From Island girl to an airline pilot seems like the Disney fantasy Moana yet nothing could further from the truth when it comes to Silva McLeod who turned fantasy into reality with heartbreak along the way.

Born in the small Tongan village of Vava’u in the days when we watched and marvelled as jets few overhead, Mcleod never dreamed one day that she would be there in the sky flying jet planes to all manner of destinations.

In her recently released memoir,  Island Girl to Airline Pilot: A Story of Love, Sacrifice and Taking Flight, she tells her story.

The book details when and where she meets her Australian husband Ken who went to Tonga to work in building a hospital. She was working as a waitress in a bar when she first met him.

However, unlike other Palagi (white men) visiting the islands and making promises they never intended to keep, Ken — according to her autobiography that initially reads like a Mills & Boon novel — was a perfect gentleman as he slowly courted her.

“At first, it wasn’t the done thing to do… Unfortunately, the picture we have that white men come in — it’s not a very nice picture, but that’s how it was — they impregnate the Tongan girl and then nick off, and mum and dad, nan and pa will have to clean up the mess,” she writes.

“So, this is quite rare, a young handsome Pālagi came to our island, and we found a common attraction to each other. My family feared the worst … so it wasn’t very well received in the beginning.

Language ‘huge barrier’
“Language was a huge barrier at the beginning, because my family couldn’t speak a word of English and Ken couldn’t speak a word of Tongan.

“So how could Ken make a conversation that might help my family accept the situation? But it didn’t take long.”

Ken eventually whisked her away to Melbourne in 1980, and while her dreams were put on the backburner while the couple raised a family.

She did ultimately realise her dream to become Tonga and possibly the Pacific female airline pilot, beginning as a flying instructor, then flying for Royal Tonga Airlines, Australian Flying Doctor Service and eventually Virgin International Airlines.

And, at the time of doing this interview, she was waiting to hear about her health results to find out whether she could keep flying.

Becoming a pilot “was never really a dream, because I could never envision reaching it or getting there,” Mcleod  says.

“It was more like a fantasy because it was never going to happen.

Both ways to the beach
“Growing up in Vava’u, in a tiny little island of Pangaimotu, 200 people live there: you walk one way you reach the beach; you turn around 180 degrees you reach the beach.

“So, to dream of eventually becoming an airline pilot one day, or even just flying an aeroplane was unreachable — so I kept it as a fantasy.

“I can just visualise myself as a child running outside every time I hear a sound of an aircraft and I was there [looking] at the sky until the aircraft disappeared.

“The curiosity in me … was getting a little bit too much, running away with the thought of ‘oh wow, how clever is that, imagine the people that are flying that machine… wouldn’t it be amazing to operate such a machine, because it defies gravity?

“The fantasy was right from a young age, but it wasn’t a dream because I didn’t think that I’d get there.”

Mcleod’s world while growing up was limited, she says: “like wanting to reach for a piece of coconut but finding your arms are bound”.

At the time growing up in the 1970s in Vava’u, television and  newspapers weren’t easily accessible, so glimpses of the lives and places outside of the immediate community were limited, she says.

‘I can’t get out’
“It felt like, ‘I can’t get out’. It’s the same right across the Pacific Islands, it’s not just Tonga.

“We have such a rich culture and living in it … it’s just part of you and something I will treasure and value for the rest of my life.

“But then on the other hand, it’s restrictive because there’s nothing else to do.

“You go to school and then after that there was no university, there was no job. What could  you  do on an island? You couldn’t see a future.

“We are bound by culture, we bind by family, we bind by religion. It’s like you are free but you are bound to something.

“That’s just the way it is, and that’s just the island life, and you just grow up understanding it and it’s part of you.”

Now, with internet connectivity many Pasifika children view a more open world, she says.

Done her family duty
Settling in Melbourne and raising two daughters who are happily married with their own kids, she has done her family duty.

Then in a conversation with Ken, Mcleod spoke of her dream of becoming a pilot. However, instead of laughing, her husband told her that she could do it.

“Yes you have to be good at mathematics to be pilot and it takes hard work so no fantasy is ever easy,” she said.

Not long after, Ken became sick with cancer, and underwent chemotherapy. Mcleod focused on his recovery until her husband asked her about what it would take to get her started. He bought her a birthday present of vouchers for an introductory flight, and the rest is history.

Six years later, she earned her air transport pilot’s licence and became  the first Tongan woman to qualify as a pilot, and later a flight instructor.

The work brought Mcleod satisfaction, though she frequently faced both racism and sexism along the way, such as callers would say they wanted to speak to “Mr McLeod”.

Sexism, racism and misogynism, she has experienced it all, but as she said, “my book isn’t about that, I just wanted to tell my story through my eyes”.

An eye on Boeing 777s
As a pilot, Mcleod was “quite happy just flying 737s all around” but  followed with interest as Boeing 777s were developed and introduced, with automated fly-by-wire technology.

“I was based in New Zealand for nearly 12 months — loved my time there. That was on the 737s, so I did all of the domestic routes in New Zealand as well as all the South Pacific islands.

“At first I was based in Christchurch, then when moved Auckland a group of us pilots pooled our allowance and took an apartment at Auckland’s viaduct and we just loved it there, Ken came along and joined us,” she said.

Mcleod then  began working for the Virgin stable  and was trained to pilot 777s there — another thing ticked off her bucket list.

When she joined Royal Tongan Airlines and became  the first pilot  to speak fluent Tongan to the largely Tongan passengers over the intercom, it gave her such pride.

Defining her life
Mcleod underlines her story that flying aeroplanes does not define her life. Her journey, family, cultural identity and partnership with Ken determined her life.

Alas Ken died recently from cancer as the covid-19 pandemic swept through the world, and McLeod says that  until the end they remained both close and committed to breaking down barriers of skin colour and culture.

“I was a wife first, a mother, a grandmother, a carer, and I just call myself a worker … whatever field you have it’s no different. I just wanted to tell my story,” she says.

“And if my story inspires young Pacific women to be who they want to be, then so be it, but that was not my ambition. I just wanted to tell my story,” she says heading out the door to a nearby golf course.

•  Island Girl to Airline Pilot: A Story of Love, Sacrifice and Taking Flight, by Silva Mcleod. Melbourne: Exisle Publishing. ISBN: 9781922539618
  

It has been a decade since The Daily Blog (TDB) came into being informing all and sundry of the political machinations in New Zealand.

Run by the Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury it serves the left of politics.

It had almost five million page views in 2022.

• READ MORE:  How NZ’s Public Interest Journalism Fund can help ‘normalise’ diversity
• Other Daily Blog reports

“We had just under five million page views last year,” Bradbury told Asia Pacific Report.

“We have professor Wayne Hope from the AUT School of Communications; we have associate professor Susan St John from Auckland University, who is a poverty campaigner; John Minto who is a well-known political activist; and we have Mike Treen, a union boss.”

And they also have one of the country’s leading left analysts, Chris Trotter.

“We have anywhere between 10 to 20 bloggers,” Bradbury said.

TBD has been one of the go to blogsites for the political left.

“I think the idea when we set it up in 2013 was to provide an alternative commentary on the leftwing of opinion shapers,” he said.

Bradbury, who studied English at Auckland University and became a journalist on the job, believes debate is essential when discussing politics.

“I think we enjoy robust debate,” he said.

Nor does he blindly carry a candle for the leftwing government of the day even though he professes to belongs to the left.

“I think you have to be critical of everyone in power regardless of whether they are on your side or not,” said Bradbury, who was given his moniker “Bomber” by the Auckland University student newspaper Craccum.

“If you are writing commentary about the politics of the day you have to equally scathing for when the left are in, or the right are in, or you don’t have any credibility.

“We (TBD) are able to talk about things that are going on in politics and that is happening 24-48 hours ahead of the mainstream media; so I think people that are hungry to find out what is going on and have better oversight into the New Zealand political system can? So they come to us before you see it turn up in the mainstream media.”

He believes that journalism must be held to account.

“We have an obligation if you are the Fourth Estate to hold the powerful to account and the most powerful is the government of the day,” said Bradbury.

Public Interest Journalism
He said the government must provide for more investment in Public Interest Journalism (PIJ).

PIJ, a programme which started three years ago and is set to be concluded this year, needed to be continued, Bradbury said.

“I think it is a good start for the problem we have always had in New Zealand which is the market driven model, which is audience based advertising. We have always had too small a population to be able to support good journalism.

“But, there needs to be a lot more investment in public journalism for it to work.”

Nor does he see it, as many perceive it, as the government attempting to purchase favours from the media.

“I don’t see it as the government buying the media, I know that is a common critique that is used and brought up, but I don’t see it as black and white as that,” Bradbury said.

“We need to have public money go into journalism and there needs to be better checks and balances as to how that money is getting out there.

“There is a problem there, but overall I think that you can’t get a well-funded Fourth Estate that critiques the government of the day without having the state invested in that.”

He is advocating for a campaign to promote the benefits of better public interest journalism.

“We need a public service campaign similar to the one we have on our beaches where we have the ‘swim between the flags’ mantra.

“There has to be more public journalism funding to a vastly different group of media players and, by getting that funding they are able to show a little flag and we have a public campaign where we talk about ‘reading between the flags,’ so they know what they are reading is accurate and true.”

TVNZ-RNZ merger
Although the government has now shelved the TVNZ-RNZ merger after five years of work and many millions of dollars, Bradbury said it was only needed to see what was happening out in the public to realise people did not trust mainstream media.

“I think that the reason why we should have the merger is because we need to have a baseline public broadcasting that people can trust,” Bradbury said.

“We have all seen with real horror what happens when a large chunk of your population no longer believes certain agreed truths and we saw that on Parliament lawns last year.

“It is important to have public broadcasting that is trusted and believed because if we don’t have that it is very difficult to find common ground.

The emergence of rightwing radio — The Platform
“What we are seeing is the fracturing of the media world in New Zealand, and there are people who don’t believe in mainstream media anymore; people who have moved away from it and are searching out their own news,” Bradbury said.

“That’s fine as long as those media that are operating adhere to the basic values of journalism and stick to them.”

Jacinda Ardern
In the TBD Bradbury shared an excerpt from a podcast from TDB’s The Working Group which was rated as the best podcast in New Zealand in August last year by the Sunday Star-Times.

Bradbury related a story from January 24 the week that former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had to endure:

“Matt McCarten tells us a story of how at the end of last year, Jacinda and [her preschool daughter] Neve went out for a coffee with a friend of theirs at a cafe just in their private capacity. The way any mum with their daughter does every weekend.

“However, when Jacinda and their friend and Neve had settled down at a table, two people walked into the cafe after learning of Jacinda being in there, and started screaming at Jacinda and Neve telling them how they intended to hurt and kill Neve and Jacinda.”

“No mother should have feral lunatics screaming death threats at them and their child in a cafe.”

— TDB’s The Working Group

The TDB Working Group of 24 January 2023, Matt McCarten at 41m 46s.

“No doubt there was a tsunami of vileness that I don’t think I have seen in my political life that hit Jacinda,” said Bradbury.

“There was danger with forcing her out the way the angry right activists did, but the danger for them was that it was going create a backlash from the political swing voters who are 50+ female, tertiary educated.

“They would have seen the way Jacinda was forced out and they would have been quite angry with that; and we saw that in the first polls which saw Labour jump back up into the lead was a result of a political backlash.”

Radical social media
With the fracturing of media there has now developed radicalism on social media.
“Now we have a level of radicalism at play within social media,” Bradbury said.

“There are some strident leftwing voices and we’ve certainly seen some middle class identity politics and their de-platforming campaign; and we also have very extreme rightwing bloggers who are taking the debate in a very conspiratorial place which is very dangerous and polarising to the political debate in this country.

“We need healthy debate, but is it healthy when people in that debate have nothing but malice and spite to trade and are actually creating problems and not providing any solutions.”

Journalism
Bradbury believes journalism is at a crossroads but its principles must be upheld.

“Journalism is one of the most important careers in a democracy right now, and I bring it back to the misinformation and disinformation we have seen on so many online formats,” Bradbury said of the covid-19 pandemic years.

“If you can’t trust the material you’re reading, and if you have a citizenship that doesn’t know what is true anymore, then the basic standard of your democracy, the entire foundation that we are built on crumbles.

“So journalism is as important now than ever before.

“This is why we need a strong public service, this is no longer a nice-to-have, because I believe journalism is under so much threat because the alternative is voters who don’t know what is real and what is not.”

Roll on the election on October 14 and once again TBD will be at the forefront.

As a postscript, Bradbury was asked how was TBD faring financially.

He laughed before offering: “We get by, we are here for this election, we’ve been around for 10 years and I am always surprised that there is still a need for it.

“I’ll keep blogging as long as there is a readership for it.”

Sri Krishnamuthi is an independent journalist, former editor of the Pacific Media Watch project at the Pacific Media Centre and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

While some women at the University of the South Pacific’s 14 campuses found working from home enjoyable during the covid-19 pandemic, others felt isolated, had overwhelming mental challenges and some experienced domestic violence, a Pacific survey has found.

Titled “University Women Remote Work Challenges”, the survey was funded by the Council of Pacific Education (COPE) and was supported by the Association of the University of the South Pacific staff (AUSPS)

The research report, released last month, was conducted by Dr Hilary Smith (an honorary affiliate researcher at the Australian National University and Massey University) for the women’s wing of AUSPS.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific gender research

“This survey confirms that many of our university women had support from their family networks while on Work From Home, but others were left feeling very isolated,” said Rosalie Fatiaki, chair of the AUSPS women’s wing.

