ExxonMobil, one of the leading opponents of climate change science, which also once happened to be one of its leading proponents.

A video by AJ+ recently revealed that ExxonMobil spent US$61 million between 1998 and 2005 challenging scientific consensus surrounding climate change.

ExxonMobil has also been largely responsible for creating the uncertainty Dr Sinclair describes, with the oil company spending US$30 million on a network of think tanks and researchers who have challenged climate change science.

Dr Sinclair says any improvements to current reportage are a question of ethics and should be seen as a matter of integrity for journalists.

Question of ethics
“If journalists could perhaps have a discussion on which ethics are important, and then link speaking truth to power to the problem of interpreting scientific results… I think that might be beneficial.”

The journalistic adage of “speak truth to power” does not do climate change reporting any favours, she adds, as this “political” focus is detrimental.

This is something Dr Sinclair has also noted in her research into comparisons of what information the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported and what The New York Times reported across a 17-year period from 1990 to 2007.

Dr Sinclair noted: “Journalists are encouraged to privilege political discourses over scientific advice”, in direct correlation with the adage.

In contrast, Taberannang Korauaba, a doctoral candidate with the Pacific Media Centre and editor of the Kiribati Independent, believes stories on climate change need to focus more on the positive and calls attention to the Pacific.

Positivity needed
“The same message is repeated, sea is rising, people will be displaced, sea encroaching land, temperature is getting hotter these days on the islands.”

Yes, Pacific people are victims of climate change, he says, but stories should focus on adaptation and media attention shift to investigate the distribution of adaptation funding.

“What is happening now on the ground, I think the focus should be there. How much money given to these islands to help build their resilience, how it is spent, who is getting what?”

Korauaba says the media needs to adopt strategies to better report climate change and one of those is deliberative journalism, journalism that is acknowledged as empowering local people and leading to greater, popular decision-making.

In his research, he regards deliberative journalism – what he terms in the i-Kiribati-language as Te Karoronga – as allowing the community to be part of climate change adaptation and raising understanding and awareness of actions, so the people themselves can take action to help save their islands.

Despite such varied calls for the media to reframe its coverage of climate change, such as by Pacific Journalism Review in a special edition in 2014 on “failed states” and the environment, not all coverage is, or has been, inherently bad, Garman and Hackett stress.

Not inherently bad
Professor Hackett says some media organisations have been doing “remarkably good work” and “exercising a sense of agency”.

One such organisation is the Desert Sun, he adds, Palm Spring’s daily in southern California due to the host of feature articles it has produced.

Garman, however, highlights the media’s growth and acknowledgement in framing climate change as a human rights issue.

“If you’d asked me that question [growth] ten years ago I would have said, ‘No, absolutely, people see climate change as an environmental issue only, something that’s happening to polar bears and may affect humans at a long-off point in the future’.

“Whereas now I do think people understand that climate change is happening now, it’s affecting people now, it’s a human rights issue.”

Although no consensus exists as to what form reframing should take, Korauaba has noted it will take time for any changes to come into effect.

“The world can’t change overnight, at least we do something, and keep doing it regularly in our coverage.”

Kendall Hutt is a graduate journalist from AUT University, currently completing her Honours year in Communication Studies. She is on the Pacific Media Centre’s Asia Pacific Journalism course.

Captain Peter “Pete” Willcox isn’t known among his peers at Greenpeace to “sugar-coat anything” and one issue he certainly doesn’t is when it comes to climate change.

Speaking to Asia Pacific Report from on board the Rainbow Warrior, Willcox says he remains unconvinced world leaders care about climate change following the United Nations Climate Change Conference last year, lauded by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius as a “historic turning point” in reducing global warming.

At the helm of Greenpeace environmental campaign vessels for more than 30 years, Willcox has seen first-hand the effects of climate change and says world leaders are still hiding behind fossil fuels.

“It’s an irresponsible position to take,” he says.

Despite agreements among 195 countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the negotiated, but as-of-yet unsigned Paris Agreement, Willcox says ignoring renewable energy is a “huge mistake” and the burning of fossil fuels and coral bleaching “not a joke”.

Sophie Schroder, a communications specialist with Greenpeace New Zealand, supports Willcox’s view of the weak commitment of world leaders to combating climate change.