“Women with young children had a lot to juggle, and those who rely on the internet for work had particular frustrations — some had to wait until after midnight to get a strong enough signal,” she said.

Around 30 percent of respondents reported having developed covid-19 during the Work From Home periods, and 57 percent had lost a family member or close friend to covid-19 as well as co-morbidities.

In the survey there was also evidence of the “shadow pandemic” of domestic abuse and although the reported levels were low, it was likely the real incidence was much higher, said Dr Smith.

‘Feelings of shame’
“That was because of the feelings of shame (reporting domestic violence). In the Pacific Islands families and communities tend to be very close-knit groupings,” Dr Smith said.

Only two of the 14 USP campuses in 12 Pacific countries avoided any covid-19 closures between 2020 and 2022 — the shortest closure was two days in Tokelau and the longest at the three Fijian campuses of Laucala, Lautoka and Labasa lasting 161 days.

There had been no cases on the Tuvalu campus until the second quarter of this year.

“For women who had older children they said they enjoyed the time with their families,” Dr Smith said.

“And it was more difficult for those with young families,” she said.

She stressed the importance of being careful with the survey in relation to domestic violence.

“With this kind of survey, we had to be a little bit careful. We can’t say we got evidence of how much there is because it is a very tricky thing to survey and especially in this kind of survey,” Dr Smith said.

‘Sensitive issue’
“And because it is a sensitive issue and people tend not to identify and it is something that people tend to be ashamed about pretty much.

“The survey was totally confidential, and we set it up so no one would who the respondents were.

“It was impossible to find out through the ANU programme we used.

“But the fact people did give some evidence then I think that we know that it is actually quite significant, and we assumed that the prevalence was quite higher.”

She said that she was not saying there were more incidents, but from media reports, particularly in Fiji, she had suspicions that it was higher than reported in the survey.

“We were responding to the fact that there were other news reports in Fiji we referenced, and there has been the other report by the UN (United Nations) women about it,” she said.

The report “Measuring the Shadow Pandemic – violence against women during Covid-19” was released by the UN in December 2021 and the Violence Against Women Rapid Gender Assessments (VAW RGA) were implemented in 13 countries spanning all regions — Albania, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Nigeria, Paraguay, Thailand and Ukraine.

There was general support of national statistical offices (NSOs) or national women’s groups and funding from the policy and Melinda Gates Foundation, which found an incidence of 40 percent of reported domestic violence.

‘There in Pacific”
“So, we weren’t saying that it was more than in other countries, but we were saying it was there in the Pacific.

“It could be more, or it could be less but because the evidence had been already highlighted in Fiji, we were just picking up on that.”

AUSPS had specifically asked for it to be followed up because of “widespread murmuring” that domestic violence was occurring.

“My colleagues at USP had indicated they wanted to follow it up because they had heard that it was an issue for some women,” Dr Smith said.

In her recommendations she had suggested counselling for women and a safe space on campus, but she was unsure if it would be acted on.

Limited counselling
There was limited counselling available already and some had suggested that it should be done through religious denominations, she said.

She said internationally people had struggled with mental health issues during the pandemic, so it was common to all communities.

“There was a relatively high incidence in Fiji, and we reported the findings from the survey,” Dr Smith said.

Among the recommendations for support during isolation was the setting up of a helpline and regular calls from senior personnel and support staff.

She said even if this pandemic had passed there were other events like natural disasters, politics, and wars to be mindful of.

“Human-made or nature-made or the prevalence of other pandemics, we are basically saying the university should be prepared,” Dr Smith said.

The Red Roses of England are overwhelming favourites to win the 2022 Rugby World Cup being hosted by New Zealand starting on Saturday.

While much of New Zealand’s parochial media is unashamedly giving wide coverage to the Black Ferns and little space to the other 11 teams in the tournament, it is England’s form that warrants them being taken seriously.

How good are the Red Roses? Very good as they have won 25 tests on the trot, including beating the Black Ferns by record margins — 43-12 and 56-15 — in 2021 when New Zealand toured Europe.

• READ MORE: Keep tabs on the Rugby World Cup
• Other sport reports

Not only that, but France who are in pool C with England, Fiji and South Africa, also beat the Black Ferns last year — in Castres 29-7 and in Pau 38-13 on that miserable tour for New Zealand.

The Red Roses won the Grand Slam and the Six Nations this year when they beat France 24-12 in a come-from-behind win in front of a sold-out crowd at Stade Jean Dauger.

The Red Roses form will come as no surprise when you realise the whole squad turned professional way back in January 2019, whereas the Black Ferns moved closer to fulltime rugby players this year with contracts worth $35,000.

Those at the lower end of the Black Ferns contracts will make about $60,000 a year, with leading players earning in excess of $130,000.

Triple header
The tournament kicks off with a triple header at Eden Park on Saturday with France playing South Africa in pool C, then England playing Fiji — who will undoubtedly be the dark horses of the pool with many of the women coming from the victorious Fijiana Drua team that won the Women’s Super W Rugby title this year 32-26 over New South Wales.

They will be captained by No 8 Sereima Leweniqila who hails from the Marist club in Fiji.

As she says, “the most memorable game I played this year was beating the Waratahs in the Super W rugby final”. No doubt those memories will be enhanced should Fiji pull a David versus Goliath result when they take on the English juggernaut.

The final game at Eden Park on Saturday features traditional foes New Zealand and Australia from pool A which also has Scotland and Wales.

While the trans-Tasman rivals will be top dogs in the pool, they will be wary of their European rivals who could on their day cause an upset.

The next day at the only other venue outside Auckland — the Northland Events Centre in Whangarei — Italy takes on USA in pool B followed by the other pool B game between Japan and the powerhouse of North America, Canada.

Scotland and Wales do battle in the third game in Whangarei with the winners set to take points towards the quarterfinals.

Titans of European rugby
The following Saturday, October 15, the titans of European rugby — the Red Roses of England — face-off against France who are known for having a committed forward pack.

“Where women’s rugby is now is just crazy compared to the first World Cup I played in,” says Sarah Hunter, England’s captain, as she prepares to feature in her fourth global adventure.

With in excess of 35,000 people expected to pack Eden Park, it shows how much women’s rugby is being followed.

As an aside, this month’s Rugby News has All Black winger Caleb Clarke on the cover so you would be forgiven for thinking misogyny is still alive in Aotearoa despite hosting the World Cup.

In fairness to editor Campbell Burnes, he did put out special publication for the World Cup and has been an advocate for women’s rugby.

As the England captain says, “Every World Cup has been special but I genuinely feel this World Cup will be the biggest and most competitive there has ever been.

“And I genuinely don’t think we’ve realised the potential of this England team yet. The blend of youth and experience across the board, the versatility of the players — the talent in this side is incredible.

‘Exciting time’
“It’s a really exciting time for English rugby.”

England lost the last World Cup final to New Zealand 41-32 in Belfast in 2017 and are sure to be out for a measure of revenge against the Black Ferns should the two sides make the final, if not clashing in the previous knockout rounds of the tournament.

The Black Ferns featuring the amazing Portia Woodman had to have a major rebuild this year with the affectionately dubbed “professor” Wayne Smith named as coach this year.

Along with scrum guru Mike Cron they have halted the slide of the Black Ferns who face an almost herculean task if they are to win.

They began the year winning the Pacific Four series against USA, Canada and Australia to show we are on the right track.

They beat the USA 50-6, Australia 23-10 and Canada 28-0 then played Australia in home and away series winning 52-5 and 22-14 win in Adelaide.

As England head coach Simon Middleton says philosophically, “we acknowledge that if we have a bad day and France, New Zealand or possibly Canada have a good one we could be in trouble.

“If we play against France or New Zealand in the knockout stages we’re going to have to be at our very best. Any team coached by Wayne Smith and Mike Cron is going to be quite good, I reckon.”

While Waitakere Stadium in West Auckland will also host games, the final will be played at Eden Park on Saturday, November 12.

• Day 1 matches: 2.15pm: South Africa v France (Pool C), Eden Park
  4.45pm: Fiji v England (Pool C), Eden Park
  7.15pm: Australia v New Zealand (Pool A), Eden Park
• Full match schedule

Rachael Mario isn’t just any woman, she is special in that she hails from the idyllic South Pacific island of Rotuma.

And it is her love for social work which she hopes will propel her and her Roskill Community Voice and City Vision team onto the Mt Roskill board.

It is also the first time a Pasifika person has decided to stand for the Puketapapa Local Board in Mt Roskill, in the current Auckland local government elections that began today.

• READ MORE:  Mayoral debate cancelled after candidate withdraws from race
• Rotuman social justice advocate puts key bid for Roskill Community Voice

Having lived in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland for 33 years has given her a perspective on social justice and diversity for Auckland.

Much of that comes from time spent at the Whānau Community Hub in the Auckland suburb of Mt Roskill where her and her team do a sterling job in running different programmes for the good folk of Roskill.

For instance, every first Wednesday of the month they host a free seniors lunch, and it not just for Rotumans but for the diverse group of seniors who reside in Mt Roskill and who yearn for company and a “good old talanoa”.

Quite apart from that, Mario and her team would be out delivering groceries to the needy, or holding health and well-being, financial literacy and language classes for children.

Community doubles
That the community doubles as the Rotuman-Fijian Centre is a testament to her 30+ plus years of marriage to Auckland Fiji human rights advocate Nik Naidu and former journalist, who she met in Fiji when he was a budding radio personality at FM96 in Suva.

When you first meet Rachael Mario she greets you with big smile and utters charming Noa’ia (the Rotuman language greeting) and then she inquires about you with an inquisitive mind just to see how things are going for you.

As Mario explains, the Hub isn’t just for Rotumans but is used by a plethora of other groups, including the Moana-Pasifika Seniors. It is also home to the recently formed Asia-Pacific Media Network (APMN), which publishes the Pacific Journalism Review at the behest of founder Professor David Robie.

With such a diverse bunch using the Whānau Community Hub it is small wonder that Mario would branch out and try to incorporate more diversity in her already busy lifestyle.

That is why the chair of the Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Inc. is now standing for her local Puketapapa Local Board in Mt Roskill.

But that has not been without social injustice challenges that her community has faced for many years.

Lack of language funding
Included in those is the housing crisis in Auckland but much closer to her heart was the lack of funding provided to Rotuman language programmes which was given a cold shoulder by local boards.

“The biggest challenge, which isn’t fair, is the discrimination against the Rotuman Community. The Ministry of Pacific Peoples choose to run a different language week against our community-led Rotuman language week programme,” she says.

Other issues she lists are climate change and the environment which she says are huge for Auckland and wider New Zealand.

What also occupies her mind is the city centre, economic and cultural development, better outcomes for Māori, wastewater and storm water, transport and parks and communities.

In a nutshell, Rachael Mario is all things to all communities.

Voting ends on October 8.

• Three fellow candidates from the Fiji Collective contesting the local body elections are: Anne DEGIA-PALA (C&R – Communities and Residents) –  Whau Local Board candidate
• Ilango KRISHNAMOORTHY (Labour) – Manurewa-Papakura Ward councillor & Manurewa Local Board candidate
  Vincent NAIDU (Labour) – Waitakere Licensing Trust – Ward 4 (Henderson) candidate

Allegations of corruption, nepotism and bad governance at the Lautoka-based University of Fiji have been made by a whistleblower who allegedly lifted the lid on a veritable can of worms.

However, the head of the institution, vice-chancellor Professor Shaista Shameem, has rejected the claims, describing them as “wild allegations” by disgruntled former employees.

Asia-Pacific Report has sighted a four-page document titled “The Nexus of Corruption at the University of Fiji” which lists 10 allegations, including mismanagement of funds gifted to the university.

• READ MORE:  University of Fiji says allegations of corruption are false
• Call for independent investigation into Uni of Fiji accusations
• Uni Fiji VC hits out at NFP leader

The allegations were put to Professor Shameem who immediately established a Litany Inquiry Commission (LIC) comprising staff from the five schools at the university

She responded to RNZ Pacific late yesterday after initially sending a message “to all staff and students at the university that she will expect quality performance from all at the university pursuant to the new Strategic Plan 2022-2026”.

Although she was appointed in March, Professor Shameem took up her appointment officially on December 10 — International Human Rights Day. As a human rights lawyer, Professor Shameem believed that the date she chose for the announcement to officially take up her position was symbolic for her.

“I did not want to be the VC. It took a lot of persuasion. I was on retirement track. Then I decided I would take up the offer and that I would do it from 10 December,” she told Asia-Pacific Report.

Prasad calls for independent investigation
“National Federation Party (NFP) leader and former economics professor at the University of the South Pacific Biman Prasad told RNZ Pacific that allegations of fraudulent behaviour should be investigated, especially since the University of Fiji had received more than F$2.7 million (NZ$1.8 million) for the 2020-2021 financial year.

“Corruption allegations of this nature at any tertiary institution is a matter of serious concern,” he said.

The document’s release to media revealed there was no academic freedom in Fiji, claimed Professor Prasad.

“Academic freedom does not necessarily mean that academics can say whatever they want to say about things outside of the university, but academic freedom also means that staff in the university should be able to raise the issues with the management with respect to any suggestion that there might be corruption or bad governance,” he said.

“If the issues involve the council members, then it is incumbent upon the council to appoint some independent organisation — such as a reputable accounting firm not influenced by any state apparatus within the country — to give those who are making the allegations and those the allegations are made against … a fair hearing.