“I think reaching an agreement probably made a few world leaders feel good and look good at a time when there’s lots of pressure for change and I think some do take it seriously and will be making changes, but I think for others it was just about the PR,” she says.

Although Schroder acknowledges Paris was a “good first step” and “more positive than the ones before it”, she stresses it should not be seen by leaders — and the world — as the “be-all-and-end-all”.

Key not serious
Schroder draws attention to the fact Prime Minister John Key returned from Paris and announced he had no plans to scale back searches for fossil fuels.

“That in itself is proof we’re really not taking it [Paris] seriously.”

New Zealand received the “Fossil of the Day” award from Climate Action Network (CAN), an international coalition of environmental non-governmental organisations, on the first day of the conference, following an address by John Key calling on countries to take more responsibility in eliminating fossil fuel subsidies.

Attention was drawn to the “hypocritical” nature of Key’s address, given the fact New Zealand’s fossil fuel production subsidies have increased seven-fold since Key’s election in 2008.

New Zealand also received a second fossil award a few days later after its involvement in blocking compensation for vulnerable countries affected by climate change.

However, it is not the first time New Zealand has received such an award.

New Zealand received two “Fossil of the Day” awards back in 2012 on the first day of climate change talks in Doha, Qatar, where its inability to come to the table regarding greenhouse gas emission reductions was criticised both by CAN and the Green Party.

Willcox’ leadership vital
Schroder, who also worked on board the Rainbow Warrior with Willcox on Greenpeace’s six-week Pacific tuna tour last year which highlighted overfishing, feels people like Willcox are important in the fight against climate change.

“I think it’s vital that we have people like Pete that are willing to be outspoken and not sugar-coat anything and say things the way they are. We need to be honest about what we’re saving.”

Martini Gotjé, first mate on the original Rainbow Warrior bombed by French agents in 1985, concurs people like Willcox are “useful” in speaking out about what he terms a “bloody complicated” and “extraordinarily difficult” issue.

“I think Peter has credibility and he’s very useful in pointing out things.”

Climate change also happens to be an issue Willcox is quite vocal about in his book being published tomorrow: Greenpeace Captain: My Adventures in Protecting the Future of Our Planet.

In this book, the first time all of his adventures appear in one place, Willcox likens polluting the planet to defecating in our own backyard.

“I have a lovable, slightly dim-witted, little mutt named Deacon. Even he won’t shit in the house. But we so-called sapiens do it all the time.”

Harpoon gun parallel
Willcox likens this “shortsightedness” to standing before a harpoon gun while pulling the trigger at the same time, and when asked if this battle would ever be won, he simply responds:

“It’s not a matter of timing. It’s a matter of when we’ll lose.”

Importantly, the opening chapter of Greenpeace Captain documents Willcox’s experience of the 1985 bombing of the first Rainbow Warrior.

But if the public thinks the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior is a “touchy” subject for Willcox, both Gotjé and Schroder insist Willcox is “fully” and “pretty open” about talking about it.

Willcox himself says he has no qualms, although he does acknowledge the death of Portuguese-born Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira, and the fact he made no attempts to save him, still hangs over him.

“To this day it still haunts me that I didn’t make an attempt, but realistically it probably would have meant that the navy divers would have to bring up my body as well.”

However, for Willcox, 30 years has not lessened the blow that the French government has not faced justice over the bombing, or Pereira’s death.

Asked if he thought they had, Willcox replied, “No, not at all. [They] never apologised to Greenpeace or the Pereira family.”

Retired colonel’s apology

An apology did come last year, but from retired secret service colonel Jean-Luc Kister, for his part in the bombing.

Kister’s apology, which appeared on TVNZ’s Sunday programme, came despite long-held interests of the French government in avoiding its accountability for the bombing.

But where to next for the Greenpeace veteran?

Willcox has spent the last three months in Japan on board the Rainbow Warrior, supporting a research vessel chartered by Greenpeace Japan investigating the radioactive fallout of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor disaster on the marine environment along Fukushima’s Pacific coast.

While in Japan, Yuki Sekimoto, head of media and communications at Greenpeace Japan, says Willcox spoke to Japanese journalists about his life on the Rainbow Warrior, notably relocating the Rongelap islanders to Mejato islet in the Marshall Islands a few weeks before the 1985 bombing.