“Then any governance issue is dealt with in a proper way.”

Professor Shameem responded strongly by saying “Professor Biman Prasad should take a good hard look at his own backyard before shooting off without any evidence being presented at all in the wild allegations”.

‘Terminated over lack of performance’
“The allegations sent to Radio New Zealand were made by disgruntled and disgraced former employees who were terminated due to lack of performance or breach of Fiji’s law and others who have not performed but expect to be promoted or given permanent employment,” she said.

“The University of Fiji will not be bullied.”

“As far as I am aware, no staff member has raised any matter to do with corruption or bad governance. The University of Fiji has a whistleblower policy which keeps identities confidential and ensures that independent investigation of any allegation takes place promptly.

“No one has so far made such allegations through the whistleblower process. Evidence of bad management practices were certainly present at the University of Fiji in the previous administrations, but a clean-up has since taken place and we are back on the right path”, Professor Shameem said.

She claimed Professor Biman was out of date on the issue.

“Politicians should get themselves up to scratch otherwise no one will have any faith in them come next elections,” she said.

‘Issues had been resolved’
“Over a two-day period of inquiry, the LIC was informed by the staff who had expressed similar views internally that at no time had they sent either Radio New Zealand or a third person their views because their issues had either been resolved by the university administration or they had understood why the university had made the decisions that it had on all the issues they initially found difficult.”

The 10 allegations are about an online learning and teaching software (Top Hat) as used mainly in in American universities, such as the University of Alabama, Rutgers University, and the University of Iowa; purchase of four new cars at a time when staff bonuses and benefits had been suspended and some staff were alleged to have their salaries cut; and a $500,000 donation by the Rajendra Sahay Trust in 2019 for the establishment of a health centre; and issues over the opening of a second café.

However, the document claimed this was the “tip of the iceberg” at the privately owned university, which is run by the Hindu religious organisation Arya Prathinidhi Sabha of Fiji.

The university is based in Lautoka and has a campus in Suva. It has about 1000 students and 100 staff.

The world’s highest paid rugby player, Charles Piutau, is delighted he will be eligible to play for Tonga now that World Rugby has changed its eligibility rules last month.

In one of his rare New Zealand interviews, he told Pacific Media Network’s Tongan programme with Tangata Pasifika’s John Pulu he was surprised and relieved that world rugby had changed its eligibility rules.

The 30-year-old, who played 17 tests for the All Blacks and whose last test was in 2015, is currently playing for the Bristol Bears for a whopping 1 million pounds sterling (NZ$1.92 million) a year — along with South Africa’s Handre Pollard who earns the same amount for Montpellier.

• READ MORE: Other rugby reports

From next year players can change allegiances if they were born in the country they want to represent or have a parent or grandparent born there; they can switch only once and there is a stand-down period of three years from international rugby.

Charles (Salesi) Piutau always had the intention to play for Tonga but “in the past its been quite tough and there was a loophole (Olympic rugby sevens), but unfortunately I couldn’t go to those tournaments.”

However, recently former All Black Malakai Fekitoa exploited that loophole to play for Tonga in their Olympic qualifier.

“It then led to World Rugby to vote on this eligibility rule and all honesty I didn’t think it was going to pass because in the past when the vote came about it didn’t reach the 75 pecent [votes needed to pass the resolution] pass mark for it to be approved,” said the fullback.

Trainers were smiling
“In the past we’ve had the Pacific Welfare group led by Daniel Leo, who has voiced his opinions on this, but on the day at my club a few of the trainers and physios were there and they were smiling and I wasn’t sure what they were smiling about but they eventually told me that the law had been passed.

“At first I was really surprised but it sank in and I was very happy that it has happened for the Pacific Island teams,” Auckland-born Piutau said.

“Both my parents were born in Tonga and moved over to New Zealand for better opportunities for us kids and at home they spoke Tongan and see my brother (Siale) represent Tonga as well it has always been close to my heart and having this opportunity is the best of both worlds,” Piutau said.

“To put on the red jersey means a lot and speaking to my parents they are excited and very proud of this opportunity.”

Just like in the 2017 rugby league World Cup where Andrew Fifita (Australia) and Jason Taumalolo (New Zealand) switched allegiances to Tonga where they beat New Zealand, Samoa, and Scotland in front of a sea of red clad fans in Auckland the Tongan red and white-cross of St. George flag flew proudly.

Those scenes were re-enacted two years late when Tonga beat Australia 16-12 and now with the change to those rules in rugby union European-based former house-hold names like Piutau, Fekitoa, Ngani Laumape, Julian Savea, George Moala and Steven Luatua can be expected to play for Tonga at the next rugby World Cup in France in 2023.

Should Tonga qualify for the next World Cup they will go into a pool with South Africa, Ireland and Scotland.

Welcomed the change
Fijian Isa Nacewa, who played two minutes for Fiji in the 2003 World Cup and then tried to make himself available for the New Zealand sevens team has welcomed the change.

“It is ground-breaking isn’t it, I said it was the elephant in the room, but I’m overly stoked to be proven wrong that you know things have changed with time and the powers that be have actually in this case and listened and taken on all the words and all the feelings of everything around the world and around this issue,” said Nacewa.

“So, it’s absolutely phenomenal and it is literally a game changer. One for the little nations but just in rugby in general.”

Pacific rugby players welfare head Daniel Leo declared himself pleased with the result, but it was surprising, and he didn’t expect it to go the way it did.

“There was a 75 percent threshold to get this across the line, which always made it extremely difficult from the get-go. But, lobbying over a number of years, like ourselves and a lot of unions, Bill Beaumont (boss of World Rugby) and World Rugby… and credit to them because it was a really positive outcome.

“Every time it has been tabled in the past it was negative outcome, so I am amazed, you never get your hopes up but it is through and that’s the main thing,” Daniel Leo told the Devlin Radio Show (DRS).

Leo said the welfare was set-up seven years ago for exactly the same reason.

A lot of injustice
“This is one of the key aspects around when we set up the organisation, myself and a lot of Pacific Island players around the world came together and we said we feel like there’s a lot of injustice in the game.

“So, we needed an organisation that had a voice a credible voice that could put pressure on these sorts of decisions, and it’s been long journey since then,” he said.

Leo said it would make an immediate impact on the game and for Pacific Island nations.

“In the short term it’ll be massive, for me the goal has always been to make the Pacific Islands sustainable financially. Having superstars come back will have an impact on the results.

“Sponsorship, hopefully getting more tier one nation matches and more revenue that we can put into the grassroots so in a 10–15-year period we don’t need this regulation anymore because we’ll have all the resources that we need.

“It’s a short-term fix for our for a long term problem. But there’s still other issues that we need to address,” said Leo.

He was referring to the revenue share model where currently the hosts get to keep all the gate taking receipts.

No revenue share model
“There is still no revenue share model in place, so for example when Tonga plays England in front of a sell-out crowd Twickenham (capacity 82,000), there is no revenue share,

“Tonga get nothing for that and that needs to change.

“We need to be able to capitalise on this. There’s no reason why a team like Tonga that could have Malakai Fekitoa, Charles Piutau and Ngani Laumape should be playing for free in front of their audiences in England.

“So, there are still challenges. But this is a great step, and we’ll celebrate the victory but it’s a battle in a bigger war,” said Leo.

The Pacific rugby player welfare had to weigh-up long and hard before it went into battle for this rule change.

“It’s not about players coming back at the end of their careers and that is the negative spin on it. That you possibly be taking away from younger players who could make the team, but this is about the union’s injecting the resources that we’ve lacked years and years to be able to invest at the grassroots to make sure that we’re not relying on guys coming back to the end of their careers forever,” he said.

New Zealand was one of countries that backed the eligibility rule changes.

• READ MORE: ‘Under attack’: Report says repression of rights persists in Asia
• Other reports on people power under attack

An open rating means people are free to form associations, demonstrate in public spaces, and share information without fear of reprisals.

Concern in the report highlighted those civic rights are not respected across the region; Fiji, Nauru and Papua New Guinea remain in the “obstructed” category, meaning that restrictions of freedoms of expression, association and assembly have been raised by civil society in these countries.

Restrictions relating to media freedoms, access to information and the right to protest led to the Solomon Islands downgrade. Freedom of expression is of particular concern — in early 2021 the cabinet threatened to ban Facebook over worries about posts with “inflammatory critiques of the government”.

The government eventually backtracked after condemnation from civil society and the opposition.

Public Emergency extended
Freedom of assembly have been documented in the Solomon Islands. In July, the State of Public Emergency was extended for another four months in response to covid-19, even though there were only 20 reported cases in the country.

A march in Honiara to deliver a petition to the government by people from the Malaita province was disrupted and dispersed by the police.

Accessing information is not available to the media in the pandemic as Solomon Islands does not have freedom of information legislation. Additionally, the environment towards civil society groups is becoming more hostile in the country.

For example, in late 2019 the office of the Prime Minister called for an investigation into a number of civil society groups after they called for the prime minister to step down.

“Excessive restrictions on civic freedoms imposed by the government under the guise of preventing covid-19 led to the downgrade of the Solomon Islands. Constant threats to ban Facebook and attempts to vilify civil society have also resulted in the failure of the Solomon Islands to retain a top spot in our global rights rankings,” said Josef Benedict, Asia-Pacific civic space researcher at CIVICUS.

The use of excessive restrictions against activists and critics was the leading violation in 2021 with at least seven countries having been found to have transgressed in the report.

Target on Fiji journalists, activists and critics
In Fiji, provisions relating to sedition in the Public Order (Amendment) Act 2014 have been used to target journalists, activists, and government critics, while other sections of the act have been used to arbitrarily restrict peaceful protests.

The Fiji Trade Unions Congress (FTUC) was denied a permit to hold a rally in Suva, on International Labour Day, 1 May 2021 — no reason, written or verbal for the rejection was given.

The use of restrictive laws is a concern across the Pacific. New criminal defamation laws passed in Vanuatu and Tonga cast a chilling blow to freedom of expression.

In Australia, the government continues to hound whistleblowers through the courts, as seen in the case of Bernard Collaery, the lawyer of an ex-spy, who was charged with allegedly exposing Australia’s bugging of Timor-Leste.

In 2019, Australia was downgraded by the CIVICUS Monitor due to attempts to silence whistleblowers who reveal government wrongdoing, among other concerns.

New Zealand and Australia, which was downgraded in 2019, did not get off scot-free. The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association said the pandemic was not reason enough to quell peaceful assembly of protesters.

Indeed, protesters to the lockdown rules were detained this year for violating covid-19 rules.

Intimidation of Pacific activists
Other civic rights violations highlighted by the CIVICUS Monitor include the harassment or intimidation of activists and critics across the Pacific, as documented in Fiji, Samoa and Papua New Guinea.

Fijian surgeon Dr Jone Hawea was detained for questioning after criticising the government’s response to covid-19 in his Facebook live videos, while Papua New Guinean lawyer Laken Lepatu Aigilo was allegedly detained and assaulted by police in April 2021 after lodging an official complaint against a politician.

“The state of civic space in the Pacific may seem relatively positive. However, over the year we have seen restrictive laws being used in several countries, including criminal defamation laws. Protests have also been denied or disrupted under the pretext of handling the pandemic, while activists have faced harassment and intimidation,” said Benedict.

However, there have been some positive developments this year. After strong civil society pressure, Tongan authorities moved swiftly to charge the alleged murderer of leading LGBTQI+ activist Polikalepo “Poli” Kefu, after his body was found on a beach near Tongatapu, Tonga’s main island

More than 20 organisations collaborate on the CIVICUS Monitor to provide an evidence base for action to improve civic space on all continents.

The Monitor has posted more than 500 civic space updates in the last year, which are analysed in People Power Under Attack 2020.

Civic space in 196 countries is categorised as either closed, repressed, obstructed, narrowed or open, based on a methodology which combines several sources of data on the freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression.

The son of a factory worker made New Zealand history last week, as the first Pacific person to be appointed to the eminent leadership position in academia at a New Zealand university.

“I’m really excited to be the AUT vice-chancellor and with that excitement comes a sense of its significance with the sector which I work in and have given much of my life to, actually looking like the people it serves. So I’m really excited to be part of that story,” Toelesulusulu told Asia-Pacific Report.

• READ MORE: Pacific scholar Dr Damon Salesa named AUT’s next vice-chancellor
• ‘Transform lives’ with education, new vice-chancellor for AUT tells Pasifika

“AUT is a place where talent can find opportunity and I would hope that lots of other people would want to express that excitement by wanting to come to AUT,” he says.

“What matters more is the work of the whole institution, that the university itself embraces its many different communities, its Māori students, its Pacific students and already AUT is a little bit known for that and what we can do is to build even more deeply on that.”

Professor Steven Ratuva, director of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Canterbury, says Dr Salesa’s appointment is a significant milestone for the Pacific.

“It is something he richly deserves, and he has been working hard for and it is a good career choice, it is good for the Pacific academic community, and I congratulate him for his contribution to Pacific education.”

South Auckland priority
Currently pro-vice-chancellor Pacific at the University of Auckland (UOA), Dr Salesa takes up his new role as vice-chancellor at AUT in March.

From just up the hill at UOA, he has observed AUT, and likes what he saw.

“I’ve really admired the way AUT prioritised and served its students, particularly the students of South Auckland and mature students, and that is one of reasons I was really interested in the job,” he says.

“Just because those communities of learners for whom education really matters, AUT has really embraced them and that is part of what is exciting about AUT — that is why I wanted to come across and join AUT.

“There is no question that the campus down south and campus on the shore bring universities into the communities that they serve and as well as being global institutions they are local institutions.

“If you have heart to service and you keep the students at the very centre of the decisions you make, you get great results like you see AUT deliver in South Auckland and the North Shore,” he says.

Strengthening Māori and Pacific research
Pacific and Māori research is one area he wants to strengthen as well as build relationships with other institutions in the Pacific.

“Certainly, one of the things I have as a priority is to make sure that AUT is in all of the partnerships that it needs to be in, that we are serving our communities and our partners as well in a reciprocal relationship from which everyone grows.

“That will mean we have to be a little bit selective, but it will also mean that Pacific partnerships and other partnerships are critical to the very centre of the university, and they are not seen as being marginal because we’re a university in the middle of the South Pacific.

“We need to honour that and be connected to our whanau around the Pacific.

“It is absolutely important that we are having those conversations, we need to understand how we can support the University of the South Pacific (USP) and their work, how we can find benefit and value for New Zealand and AUT students and staff from those relationships, so certainly we will be taking that seriously.

“But certainly, USP is a special institution in our region, so we need to be strategic in how we support and partner with them.”

Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, head of journalism at USP, says “as many have pointed out, the appointment is well deserved. He was not given any preference as a Pacific Islander. He was picked on merit.

A Pacific ‘trailblazer’
“As a trailblazer, he will inspire many Pacific Islanders and Pacific people beyond New Zealand as the vice-chancellor of one of the finest universities in our region.

“Through my association with the Pacific Media Centre (PMC), I have participated in AUT journalism-related workshops, seminars, and conferences.

“I have a high regard for the AUT and the PMC, long a flagship of the university for its cutting-edge research and publications in Pacific journalism.

“I hope the PMC is revived as journalism in the region has been struggling due to economic and political factors. Pacific journalism needs support and leadership and AUT can become the beacon it was,” Associate Professor Singh says.

Dr Salesa was in the dark about the PMC which has now been in hiatus for almost a year for unknown reasons.

“I’d have to learn more about that, I don’t know the ins and outs of that situation, but these are things that have to be collaborative, they have to be built with the kind of collective will and expertise of the university especially.

“There is no question that AUT will be prioritising Māori research and Pacific research among its other amazing specialisations,” Dr Salesa says.

AUT ‘anchored in Pacific’
“AUT will always be anchored in the Pacific region and obviously has a long history of educating people from the Pacific region and we hope to continue and deepen that.

“Those partnerships will speak directly to AUT’s future, and this is a period in time where everyone is just hoping for the best possible outcome for USP, and we will be looking to support in ways that make sense for them and AUT.”

Dr Salesa is testament to the fact that people of a Pacific background or ethnicity can succeed and excel — not just in sport, but in every facet of society.

“I think we’ve always known, as the saying goes, talent is everywhere, but opportunity isn’t — and what AUT is the story of, is making opportunity available to diverse groups of talented people.

“We know if you make opportunities available to those who have been denied them, they will flourish if they are supported in the right way.

“I have no doubt what people will see in my own story is that the kinds of diverse talent we have in New Zealand that too often we haven’t made the most of, can come to AUT and thrive.

“I hope that people see in that all kinds of stories because I am also the son of a factory worker, and I am also a first-generation university attendee people can understand that when talent gets opportunity and support it drives them and that’s what I am hoping you’ll see and that is what success at AUT is all about and its story,” the Auckland suburb of Glen Innes-raised Dr Salesa says.

Education pathway
A strong advocate for education, he wanted young Māori and Pasifika people to pursue that pathway rather than young school leavers joining the workforce.

“We know that education is one of the proven pathways to wellbeing and prosperity for families, and that at the same time we know that many families need their young people to go out and work.

“So, it is absolutely critical that we find ways to get talented young Pacific, Māori and other students into high value employment and education is one of the ways of doing that.

“What we need is for them to be ambitious, to have high expectations of themselves and their families and it is for AUT and other universities to deliver that transformational learning which is the secret to those strong and prosperous futures,” Dr Salesa says.

Transformative learning allowed people to change and have more than one career.

“We know all of us are living in the most uncertain and highly changeable times. In the old days everyone imagined they would have just one career and many people now are realising they might not only change jobs but change careers and they have also come to realise that in many, many of our jobs technology sits at the centre of opportunity and the ability to be effective.

“AUT is the kind of institution that is built for these times, it offers all sorts of flexible learning offerings and a truly diverse student body and it is New Zealand’s tech university.

Transformative learning
“So transformative learning is the kind of learning that actually transforms individual students lives where you can see outcomes writ large and that’s what I’m hoping to support further development at AUT so that people understand AUT is a great place to go, to study and get a great job but also prepare themselves for a great future,” Dr Salesa says.

Then there was the inevitable vexed question, whether it was time for another university, namely AUT, to start a new medical school? To which he played with a straight bat.

“At the moment AUT is one of the great providers of the health workforce in New Zealand and certainly for the short term we will be focusing on doing an even better job of doing that.

“Delivering a health workforce and the health researchers that New Zealand needs. That is obviously a critical contribution in the age of the pandemic, but again that will be built collaboratively with my colleagues at AUT.

“I think it is a very challenging time for universities across the board and particularly where next year is going to be where students have had two years of lockdown learning in Auckland so we have to make sure that the university can support them in their ambitions to be successful at AUT.

“That is going to be one of the great challenges, not just facing AUT, but all the tertiary providers that have suffered lockdowns in Auckland.”

Keynote speakers professor David Robie and Glenda Gloria, executive editor of Rappler, addressed “truth and justice” on the opening day of the Asian Media Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) conference in Auckland.

Dr Robie opened the conference yesterday with his topic “Journalism education ‘truth ’ challenges in an age of growing hate, intolerance and disinformation” while Gloria spoke about the difficulties of doing investigative journalism amid this covid-19 pandemic.

Founding director of the Pacific Media Centre, Dr Robie began with a tribute “to two extraordinary and inspirational journalists, who have shed light on dark places and given the rest of us hope”.

• READ MORE: Other ACMC media conference reports

The first of these was to Maria Ressa, chief executive of the Filipino investigative website Rappler, who, along with Russian editor Dimitry Muratov, was named a Nobel Peace prize laureate last month for safeguarding “freedom of expression”.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee described them as “representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions”.

Julie Posetti, global director of research at the International Centre for Journalists (ICJ), said the choice had been very timely and she pointed to the fact that it had been 85 years since the first working journalist had won the Nobel prize.

German investigative editor Carl von Ossietsky won the Nobel prize for his “burning love for freedom and expression”’

Award in jail
Ossietsky, was incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp at the time he won the award and later died in jail.

As Gloria told the conference hosted at Auckland University of Technology, the Nobel prize put a “global spotlight on the extraordinary dangers that we journalists face today”.

“You and I are no stranger to threats to media freedom – from repressive laws to libel suits to imprisonment to death threats,” she said.

“To many of us in the Global South, journalism has always been considered a dangerous profession long before media watchdogs started ranking countries around the world according to the freedoms enjoyed by their press.

“And yet, despite all that we have seen and experienced, it’s no exaggeration to say that this is the most challenging period for journalism. At stake today is our very existence, our relevance, and our ability to speak truth to power.

“Not only are journalists under attack. Truth is under attack,” Gloria said.

Optimism for Rappler
She gave three reasons for the Filipino publication Rappler to be optimistic in spite of dealing with 11 lawsuits aimed at silencing the website.

“Every crisis is an opportunity. In the last two years, we at Rappler managed to bounce back and continue holding power to account and exposing wrongdoing,” she said.

“Part of the reason is how our ownership structure was set up. Rappler is the only journalist-owned and journalist-led media company in the Philippines. We make decisions for the public interest even if it’s bad for business.

“Second reason to be hopeful is — for journalism to matter, the community must be a part of it. In our crisis years, our community stayed with us.

“We realised that we had a core base of audience that, while not massive, shared the same value that we believe in, which is the public’s need for transparency and accountability on the part of those who lead and government them.

“At Rappler, we learned that when the going gets tough, hold the line, stick to your core, and have faith in your community of readers.

“The third reason to be hopeful is that crisis challenges our mindsets. The attacks on Rappler scared away advertisers but also compelled us to diversify our revenue stream so that today, our revenues come not just from advertising but business research, grants, membership, programmatic ads, and special projects.

Postive net income
“We have not paywalled our site but we have content and activities exclusive to paying subscribers. Thankfully, we are now entering our third year of positive net income,” Gloria said.

Dr Robie’s second tribute was to Max Stahl whom he described as a “courageous journalist and filmmaker who sadly died at the age of 66 from cancer”.

From Timor-Leste, he made the controversial film footage of the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre in the capital Dili which eventually led to Timorese independence.

British-born Stahl returned to East Timor in 1999 and made the documentary In Cold Blood: Massacre of East Timor, for which he was decorated with the Order of Timor-Leste, the country’s highest honour and he was awarded Timor-Leste citizenship in 2019.

“The common thread linking all four of these media communicators – Maria Ressa, Dimitry Muratov, Carl von Ossietsky and Max Stahl – has been their courageous, determined relentless pursuit of ‘truth and justice’,” Dr Robie told the virtual conference.

“ ‘The truth’ – this supreme goal of journalists in holding power to account is hugely under threat by politicians, demagogues and charlatans peddling fake news and disinformation,” he said.

Dr Robie spoke about covid-19 and the “disinfodemic” – described by UNESCO as “falsehoods fuelling the pandemic”, leading to civil disobedience and attacks on medical staff the world over, including in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Violence pervaded South Pacific
The violence had pervaded the South Pacific and was noticeable in Fiji and Papua New Guinea despite the high number of people being infected.

Dr Robie highlighted PNG where health authorities were forced to cancel vaccinations for fear of attacks, hence the rate is incredibly low this month, sitting at 2.5 percent,

He also addressed the infodemic and the rise of “disinformation” and the challenges it brought to the media.

Dr Robie spoke about climate change “and the disproportionate impact this is having on our Asia-Pacific region”.

A key component of the disinfodemic was the lack of fact-checking and as veteran Pacific journalist and consultant Bob Howarth had asked, why had the basics of fact-checking not “become part of journalism training in our universities and colleges?”.

Dr Robie also spoke about climate change “and the disproportionate impact this is having on our Asia-Pacific region”.

Climate ‘catastrophe’
He outlined the challenges of climate change, preferring to call it climate “catastrophe”.

“I am stressing the word catastrophe rather than merely change, That is because for the microstates of the Pacific it is already viewed as an impending catastrophe,” he told the conference.

Dr Robie said he had developed several theories and models of journalism such as “talanoa journalism”, a concept developed through a Pacific approach.

“My emphasis has been on ‘project journalism’, creating high quality coverage of issues and challenging assignments on university platforms with high standards of journalistic integrity and to foster multi-university collaboration across national boundaries.”

The conference concludes tomorrow.

• The ACMC conference programme

A Filipina journalist who cut her teeth as a young reporter in the Marcos dictatorship years and now heads an investigative digital media outlet and a New Zealand journalist who was on board the bombed Rainbow Warrior environmental campaign ship are keynote speakers at an Asia-Pacific conference opening in Auckland today.

The Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) is hosting the three-day 2021 virtual conference in partnership with Auckland University of Technology with the theme “Change, Adaptation and Culture: Media and Communication in Pandemic Times”.

Glenda Gloria, an award-winning investigative journalist and author of Under The Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao, is co-founder and executive editor of Rappler, which is at the forefront of media freedom struggles in the Philippines.

• READ MORE: The ACMC 2021 conference

Her colleague, Maria Ressa, recently jointly won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, for championing a free press and she has been the target of multiple lawsuits in an attempt by the Duterte administration to silence the media.

Gloria will talk about current challenges facing the media in the Philippines and across the Asia Pacific region.

David Robie, founding director of the Pacific Media Centre and recently retired professor of Pacific journalism, is speaking about the media and covid-19 “disinformation and hate speech”.

Dr Robie sailed on board the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior that was bombed by French secret agents in Auckland in 1985 and he has reported on environmental issues, climate issues and independence struggles.

He has been the head of three Pacific university journalism programmes and the author of several media and politics books, including Eyes of Fire and Blood on their Banner.

‘International sharing’
Senior communications lecturer at AUT Khairiah A Rahman, principal organiser of the event, said there was much to be achieved from the conference.

“We will be looking at international sharing, networking, future collaborative projects, and research publications in journals and books,” Rahman said.

The ACMC received more than 60 paper submissions and approved 44 peer-reviewed abstracts for the biannual conference which was established in the Philippines and began in 2008.

Six international ACMC conferences have been hosted by universities in Penang, Malaysia; Bangkok, Thailand; Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Hong Kong; Philippines; Taiwan; and now at AUT in Auckland.

“We had several pre-conference talks which yielded as many as 94 participants. In real — not virtual — ACMC conferences, we welcome 130 to 160 attendees from 22 countries,” Rahman said.

The opening addresses will be made by Professor Felix Tan, associate dean research and acting dean of AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies, and professor Azman Azwan Azmawa of Malaysia, president of the ACMC.

Among papers to be presented are topics such Media, Gender, and Intersectionality in the Pandemic Times; Lockdown Love: Computer-mediated Romantic Intimacies among Select Gay Filipino Couples; The Articulation of Papuan Women Ethnic Identity on Facebook; AUT’s Cindy Wang on Anyone can be a Vlogger: Sri Lankan Moviegoers in Covid-19 Pandemic Era.