Break before action
“It was a great opportunity for Greenpeace Japan as an office located in the only nation to be hit by atomic bombs,” Yuki says.

With the campaign in Japan wrapping-up last week, Willcox says he is “ready to go home for the next three months”.

However, despite being 63, Willcox says he has no thoughts of retiring until he can leave his daughters a “planet they love” and a “safe place to raise their families”.

Willcox will be back at the helm of the Rainbow Warrior in three months’ time, for Greenpeace’s next campaign in the Mediterranean.

And if there is anything he would like his readers to take away from his book, he says, it is this:

“Get off the couch and do something. We can all do better”

Kendall Hutt is a graduate journalist from AUT University, currently completing her Honours year in Communication Studies. This is an Asia-Pacific Journalism Studies assignment.

Greenpeace Captain: My Adventures in Protecting the Future of Our Planet, by Peter Willcox (with Ronald B. Weiss). Penguin Random House, Australia, release date, April 18.

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Officials from 17 nations across the Pacific are welcoming the findings of a landmark report into illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

With the largest tuna fishery on the planet, the report, Towards the Quantification of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing (IUU) in the Pacific Islands Region, will allow officials to bolster their monitoring, control and surveillance efforts across the breadth of the Pacific Ocean.

Forum Fisheries Agency director-general James Movick says the report’s findings enable them to identify where key illegal fishing risks are, and in turn, enable them to strengthen their monitoring (MCS) framework.

“It will help us to target our MCS activities in the future much more appropriately.”

Duncan Souter, chief executive of M-RAG Asia Pacific, an independent fisheries and aquatic resource consulting company, which authored the report, says it enables effective tracking of investment.

“What it [the report] does allow for Pacific Island countries is that it allows them to prioritise where they should be putting their MCS resources and it allows us to track the effectiveness of those investments over time.”

However, this does not mean that MCS efforts in the past have been unsuccessful, officials warned.

Technology key
Pita Elisala, chairman of the Forum Fisheries Committee, addressing media at a press conference last week acknowledged the “astonishing” achievements in MCS to date, such as the addition of the first centralised regional satellite-based vessel monitoring system (VMS).

“There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that without that historical and ongoing effort, we would be looking at a much different report today.”

Officials point out that such “astonishing” achievements could not have been made without the high presence of technology.

Hugh Walton, former team leader and policy specialist for the EU-funded DevFish II project, says technology is increasingly important, particularly for MCS efforts.

“The collective of technology for real time reporting and data entry at source means MCS administrations can focus more directly on analysis and follow up on anomalies.”

Delivering a presentation at the 19th Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Meeting in Auckland last week on electronic reporting and electronic monitoring, Walton noted that these technologies play an “evolving role” in MCS.

Potential benefits of adopting both systems in the purse seine and longline fisheries include, among others, enhancing coverage in existing human observer programs, along with eliminating costly, time-consuming shore-based data entry.

Ensuring the future
Movick has also acknowledged the big role technology plays in managing the region’s fisheries and says it is something FFA member countries need to continually take advantage of as it evolves.

“The continual search for new technology is always there and it’s very fundamental to ensuring the future.”

A lack of data in the longline sector (tropical longline and southern longline) however, both M-RAG Asia Pacific and the FFA agree, needs addressing.

The report argues stronger catch monitoring arrangements are required, singling out the fishery in both its main messages and measures to further deter illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU).

The lack of these arrangements are seen as a rather gaping weakness in the current MCS regime.

Longline fishing does not currently meet the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission’s five percent benchmark for observer coverage, a policy directive which has not escaped the notice of officials.

Souter says the five percent benchmark is currently being met by few fleets and says meeting this would “certainly be a very good first step”.

Bolstering the network
Movick agrees and says reporting in the longline sector needs the most work, and will be a central focus in bolstering the current MCS network.

“We will be continuing the trials and moving beyond trials to the implementation of electronic monitoring surveillance, moving, where we can, to reduce fishing on the high seas, and to banning, where we can, transhipment.”

Reporting and post-harvest offences accounted for around 58 percent of the total ex-vessel value (market value) of IUU activity.

But the bad news for the longline sector does not end there.

The FFA and Secretariat of the Pacific Community’s Regional Roadmap for Sustainable Pacific Fisheries acknowledges its regional longline fisheries are “barely economic”, while its Tuna Fishery Report Card 2015 highlights that “clear challenges and opportunities” remain in increasing returns from this fishery.

Longline fishing currently represents a small proportion in value for the FFA’s Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), both in terms of catch value and value access.

Purse seine dominates both arenas, increasingly doing so since 1997, climbing to a catch value of over US$4 million.

Though longline fishing may be seen as a blight on the report’s landmark implications, the blow is lessened by the report effectively debunking several misconceptions about IUU in the Pacific.

Illegal fishing culprits
The report has revealed that the source of illegal fishing in the Pacific is closer to home.

The most prevalent and costly form of IUU in the region is in fact from misreporting and underreporting by licenced vessels, and not rogue, pirate vessels as some may believe.

“Assuming catch transhipped illegally is taken by licenced vessels, IUU fishing by the licenced fleet accounts for over 95 percent of the total volume and value of IUU activity,” the report says.

This is a stark contrast to the five percent of unlicensed vessels, and it is something officials have taken comfort in.

Movick acknowledges that although such illegal fishing is an affront to the Pacific’s sovereignty, there has been marked improvement.

“We can take comfort that this is a big change from years gone by, where patrol vessels and aerial surveillance would routinely detect vessels in fishing areas that they were not licenced to be in.”

However, it does not mean that Pacific nations have escaped unscathed.

Although the report has been able to place a more accurate dollar figure on the proportion of illegal catch — an estimated US$616 million — Movick says the actual loss is better reflected in looking at lost fishing access revenues.

“Using economic rent calculations this report estimates that the actual loss to Pacific Island countries from lost fishing access revenues is around $152 million.”

Figures “bandied about in the past” have seen the loss estimated at between US$750 million to $1.5 billion.

Despite this, Elisala and officials agree, the report serves as an incentive for the Pacific to continue its fight against illegal fishing.

“It’s a hard fight…but it is a fight that we have made significant ground on, and one that we will continue to challenge.”

Kendall Hutt is a graduate journalist from AUT University, currently completing her Honours year in Communication Studies. She is reporting on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course.

Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency

Pacific-wide study tipped to show ‘real value’ of lost fisheries

Report by Pacific Media Watch

A team of Auckland University of Technology student journalists has won the 2015 Ossie Award for Best Innovation for a series of video reports about the Rainbow Warrior bombing and the environment.

The student team entry, coordinated by Kendall Hutt, is featured on the Eyes of Fire microsite published by Little Island Press in collaboration with AUT’s Pacific Media Centre and Greenpeace New Zealand.

The Rainbow Warrior project involved interviews with crew members on board the sabotaged Greenpeace campaign ship 30 years on, stories on contemporary environmental issues, and profiles of photojournalists who covered the anti-nuclear struggle.

The project was inspired by a new 2015 edition of David Robie’s book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior. Dr Robie, director of the PMC, was an independent journalist on board ship for 10 weeks until the bombing by French secret agents on 10 July 1985.

The Ossie Award, presented at the annual conference of the Journalism Education and Research Association (JERAA) at Bathurst this week, was warmly welcomed by AUT staff and students and microsite publisher Tony Murrow.

‘Multimedia-rich’
“The Eyes of Fire project used the online medium well, through a clear, easy-to-navigate and multimedia-rich website, but also contained significant amounts of more traditional video and print reporting, which was tightly edited and interesting,” said the judge’s citation.

“The two were combined well to both entertain and impart information. Looking through it was an education in the Rainbow Warrior and its significance.”

The teaching team leading the project were Gilly Tyler, Danni Mulrennan and Dr Robie. Television lecturer Mulrennan coordinated the student news reporting team.

The list of students involved in the project is here.

The Ossie Awards are named after Australian foreign correspondent Osmar S. White.

Pacific Media Watch project editor Alistar Kata also reported a series of in-depth stories on the Rainbow Warrior and environmental activism.

The latest edition of the Pen Sydney freedom of expression magazine has published a four-page article by Dr Robie about Eyes of Fire and the Rainbow Warrior experience.

Eyes of Fire microsite