Critical thinking
AUT’s Rahman and associate professor Petra Theuissen will jointly present a paper titled Concept Maps as Foundations for Critical Thinking in Public Relations Study.

Other papers to be presented include The Weibo Discussion about Taiwanese Legislation of Same-Sex Marriage presented by Massey University’s Fei Xiao.

Also, Rahman will present a timely paper after the New Zealand’s 2019 mosque massacre titled Shifting Dynamics in Popular Culture on Islamophobia Media Narratives.

Among the conference moderators is Jim Marbrook, a filmmaker and an AUT senior lecturer in screen production who in 2020 was co-producer of the documentary Loimata, The Sweetest Tears that won the 2021 FIFO grand jury prize in Tahiti. He will moderate a “media in quarantine” session.

Other moderators include associate professor Camille Nakhid, chair of the Pacific Media Centre which has been in hiatus for a year, Dr Theuissen and Deepti Bhargava, who will moderate a “crisis in communication challenges” session.

The conference begins this afternoon and ends on Saturday.

• The conference programme

Both the INEOS and Altrad logos will be emblazoned on the All Blacks jerseys and shorts for the next six years from 2022 and critics say both are bound to tarnish New Zealand’s clean, green image.

Imagine, in the opening match of the 2023 Rugby World Cup both the All Blacks and France will be wearing the albatross-like Altrad brand, and both seeming to endorse a company that dabbles in worsening climate change.

Again, New Zealand Rugby (NZR) is on the wrong side history and flying in the face of environmentalists the world over who came together in Glasgow for COP26 earlier this month to labour the point that climate change is here right now.

• READ MORE: New protest slaps NZ Rugby over INEOS oil deal blow to Pacific
• Rugby: France demolish All Blacks 40-25 in Paris
• Très magnifique as fabulous French serve up telling lessons for All Blacks

The All Blacks jersey will carry the Altrad logo which AIG has adorned for 10 years, and the back of the shorts carry the giant British petrochemical firm INEOS logo which is owned by James Ratcliffe who was valued by Forbes magazine as having $14.9 billion and 26,000 employees.

Who is Altrad? A quick search on your browser comes up with screeds of material virtually all positive about its owner Mohed Altrad, 73, a tale of rags-to-riches for the French-Syrian businessman who is valued at $3.3 billion, has 42,000 employees and is the owner of Montpellier Heralt Rugby club in the Top 14 elite.

What does Altrad do? “Altrad is a world leader in the provision of industrial services, generating high-added value solutions principally for the Oil and Gas, Energy, Power Generation, Process, Environment and Construction sectors. The Group is also a recognised leader in the manufacturing of equipment dedicated to the Construction and Building market,” according to its website, and that doesn’t mention the work it does at nuclear power sites.

However, Altrad either doesn’t participate or disclose to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) which conducts disclosure from companies willing to engage with the project.

Combined deal worth $50m a year
For NZR the deal with Altrad is in excess of $120 million and $8 million from INEOS with the combined deal believed to be around $50 million a year.

“INEOS have been caught out at the far end of those who are being seen as not playing their part in climate change mitigation and obviously positioning themselves accordingly,” said former All Blacks captain Chris Laidlaw, one of 100 signatories on an open letter sent by Kiwis in Climate to NZR decrying the deal with INEOS last month.

“They will be thinking about it now because the fuss is erupting, there is not much more that I can say other than it is not a good look for New Zealand.

“It is not a good look that we are on the backfoot and up in the climate change stakes and the rugby union have to think about it in those terms that it all adds up to not being in their interests to go ahead with these is drawing a fairly longer bow.”

As a former All Black, Laidlaw in his public service career was also a tireless campaigner against apartheid which saw rugby on the wrong side of history once again.

In 1986, Laidlaw became New Zealand’s first resident High Commissioner to Harare, representing New Zealand’s interests throughout Africa. In 1989, Laidlaw was appointed Race Relations Conciliator.

‘A great shame’
“I’ve always thought the rugby union has been behind the play when it comes to social or political awareness, and they are showing it again now which is a great shame,” Laidlaw told Asia Pacific Report.

“If you asked most former All Blacks what they think about that, they are probably not going to give the answer you want, I just know that as a rule they are not connected with the political dimension we are talking about here.”

For Professor Dave Frame, director of the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute at Wellington’s Victoria University and another of the signatories, it was a simple equation.

“I don’t see it as anything against New Zealand rugby, it is more as being about fossil fuel companies …I get why they spend money advertising in the motorsport industry, and they are enormously profitable companies,” he said.

“So, I think they are a bit like cigarette and alcohol companies sponsoring sport and these are things that we know to be harmful in one way or another to the environment.

“The All Blacks are a precious national brand and not just a company.

“Some of their own declared values, things like be a good ancestor, don’t really fit well in the 21st century being sponsored by a fossil fuel conglomerate.

Fossil fuel sponsorship ‘obsolete’
“Any fossil fuel sponsorship of a national rugby team it feels obsolete it feels like the sort of thing that it wouldn’t take much to decline. We shouldn’t be giving social licence to organisations which are actively causing one of the world’s greatest problems,” said Professor Frame who happens to be a Crusaders fan.

“If they’ve got spare money, they should stick that money into research and development into non-emitting energy technology rather than laundering their reputations via things like the All Blacks.

“That to me doesn’t feel right, I think it will be like turning up these days in a Rothmans or Benson & Hedges jersey or something like that.

“It is worse in some ways because people who are smokers choose to smoke like I say these are phenomenally profitable companies, you look at other sports like football.

“The champions league is probably one of the biggest annual sporting events in the world and champions league final, and they are sponsored by Gazprom and now the Saudis have bought Newcastle United [Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund-backed consortium for £305 million] so they will be in there as well.

“These are profoundly profitable companies that are doing an enormous amount of environmental harm that is already being felt and it is disproportionately being borne by the poorest people in the world, and the leaders of these companies have this money to splurge on trinkets like football teams and rugby teams and that seems wrong,” Professor Frame said.

“I object to fossil fuel companies sponsoring sport in principle, I don’t have specific views on particular companies I don’t know of like Altrad although I do know a little bit about INEOS.

A place in motorsport
“They have their place like in the motorsport industry where they are encouraging more efficient design and that is a more arguable place, but I struggle to see the link between a fossil fuel company and rugby.

“We ought to have moved past it, and I think society will, I hope, soon withdraw its licence for this sort of reputational laundering,” said Professor Frame.

Laidlaw said he had looked at INEOS and thought they were not a good fit for NZR.

“They are not doing it for the betterment of rugby, I suspect therefore as seen as good citizens these companies choose their sponsorships arrangements very carefully and strategically, we all know that,” Laidlaw said.

The fact that they are a company that is intent now — right in the middle of when it’s very obvious we need a dramatic change in climate change management — buying up petrochemical plants around the world does not send the right signal.

“So, they are not a good partner. Any company that is in the middle of this kind of syndrome really does not warrant much attention as a donor or a partner.”

“It is very galling and a very large chunk of (rugby) supporters are really not much interested in climate change.

‘Pushback and backlash’
“Again, there will be some pushback and backlash but all the fuss in the world, once they have signed that agreement, they will just tough it out.”

What chance then of a court action, like that in 1985 when club players and lawyers Patrick Finnegan and Philip Recordon sought and gained an interim injunction that was granted by Justice Maurice Casey, stopped the All Blacks tour to South Africa.

“I was in the courts in 1985. I was astounded that the judge decided to provide an interim injunction, it was a very surprising decision given the law, it was a very good decision, and everyone was very pleased,” recalled Laidlaw.

“Well, not everyone, the Rugby Union was very displeased but on the same scale I would doubt it would, but you never know but it would be very interesting to see that happen.”

However, he doubted that such an action would take place with NZR’s deal with INEOS and Altrad.

“This is more an emotional thing than international law, there is nothing illegal about it, there is nothing in terms of human rights or anything like that. It is really not as compelling, I’m afraid.

“They might be moral companies but when it comes to climate change, they are missing the point.

Hard to persuade people
“Even then it is going to be quite hard to persuade people of the merits of this in terms of the argument being about climate change.”

The problem with climate change, he said, was people could not see the tangible effects of it in New Zealand.

“You can’t see climate change, you can see some of the side effects of it, but it is too big a thing for most people to comprehend.

“That is the fundamental problem, I’ve been through this as the chair of the regional council [Greater Wellington Regional Council] for some years and trying to get people from the farming community and others to actually convince themselves that they really have to be part of the solution is very, very hard, even now.

“We are getting some progress but dramatic action it is almost impossible to get, to persuade people. It is not in their material interest to move, and they won’t.

“There is only one side that you can be on this issue while it’s ephemeral to climate change, it is not a good look for New Zealand Rugby, and they are clearly going to be on the wrong side of history if they do it,” Laidlaw said.

• France completely dominated the All Blacks, winning 40-25 in Paris yesterday and handing New Zealand their second loss in row, and a third loss in a season for the first time since 2009. And, the Black Ferns were beaten by France as well, going down to them 29-7 in Castres to complete their tour losing all four tests to England and France. Their two years without playing a test because of covid-19 has seen the English and French steal the march on them ahead of next year’s Women’s World Cup in New Zealand.

October 2021 was a horror month for Facebook as the headlines screamed “Facebook under fire” which started with the social media behemoth suffering an outage for several hours.

Then it had a whistleblower — American data scientist Francis Haugen — who accused the company of:

• prioritising growth over user safety;
• bowing to the will of state censors in some countries;
• allowing hate speech to burgeon in other countries;
• ignoring fake accounts that may influence voters and undermine elections;
• allowing the antivaccine message to proliferate; and
• having algorithms that fuel noxious behaviour online.

Add to that, a major impending problem of capturing a young audience who are flocking elsewhere and turning their backs on the oldest social media platform which was founded in 2004 by Harvard students Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.

• READ MORE: Facebook profits top $9bn amid whistleblower revelations
• Other Pacific Newsroom reports
• The Pacific Newsroom

Even so, its success as the leading platform is undeniable with it announcing a $9 billion quarterly profit in October with a massive 3 billion users.

It was the access to smartphones when they were offered in the Pacific and technology that drove Facebook’s popularity to largely receptive devotees. The uptake of the social media platform in French Polynesia (72.1 percent penetration by 2020), Fiji (68.2 percent, Guam (87.8 percent), Niue (91.7 percent), Samoa (67.2 percent) and Tonga (62.3 percent) made it a no-brainer for Sue Ahearn, founder of the highly credible The Pacific Newsroom page to use the platform.

Measured success
The success of The Pacific Newsroom page can be measured by the site garnering in excess of 40,500 members most of who can participate actively by contributing to the page.

Ahearn is no stranger to the Asia-Pacific region. An Australian journalist for more than 40 years, 25 at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), who originally hails from Martinborough in New Zealand, she was drawn to set up the page primarily because of misinformation that tends to flourish in the Pacific news.

“It came to me about four years ago when the ABC cut back on all of its coverage of the Pacific, and I could see there was a big gap there,” she says.

“The ABC was only providing a small service and there was a lack of interest in most of the Australian media. You could see the technology was changing, how the information was flowing from the region was changing.’’

The apathy for a thirst for Pacific knowledge has had a profound effect on insularity in the media, especially in Australia and New Zealand, although the Public Interest Journalism Fund is attempting to address that in some way in New Zealand.

“I wish I knew, Sean Dorney, Jemima Garrett and all of the Pacific journalists just can’t fathom why is there so little interest in our region among the Australian media,’’ says Ahearn.

“It doesn’t make sense. There tends to be three or four journalists that cover the region and try to convince news outlets to run their stories or send reporters, and that has become very difficult.”

Only Pacific correspondent based in Pacific
Natalie Whiting of the ABC and the recipient of the Dorney-Walkley Foundation grant 2021 is the only journalist from Australasia who is based in the Pacific. She is stationed in the Papua New Guinean capital of Port Moresby.

“In New Zealand, that’s not a problem and New Zealand does good coverage of the Pacific. New Zealand has a much closer relationship with the Pacific,” Ahearn says.

However, Michael Field in Auckland, a page administrator and a veteran of the Pacific who went to journalism school with Ahearn, had qualms about the coverage out of New Zealand.

“The thing that really bugs me is that only Radio New Zealand (RNZ) seems to be doing Pacific news. For example, you’d pick up the (New) Herald and see who’s covering the hurricane out in Fiji only to see it is a re-run of a RNZ story,” says Field.

“It bothers me. The Herald should have had a different angle on the story, RNZ a different angle, The Dominion Post would be different and there would be work for stringers in the Pacific. Now that is not the case because RNZ takes up everybody else’s work and runs it that way,

“I guess that is the reality of it now, but it seems the voice of the Pacific these days is state radio.

“Call me old fashioned, but I’d be too embarrassed to run a story quoting another media organisation, and if you had to do it you’d do it grudgingly. We are starting to fail in the coverage of the region,” he says.

Success stirs amazement
The success and growth of The Pacific Newsroom as an organic, quasi news agency akin to Reuters, Agence France Press (AFP) or Australian Associated Press (AAP) in a tiny way, has caught Ahearn by amazement.

“I am surprised because we have a lot of engagement, some stories get 80,000 or 90,000 engagements so there is a lot of interest in it, and I think it fills a huge niche.

She speaks about the talanoa concept of The Pacific Newsroom.

“It’s like a town square where people can meet, share stories and talk about what is happening. Michael (Field) and I spend an enormous time on this project and we’re basically volunteers, we’re not being paid or making any money from it,” she says.

Nor would she entertain the thought of applying for funding either in New Zealand or Australia, preferring instead to maintain their editorial independence.

“Mike and I have discussed this, and we think one of the main attractions of our site is it is not monetised, that it is a voluntary site, there are no advertisements on it, we try and keep it independent, and we are both at the stage in our lives where we’re not working fulltime in the media,” Ahearn says.

“We’ve got time to spend doing this as a public interest, we really enjoy doing it too, it’s a lot of fun.

Many great stories
“There are so many great stories in the Pacific that need to be amplified to the world.

“Things are happening with technology and it’s giving a much stronger voice to the Pacific whether it’s on climate change or fishing or other important issues and that is why it is going to get stronger and stronger,” Ahearn says.

Among the stories that gained the site momentum was the University of the South Pacific (USP) having its vice-chancellor and president Professor Pal Ahluwalia at the centre of controversy during his first term when Fiji government and educational officials tried to oust him from office in the so-called USP saga, eventually unceremoniously deporting him in a move widely condemned around the Pacific.

“The big story which moved us along was the USP saga last year, for quite political reasons which had to do with the players, we were leaked all the reports and people could see if it got a certain amount of information on Pacific Newsroom that things might happen, and it did,” Field says.

“More recently we’ve had the same with the Samoan elections where a number of players wanted to be interviewed directly; the former Prime Minister (Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi) seemed to have some misinformed view that we are more powerful than we are. We cope with that so it is constantly moving thing.”

Another worrying development were the libel laws in Australia where last month the court ruled publishers to be liable for defamatory comments.

“The libel laws, it’s another tension and another thing we’ve got to watch. We watch it like a hawk (as moderators) and that is not to characterise the particular audience we’ve got,” Field says.

‘Shooting your mouth off’
“Shooting your mouth off seems to be regarded in much of the Pacific as a God-given right — ‘why you trying to stop me from saying this’, we just delete people now. We tried saying to people right at the beginning we didn’t need expletives, swear words and all that stuff, and we were going to take them down.

“It is learning experience, moderating a site like Pacific Newsroom can be hard, depressing work and sometimes there’s a lot of people that sort of feel they have to say something even though it is a complete nonsense, and it is hard yakka that sort of stuff,’’ Field says.

On the flip side of it were the tangible rewards that make it all worthwhile.

“I can remember one particular point where we were tracking a superyacht that was tripping around Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga; there were people from quite remote village areas of these countries that would send us pictures saying, ‘here is a picture of the yacht that has just passed my village ‘. Whereas back in the day you tried to get a shortwave radio operator to tell you what happened three weeks after the event.

“The Pacific is now full of people with smartphones and with good connections so we can cover everything in the Pacific,” Field says.

As for the credibility of the site, Field declined an approach from a major mainstream New Zealand media company that sought copyright and permission to use the material that was published.

Then there was the young journalist from another mainstream media company who asked Field for a contact in relation to a Vanuatu story, telling Field that they all shared their contacts in the newsroom. Needless to say, he went away disappointed and empty-handed.

Ancient settler societies
Just how well The Pacific Newsroom is regarded in the Pacific is summed up eloquently by history associate professor Morgan Tuimaleali’ifano of the USP who tells it with a Pacific panache.

“Apart from Australia, New Zealand, Tokelau, Hawai’i, Guam, American Samoa, West Papua, Rapanui, and the French territories (New Caledonia, Uvea and Futuna, Tahiti), the nature of independent and self-governing Pacific societies is that they are ancient settler societies steeped in conservatism,” Tuimaleali’ifano says.

“While their constitutions have absorbed Western influences, imperial laws, Christianity, fundamental freedoms/rights, monetary capitalism, they remain steeped in ancient systems of governance based largely on hereditary hierarchies.

“Two worlds co-exist with the constitutional democratic model heavily influenced by kinship patterns of thought and behaviour. Within kinship hierarchies, there exists diverse governance structures and no two villages share the exact governing structure,” he says.

“Equally important are the constitutions and parliamentary legislation. These law-making institutions together with the judiciary are constantly evolving as they must with changing circumstances and best practices.

“It is within these social dynamics that journalism provides the Fourth or Fifth Estate to maintain an even keel on the Pacific’s growth as a viable region of nation-states.

“The Pacific Newsroom plays a vital role, of mirroring the changing Pasifika people needs and commenting on sensitive matters that many may find unsavoury difficult and overwhelming to articulate within ultra-conservative societies.

‘Without fear or favour’
“Without fear or favour, The Pacific Newsroom and its sister networks provide a critical service for a multi-faceted Pasifika struggling to reconcile and reshape a new consciousness for Pasifika.

“These include the enduring issues of regional identity and solidarity and unity within the context of relentless ideological and geopolitical power plays.”

As associate professor and head of journalism at USP Shailendra Singh in Suva, who continues to strive to keep his students well abreast in journalism under draconian media laws in Fiji, says:

“It is indeed a success story, due to a large following, because of media restrictions in Fiji. Users from Fiji especially feel more comfortable expressing themselves on this page.

“The page is prudently and professionally moderated, so it is respectable. The page uses information from credible news sources. (Independent sources like Bob Howarth on Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste; former Vanuatu Daily Post publisher Dan McGarry; current Pacific Island Times publisher Mar-Vic Cagurangan; and photojournalist Ben Bohane, until he returned to Australia from Vanuatu; as well as David Robie‘s Asia-Pacific Report which is a huge contributor to the page).

“I promote USP journalism students’ work on Pacific Newsroom. It is exemplary of how Facebook can support democracy.”

A vital source of information in the covid era. You get a cross-section of news and views on one platform. It is definitely the most popular virtual “kava bar” in the Pacific.

• Browse The Pacific Newsroom

The Pacific Newsroom – the virtual ‘kava bar’ news success story #ThePacificNewsroom #AsiaPacificReport @shrek45 #mediafreedom #independentmedia @RSF_inter @RSF_AsiaPacific @sueahearn @MichaelFieldNZ @ShailendraBSing @wansolwara @USPWansolwara https://t.co/9m7DJ0DUq6 pic.twitter.com/QIJUlvsbFu

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) November 5, 2021

The warning is stark — New Zealand is on the verge of a “tsunami” of dementia cases and the government can ill-afford to merely acknowledge the University of Auckland’s Dementia Economic Impact Report 2020.

And while it may not receive the priority which goes to dealing with the covid-19 pandemic, it is nonetheless a concern.

The report found an estimated 69,713 people — or 1.4 percent of the population — were living with dementia in 2020 and that number is projected to more than double to 167,483 — or 2.7 percent of the population — by 2050.

• READ MORE: Number of New Zealanders with dementia will increase in 30 years — report — RNZ Checkpoint

The alarming statistic is that the number of Māori, Pacific and Asian people with dementia is expected to triple, while the number of Europeans with dementia is expected to double.

“This is the fourth dementia report we’ve written and the last three reports have all talked about the baby boomer generation coming up to retirement age and people living longer,” says Dr Etuine Ma’u, lead author of the report and a Tongan.

“So we have this massive bulge of 65-year-olds coming through since 2011. This report now is saying, look at the tsunami, the surge of cases that is here now,” the senior lecturer at the University of Auckland and consultant psychiatrist at Waikato hospital says, sounded a stark warning.

“It is concerning because at the moment we’re sitting at about 15 percent of the population of people with dementia being Māori, Pasifika and Asian and that is going to rise to a quarter and they are growing a lot quicker because the population is ageing a lot quicker.

Worry that it’s an underestimate
“The worry is that it is an underestimate and that is because we had a paper out earlier this year looking at the risk factors for dementia and what is shown is that, particularly for Māori and Pacific, their risk factor burden is a lot higher than European which means that they are probably at a higher risk of developing dementia anyway,” Dr Ma’u says.

At the same time that the report was launched, an updated action plan was also presented to Associate Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall.

“The plan is really a call to action for the government, the plan is really trying to highlight to the ministry the urgency of addressing dementia,” Dr Ma’u says.

While the reports have all been acknowledged, nothing further has been done since 2008.

“I don’t think that they have (the past four governments) paid attention to them in any practical sense. They’ve always acknowledged the reports when they have come out and they’ve always acknowledged that the problem is coming,” Dr Ma’u says.

“I think what is urgent about the current report is that it really shows the problem is here right now.”

Closer to home
For report co-author Auckland University of Technology associate professor Dr Rita Krishnamurthi, a stroke and dementia researcher, it is much closer to home.

Her father, Venkata Chalam, died in July 2014 from dementia and that proved a spur to her studies into dementia.

“That was my motivation to do something about this insidious disease because in the last years of his life it was particularly bad,” she says.

“Culturally too, we weren’t going to put him in aged residential care (ARC) where he wouldn’t get the comforts of home, like food and company that he was comfortable with.

“My mother (Sita) wouldn’t hear it; she insisted that he was cared for at home.”

Cultural and social norms were the primary reasons Māori, Pasifika and the Asian communities were hesitant to make use of the ARC.

“The other problem is that because Europeans (or Pakeha) make up the overwhelming majority of the population over 65 with dementia, all of the interventions and services are pitched at that group,” Dr Ma’u says.

Not culturally appropriate
“So they are not culturally appropriate, they are not really acceptable particularly to Māori, Pasifika and many Asian populations. They are not using those services and that means that they are carrying the burden of care and the cost associated with it themselves.

“And that is what the report shows quite strongly.

“We need tailored services, we need tailored intervention and what we need the Ministry of Health and the government to wake up to is that if in the next 20 years non-European people with dementia are going to make up a quarter of all the people with dementia then we are going to have to start targeting services and developing services and targeting policy that is acceptable and appropriate to these different groups.

“There is no one size fits all approach,” he says bluntly.

A year ago research into dementia found 12 significant risk factors that brought the onset of dementia into people.

“There was a big paper that came out a year ago with The Lancet which identified 12 potentially modifiable risk factors for dementia and they calculated what is called the population attributable fraction which is effectively the amount of dementia you could potentially prevent if you could completely get rid of those risk factors,” Dr Ma’u says.

“The risk factors broadly speaking fall into two categories — those that increase the risk of damage to the brain like high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, alcohol, physical activity and diet and then there are factors that impact on your competent reserve, which is basically your brain’s ability to cope and to compensate for any damage.

Active social network
“That is around maintaining a healthy and active social network, your level of education because it challenges the brain more.

“Hearing is a massive one because people who have difficulty hearing have a problem with socialising.”

The cost of hearing aids in New Zealand is a major prohibiting factor, he says.

“We’re hearing things like funding hearing aids is going to make a massive difference but in New Zealand, they are horrendously expensive.”

He makes it clear that the health industry is not geared up to deal with the wave of dementia cases that is impending.

“Are we ready, the short answer is ‘no’, it is the message that Alzheimer’s New Zealand wanted to push across when they presented their dementia plan to the Associate Minister for Health,” he says.

“I don’t think we are prepared: based on the dementia report the costs are really high, estimated at $2.5 billion. Because we are looking at an extra 30,000 people with dementia in the next 10 years and an extra 100,000 people in the next 30 years, even based on today’s dollars, the cost per person is around $30,000-$35,000.

“So we are looking at an extra billion dollars that the government is going to have to find in the next 10 years alone just for dementia and I don’t think the health budget can sustain that.

No cure for dementia
“There is no cure for dementia at the moment, and the only way we can reduce cost is by reducing the prevalence, reducing the number of people.”

He says what is more disquieting is that no studies of the disease have been done in the wider Pacific.

“I don’t know,” he says when asked if studies have been done in the Pacific.

“I can only speak from the Tongan point of view and I can say there are no studies and I’m pretty sure that there aren’t any in Samoa and Fiji either,” Dr Ma’u says impassively.

“Based on the work we did earlier on the risk factors for dementia in different populations in New Zealand I suspect the prevalence of dementia in the Pacific is going to be quite high, the risk factor burdens are going to mirror those of the Pacific population in New Zealand so I think it is going to be high.”

While it isn’t getting the daily headlines that covid-19 is, and he acknowledges that the pandemic deserves the attention, as opposed to dementia which is a silent creep.

“Covid-19 is a huge problem, you just have to look at Auckland to see how massive it is, but dementia is an insidious problem that is just going to keep getting bigger if we don’t do anything about it now,” he says.

Costs of healthcare
“The earlier people get diagnosed, the earlier they put interventions in place, the longer they can live well at home and the longer you can delay things like entry to aged residential care (ARC)… and residential care in New Zealand is where most of the costs of healthcare and the cost of dementia sit.

“We have shown in our report over half of the economic costs of dementia is around social care, predominantly paying for residential care and paying for community care. If we can reduce the number of people entering residential care by supporting them better at home then ultimately you will reduce the costs.

“That’s why personally my big push is around dementia prevention and that is ultimately going to be the way we reduce the costs.

“We are also talking about the need for tailored intervention, the tailored services that Māori, Pasifika and Asian populations are actually going to find acceptable.

“I don’t think we provide the level of service and interventions to people with dementia that they need, there is a deficit all the way across and from my point of view there is a difference in uptake that Europeans use compared to Non-Europeans.

“The report shows that Europeans are using $5000-$8000 more of social care which shows that Māori, Pasifika and Asians don’t go into aged care as much as Europeans do.
“Maori, Pasifika and Asians aren’t wanting to put their loved ones into care because they don’t see it as a place that will meet the needs of their loved ones and that has to change,” Dr Ma’u says.

Awareness of dementia is a problem too, how does one discuss a family member suffering from this disease?

Awareness slowly growing
“It is slowly coming to the public’s attention and the awareness is slowly growing,” he says.

“There is a lot of stigma associated with dementia particularly in Pacific cultures, there is a really poor understanding of what dementia is and the names that are used for it.

“The way it is understood varies from being a part of normal ageing and something just happens and you just have to accept it and deal with it.

“Or through it being something of punishment or karma for bad things done in earlier life.

“We need to shift that mentality to reduce that stigma so that people understand that the changes that are happening in someone’s cognition needs to be looked at, needs to be assessed and diagnosed so we can get the interventions early to provide as much support as possible”

The irony is there is no term to describe dementia in the Islands.

“In Tongan, there is no specific term for dementia. In Tonga the psychiatrist (Dr Mapa Puloka) is trying to get a definition as catastrophic decline “Holo Tamaki’’, effectively trying to describe the deterioration in someone, otherwise, it’s called “Loto Ngalongalo” which means forgetful or they call it “Alasaima’.

“General understanding, they call it crazy ‘fakasesele’.”

The stigma is such that people don’t talk about the deterioration in one’s mental capacity once caught in its vice-like grip that there is no escape from.

When it becomes real

This is where it becomes real. Helen Reddy, daughter of the former leader of the National Federation Party, the perennial opposition in Fiji, Jai Ram Reddy comes into focus.

Jai Ram Reddy is currently in Auckland, at an ARC, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Gone is the charisma, the magnetism and the flamboyance of the once-proud politician and lawyer who revelled in reciting verse and chapter the works of Shakespeare.

He served as the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General in the coup-stricken Dr Timoci Bavadra government in 1987.

He was the first Indo-Fijian that was accorded the right to address Fiji’s Great Council of Chiefs and at the zenith of his powers in 2003, was elected to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania.

Sadly, however, when Helen, herself a lawyer and a senior crown prosecutor in London, endured the MIQ system in Auckland to get to see her father he was a mere shadow of his former self.

That didn’t deter Helen, on one occasion during her visits to see her dad she played a ghazal (old Indian song) from Jagjit Singh.

The lyrics read:

“Hmm hmm hmm … ha ha ha
Hmm hmm hmm … ha ha ha
Hoshwalon ko khabar kya bekhudi kya cheez hai
Mindful people don’t know about senselessness
Hoshwalon ko khabar kya bekhudi kya cheez hai
Mindful people don’t know about senselessness
Ishq kijiye phir samajhiye
Fall in love, then you’ll understand…
Ishq kijiye phir samajhiye zindagi kya cheez hai…”

As Helen relays wistfully:

“I saw dad again today. Moments of lucidity. I played the first song on this Jagjit Singh track and he stroked my face so lovingly xx”.

• READ MORE: How NZ’s Public Interest Journalism Fund can help ‘normalise’ diversity (Part 1)
• Perceptions over NZ’s public interest journalism project – saint or sinner? (Part 2)
• Public Interest Journalism Fund

Goal 3: The PIJF says: “Actively promote the principles of Partnership, Participation and Active Protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi acknowledging Māori as a Te Tiriti partner.”

• READ MORE: How NZ’s Public Interest Journalism Fund can help ‘normalise’ diversity (Part 1)
• Perceptions over NZ’s public interest journalism project – saint or sinner? (Part 2)
• Public Interest Journalism Fund

To that end, a three-pillar model was developed for:

• Project funding – for tightly defined projects delivered to a deadline, similar to those funded via the NZ Media Fund Factual stream;
• Role-based funding – supporting newsrooms for the employment of reporters, clearly tied to content outcomes; and
• Industry development funding – including cross-industry cadetships, and targeted upskilling initiatives

Public Interest Journalism does not pander to the murky side of clickbait, advertorial, fake news, censorship, propaganda and voyeurism.

The fund ‘was a necessity’

As experienced journalist and producer Raewyn Rasch, who was appointed by New Zealand on Air (NZOA) as Head of Journalism alludes, the fund was a necessity.

“The impact of covid-19 had exacerbated the decline of traditional commercial media models,” she said.

“Prior to covid-19, rapid technological change and changing consumer behaviour was already causing financial constraints for media organisations as advertising revenues moved away from traditional media outlets towards online platforms and social media.”

It was time to sweep with a new broom as the media grappled with the changing landscape.

“As a result of covid-19, further declines in advertising revenue have resulted in significant journalist redundancies, pay cuts and disposal of infrastructure, with further cost-cutting measures expected,” explained Rasch.

That was confirmed by Crawford Media Consulting, which was engaged to interview industry players and find dominant trends prevalent in the media market.

“The decline in the provision of public interest journalism (PIJ) to New Zealand audiences is real and widespread. At the same time, PIJ output has reduced, the attractiveness of journalism as a career has collapsed.

Closure of journalism schools
This collapse is seen in the closure of journalism schools and the declining applications to one high-profile journalism course,” the report said.

Rasch saw the dire need for a calculated injection of funding to secure the decline in industry numbers.

“Covid-19 has accelerated the need to confront the pre-existing and fundamental challenges facing the news media sector,” Rasch said.

“Media companies have to adapt and transition to more sustainable business models that would fit the future media outlook, and continue to provide vital public interest journalism”.

It was then easy to assume then that Māori, Pasifika and other ethnic minority media had been marginalised.

It came as no surprise that Taualeo’o Stephen Stehlin, managing director of Sunpix, which produces Tagata Pasifika (TP), felt aggrieved at the way the Pacific programme was sidelined by state-owned Television New Zealand.

“I think [PIJF] is a great start and we have [funding] for two roles [for its new website TP+] for two years, although it is more than TP which gets funded from year to year [by the Ministry of Heritage and Culture].

‘Lack of leadership’
“But the big media companies, which we were part of for 27 years, then turned around and dumped us for no other reason than a lack of leadership.

“Personally, it has been good for us but for the development and capacity-building for Pacific people it is appalling because then the training is left to much smaller organisations like us, Coconet and PMN (Pacific Media Network) and we are all tiny in the grand scheme of things,” Stehlin said.

Rasch, however, said the PIJF had worked hard with applications received to fund diversity.

“We are particularly conscious of the need for diversity, in Māori, Pacific, and Asian journalism,” she told BusinessDesk in June.

Selwyn Manning, whose independent company Multimedia Investments Ltd, publisher of Evening Report, applied but was unsuccessful, said the PIJF sought to address issues of diversity.

“There is a clear and considered effort to address diversity through prioritising a biculturalism-first approach,” Manning said.

“And, it is encouraging that Māori media and Māori initiatives were highly represented among those entities that were successful in their funding applications — at least in the first round of PIJF considerations.”

Among five goals
Among the five goals the PIJF applicants had to achieve were to:

• Actively promote the principles of Partnership, Participation and Active Protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi;
• Acknowledge Māori as a Te Tiriti partner; and
• Reflect the cultural diversity of New Zealand

That spoke volumes for the hoops applicants had to jump through, said Manning.

“What was particularly obvious was all applicants were required to address and detail their respective commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Te Reo Māori,” he said.

“This effort was clearly considered and well beyond past tokenisms that mainstream media entities were, in past years, encouraged to address.”

He paid tribute to RNZ’s Guyon Espiner and others for inculcating Te Reo gaining acceptance in the New Zealand media vernacular.

Concerted effort
“Generally in 2021, we have seen a concerted effort on behalf of mainstream multimedia producers to present a bicultural face to their reporting,” said Manning.

“I believe Radio New Zealand producers and reporters first set an excellent benchmark in this regard. Guyon Espiner and others pioneered this bicultural expression, and I have full admiration for their effort.

“The Public Interest Journalism Fund certainly seized on this cultural shift as an opportunity to embed this expression of biculturalism within its funding selection processes,” Manning said.

“New Zealand on Air should be applauded for making such a clear requirement to all PIJF applicants.”

Media consultant and former editor of The New Zealand Herald Dr Gavin Ellis, who was one of a group of independent assessors who made the initial assessments, was in agreement with that view.

“The criteria for the PIJF are certainly wide enough to accommodate broad diversity and the first two funding rounds show Māori and Pasifika media are well represented. Other ethnicities have also received funding.

“Much depends on the applicants: to receive the funding they must present as compelling a case as possible. So the ball is in their court,” Dr Ellis said.

‘No systemic problems’
“I’m satisfied the PIJF has no systemic problems relating to diversity. Indeed, I would say the opposite. Diversity is a key driver.”

Manning took this further with his assertion that diversity went beyond the realms of mainstream media.

“If Public Interest Journalism funding is accepted as necessary to maintain democratic balance, then such initiatives must go further than mere corporate welfare.”

However, diversity brings its own problems and one that the interviewees identified in the Crawford Media Consulting Report. This said:

“There was a consensus that the pipeline of talent into NZ journalism is broken.

“Newsrooms cannot find experienced journalists to fill vacancies and many in the industry believe the tertiary sector is not supplying sufficiently skilled graduates.

“For this reason, interviewees were enthusiastic about the possibility of a funded cadetship programme and other training initiatives,” the report said.

That highlights the constriction created by the dearth of good quality ethnic journalists.

‘Where are these people?’
“With 110 positions in the second round, that is great, the question is where are we going to find these people?” Stehlin asks in exasperation.

“The other problem is the whole media landscape for the last 30 years has been one of a production village where big broadcasters pick and choose so the small voices never get a look in.

“But that has changed now because the younger generation is simply not watching mainstream and they don’t care about current affairs, they would rather watch themselves doing TikTok.

“The pitch (PIJF) is admirable, it will create opportunities but it remains to be seen because there is a very small pool of Pacific journalists to begin with,” he said.

Where then do the likes of freelance journalists like Portia Mao, a Qantas Award winner who has written for North and South, Newsroom, Herald on Sunday, as well as worked for TVNZ Sunday, 60 minutes on TV3, go? Or are they meant to slip through the cracks?

“I have been working as a journalist in doing in-depth reports on big political and economic or cultural events that have happened in mainstream society since 2004,” Mao said.

“It is important to help the community integrate into New Zealand society by helping them to become informed citizens or residents. Apart from writing, I make video programmes.

Chinese candidate interview
“The video interview with Naisi Chen, the Chinese candidate during the last election got more than 8000 hits,” she says.

“I sometimes write in English to let the mainstream know what is happening in the Chinese community and what the community is concerned about. I do think my work is very important and I get no official support at all.

“It is really hard to make a living as an independent journalist.”

Mao has had to write in collaboration with Kiwi journalists whose bylines tend to dominate articles for fear of reprisals from Chinese authorities.

Of immediate concern is rectifying the broken pipeline of Māori and Pacific journalists.

That is where a training programme called Te Rito aims to train and hire 25 journalists and cadets to inject more Māori and diverse voices into the media.

Te Rito is a collaboration between Māori Television, Newshub, NZME, and Pacific Media Network and other media organisations such as Sunpix.

Funding for training
As Mihingarangi Forbes, presenter of the Māori programme The Hui, said:

“Yes, have been funded to do some training with iwi radio stations, also some consultation work to diversify mainstream newsrooms and we have a podcast on RNZ with Tau [Henare] and Shane [Jones] but it has been held up with covid.”

And, as one who observes from the sidelines but provides vital content, training and equipment to the Pacific Island, Natasha Meleisea, CEO for Pasifika TV (funded by the Ministry of Foreign and Trade, MFAT) and has extensive experience in media, marketing and Aadvertising assesses.

“There is a need to build a pathway for more diverse voices in journalism,” she said.

“It is timely to start thinking about broadening or redefining the concept of mainstream [media] to be more inclusive than divisive. Journalism can play an active role in normalising diversity and promoting acceptance.

“We are beginning to see this now, however, there is always more that can be done. There is hope that the PIJF will help encourage more diverse voices on-air, onscreen and online.” Meleisea said.

With the need for diversity in the media, identified by the catalyst of the 15 March 2019 mosques massacre in Christchurch, the PIJF is a bold move into uncharted waters.

Chance for a global standard
As the Crawford report concludes:

“The PIJF will invest more per year than either the UK or the Canadian PIJ schemes, in a country a fraction the size. The potential impact is big, and the scheme has an opportunity to set the global standard in terms of PIJ reinvention.

“It is not an exaggeration to say that for anyone convinced of the value of news, the initiative represents a crucial test. We hope that the information and recommendations in the full report will assist New Zealand in building a world-leading public interest journalism fund”.

At the heart of it will be diversity.

While the All Blacks and Springboks will play their 100th test tomorrow both Pacific rugby teams are preparing for next year’s Super Rugby Pacific and a journey into the unknown.

The Fiji Drua and Moana Pasifika will debut in the 12 team-competition which includes five teams each from Australia and New Zealand.

While the Fiji Drua were awarded their unconditional licence back in April and are yet to complete their roster, Moana Pasifika revealed this week they have just eight places remaining to be filled in their 38-man squad since being granted their licence in July.

• READ MORE: Fijian Drua names 5 players to debut in Super Rugby Pacific season

Interim chief executive officer of Moana Pasifika, Pelenato Sakalia told RNZ Pacific Sport, “we’ll take our time on filling those eight additional spots, but I’d like to think we’ve broken the back of the squad, [because] 30 out of 38 is quite a significant chunk.”

They are likely to name Aaron Mauger, former head coach of the Otago Highlanders, as coach.

Mauger deputised for Tana Umaga when Moana Pasifika came together last year in a one-off game against the New Zealand Māori which they lost 28-21.

Like Fiji Drua they are yet to confirm their coaches although Fiji Drua was to have named their coach this week.

Australian Mick Byrne appointed coach
Late this afternoon Fiji Drua announced experienced Australian Mick Byrne as head coach. Byrne was previously assistant and skills coach for the Wallabies, All Blacks, Japan and Scotland.

He was also assistant coach of the Auckland Blues from 2012 to 2014.

However, Fiji Drua will have to rely on mainly Fiji or regional based players to fill their roster and they are to have a home base in Australia for the first season.

Fiji Drua’s interim chief executive officer Brian Thorburn said the delay in confirming the competition structure had resulted in not being able to sign up players based in Europe.

He told RNZ Pacific Sport: “As a result, many of the guys that were on our original list who were playing in Europe had to choose between a firm commitment and opportunity in Europe versus an unconfirmed commitment coming out of us, and we just couldn’t sign anybody.

“But having said that, every cloud has a silver lining. We’ve got a great pipeline of talent, that’s one of the wonderful things, and we are very happy with the guys that we’re signing be they local provincial rugby or from the sevens sphere.

“Our aspiration is for every player that plays for Drua to be eligible for national duty, but in some cases, we’ll have to compromise that for the first year or two.”

Australian-based Thorburn said there would be times when would have to play a “joker”.

‘Joker’ possibilities
“We’ll have to contract the odd what we call a joker, where somebody who is not otherwise eligible to play for Fiji, might have to fill an area of weakness for us.”

Both he and Fiji Rugby CEO John O’Connor admitted the new rugby franchise would have to contract players not eligible for the Flying Fijians.

“We are starting on a journey and our players here are amateurs. We are transiting them into the professional environment. It’s our first year and we will continue to grow and learn as we participate in the competition.

“That is why we are not competing with those players who are on six-figure contracts in Europe,” O’Connor told The Fiji Times.

Fiji Drua announced their first five players this week with exciting utility back Napoloni Bolaca, an Olympic gold medalist, among their first signings.

Others were Flying Fijians’ hooker Tevita Ikanivere, winger Onisi Ratave who played for the Bay of Plenty in their unsuccessful bid for the Ranfurly Shield against Hawke’s Bay, loose forward Nemani Nagusa and halfback Simione Kuruvoli.

While it appears that the South Auckland-based franchise Moana Pasifika aren’t having recruitment issues, they have nonetheless faced some hurdles of their own.

NZ link criticised
The involvement of the New Zealand Rugby Player Association (NZRPA) chief executive Rob Nichol, who has said three current, potential or former All Blacks can be selected for Moana Pasifika, has drawn the ire of Pacific Rugby Players’ Welfare boss Daniel Leo.

He commented on Twitter that the NZRPA was there to look after the welfare of New Zealand players and shouldn’t be involved in the Moana Pasifika process.

“Their mandate is to advance the NZ players at any cost. Not Pacific Island players,’’ Leo posted on Twitter.

“The fact they are key stakeholders in Moana and one of their employees is the general manager has alarm bells ringing.’’ He was referring to Kevin Senio, former All Blacks halfback, who is the director of Rugby Moana Pasifika.

Senio responded to Dan Leo’s claims when he appeared on Sky Sport’s Breakdown show.

“Eighty percent of the team will have to be eligible and/or have played for Samoa, Tonga or Fiji,” Senio told The Breakdown.

“For those who are going to align themselves into Moana Pasifika, you can’t play for the All Blacks or Australia.”

Feeder franchise
Back in April when former Wallaby turned rugby commentator Morgan Turinui wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald that Moana Pasifika would become a feeder franchise for the All Blacks.

“To put it simply, Moana Pasifika look to be another NZ franchise who will funnel players through to the All Blacks,” Turinui wrote.

World Rugby has confirmed a £1.2m (NZ$2.3 million) annual funding package for an initial three-year period to support the two franchises, Fiji Drua and Moana Pasifika, in joining Super Rugby from 2022.

Australian authorities’ heavy-handedness and the use of the covid-19 pandemic to curb civic and media freedoms are major concerns in the latest report, People Power Under Attack 2020, released by the international non-profit organisation CIVICUS.

Australia was downgraded last year (2019) and is still rated as having freedoms “narrowed” with Fiji, Nauru and Papua New Guinea remaining in the “obstructed” category.

However, there are bright spots for civic freedoms across the Pacific compared globally with the report finding that 87 percent of the world’s population now live in closed, repressed or obstructed countries.

• READ MORE: People Power Under Attack – the full report

“For many observers, the state of civic space in Pacific may seem relatively positive. However civil society groups are concerned about the increasing use of laws to silence dissent,” said Josef Benedict, Asia-Pacific civic space researcher for the CIVICUS Monitor.

“They are also worried about attempts to censor journalists and cover up criticism, especially around governments’ mishandling of the pandemic,” he said, as reported widely in Asia Pacific Report in May.

In the Pacific region, the CIVICUS Monitor documented the use of restrictive laws against activists and critics.

Australia deployed its Intelligence Services Act to prosecute a whistleblower for disclosing the bugging of Timor-Leste government buildings in 2004, with essential parts of the trial to be held in secret.

Criminal libel laws ‘chilling’
In Fiji, the Public Order (Amendment) Act 2014 has been used to silence and prosecute critics, including trade union leader Felix Anthony, while in Samoa, criminal libel laws continue to create a “chilling effect” for those wanting to speak up and criticise the authorities, the report found.

There were concerns raised about the promulgation of a public health emergency law in Papua New Guinea which was passed hurriedly without adequate consultation and contains various provisions that could restrict human rights without adequate oversight.

Censorship was another major another violation documented by the Monitor in the region; and it was particularly concerning during a pandemic, when access to accurate information is vital.

In August 2020, Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama ordered the Fiji Broadcasting Corporation, which is run by Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, brother of Fiji’s Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, to stop airing a debate.

n Vanuatu, media outlets were not allowed to publish articles on covid-19 without government authorisation, and in the Solomon Islands the authorities sent out a memo threatening to sack staff who post comments online criticising the government’s covid-19 response.

Tonga passed new regulations that could be used to restrict press freedom in August 2020, while Nauru continued to impose high visa fees on foreign journalists hoping to access the country to report on human rights issues.

Also alarming were reports of harassment of activists and journalists.
In Australia, even as fires and floods swept the country, environmental and climate action protesters were publicly vilified, with the Prime Minister Scott Morrison branding environmental activists as “anarchists”.

Experienced journalists attacked
In Papua New Guinea, the police minister attacked two experienced journalists in April 2020 and called for them to be sacked.

“Australia was downgraded last year to ‘narrow’ but still we continue to see restrictions on civic freedoms and a growing climate of intimidation aimed at discouraging dissent,” said Benedict.

“A range of problematic security laws have had a chilling effect on journalists and whistle-blowers. There have also been efforts to weaken privacy rights in the name of national security while stricter anti-protests laws are being pushed through.”

Despite this onslaught against civic freedoms, in the past year there have been some small victories such as the passage of the whistleblowers law in Papua New Guinea. In April 2020, four women made history by winning seats in the Kiribati parliament, the highest number of women so far.

Civil society and community groups in the region have also continued to organise and mobilise against mining, logging and development projects affecting environmental and indigenous rights, including in the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand.

More than 20 organisations collaborate on the CIVICUS Monitor to provide an evidence base for action to improve civic space on all continents.

The Monitor has posted more than 500 civic space updates in the last year, which are analysed in People Power Under Attack 2020.

Civic space in 196 countries is categorised as either closed, repressed, obstructed, narrowed or open, based on a methodology which combines several sources of data on the freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression.

• More information

In this new covid-19 world, environmental and climate crisis defenders are developing new ways to cope and operate under the pandemic constraints.

Groups as diverse as the local branch of the global environmental campaigner Greenpeace Pacific, Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), the Green Party in French Polynesia and Greenpeace New Zealand have found solutions.

They have followed in the traditions of the Fiji-based Pacific Climate Warriors – part of the global 350 movement – who have drawn attention to environment and climate crisis issues with colourful and dramatic protests.

• READ MORE: InfoPacific – the geojournalism project
• Pacific environmental defenders on Earth Journalism Network

Climate Warriors coined the phrase: “We are not drowning, we are fighting.”

The Pacific faces mounting climate change issues, environmental degradation, rapidly rising sea-levels, massive king tides with the salty sea affecting arable land, coral acidification, pollution and – just to make matters worse – wildlife poaching as the plundering of the region’s fisheries goes unabated.

“Climate change could produce 8 million refugees in the Pacific Islands alone, along with 75 million in the Asia-Pacific region within the next four decades [has] warned a report by aid agency Oxfam Australia,” wrote the Pacific Media Centre’s director Professor David Robie in Dreadlocks a decade ago signalling the dire need even then for environmental defenders to pick up the pace.

Greenpeace head of Pacific Auimatagi Joseph Sapati Moeono-Kolio realises that need and is thankful that most parts of Pacific are being largely spared from the covid-19 pandemic that has raged across the world, leaving his organisation free to pursue its green goals.

“Fortunately, many island nations in the Pacific are free of covid-19. As a result, Pacific climate leaders are able to continue our moral and ethical fight for climate justice,” says the Samoan climate change campaigner.

“We are doing so by leading the world in transitioning to renewable energy – in fact Samoa is on track for 100 percent renewables by 2025.

“So, while covid-19 has slowed several things down, the transition to renewables, as an important pillar of climate action, has stepped up.”

Climate change on back burner
The pandemic has forced leading climate change advocates of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS), such as Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, who was president of the 2017 Conference of the Parties COP23 to push the issue onto the back burner.

Pacific Island climate frontline states such as Kiribati, Tuvalu, Tokelau and Marshall Islands along with Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea (Carteret Islands) and the Federated States of Micronesia require a champion for their cause. However, the pandemic has put paid to that, as Auimatagi points out.

“Because of covid-19 our global advocacy moments to elevate the voices of Pacific leaders demanding climate action are limited,” says Auimatagi.

“We are also working on a documentary called Finding Hope: Samoa, where we will meet with people from all walks of life and share their truth of what is happening in their villages as oceans rise and warm.

“With covid-19 and climate change combined, we are seeing dual impacts such as in Vanuatu during the most recent cyclone  – Harold in April 2020.

“Communities and families were all social distancing and then the cyclone hit so they needed to decide whether to stay apart at home or take shelter in emergency refuge centres,” he says.

From that occurrence emerges the real and immediate threat of making climate change of secondary importance despite an increase in adverse climate events.

Working hard for the Pacific
“Pacific communities are among the first to feel the full impacts of climate change, and there is a threat that while the world is focused on covid-19, that climate action takes a back seat,” says Nick Young of Greenpeace New Zealand.

“Greenpeace internationally is working hard to make sure that isn’t the case.

“The covid-19 recovery also offers a unique opportunity in this regard as billions are spent to stimulate economies around the world and Greenpeace in New Zealand and elsewhere in the world is pushing for a Green Covid-19 Recovery that invests in climate resilience.”

Greenpeace initiatives and campaigns as environmental defenders are still continuing, albeit at a slower pace than usual.

“All of the core Greenpeace campaigns around transforming agriculture and energy, protecting the oceans and shifting away from single-use plastics remain active,” Young says.

However, it is more than the pollution that is a concern with the ocean. Auimatagi talks about this.

Ocean poaching problem
“Ocean poaching is ongoing, carried out by the Chinese and Japanese flagged vessels. While Samoa has one of the smallest Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), places like Micronesia and Kiribati are much harder to enforce as they have much larger EEZs.”

As Jacky Bryant, president of the Green Party in French Polynesia points out: “The 5 million km/2 of the EEZ (Exclusive and Economic Zone) are open to all kinds of abuse by foreign ships and is under surveillance by only one ship belonging to the French state.

“From time to time we have a fishing vessel that gets stranded on the reef carrying tonnes of fish, some legal, some illegal.”

Last month, the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) continued its coordination and commitment to regional fisheries surveillance operation.

The 17-nation organisation is based in Honiara, Solomon Islands and its members comprise: Australia, Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

The FFA is charged with protecting Pacific fisheries from poaching among other cooperative activities.

It has recently completed its “Operation Island Chief” (August 24-September 4), conducting surveillance over the EEZs of Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa, Tonga and Tuvalu this year.

Challenging pandemic times
FFA’s Director-General Dr Manu Tupou-Roosen says: “During these challenging times with the focus of the world on the pandemic, we welcome the commitment and cooperation demonstrated across the region to deter illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in our waters.”

That concerns Greenpeace as well. Young says: “Illegal and unregulated fishing is still an issue in many places, and certainly in the Pacific.

“It threatens ocean life as well as the resilience of Pacific communities who rely on the oceans for their food and way of life.”

The FFA Regional Fisheries Surveillance Centre (RFSC) team, supported by three officers from the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF), had an increased focus on intelligence gathering and analysis, providing targeted information before and during the operation in order to support surveillance activities by member countries,” the FFA said in a statement.

Aerial surveillance of the nations of the EEZ was provided by New Zealand, Australia, USA and France, assisting the fragile small island developing states in protecting them from poaching or overfishing.

In addition to that the cooperation goes as far as working together to prevent covid-19 from being transmitted in the fisheries operations allowing them to continue contributing Pacific Island economies.

“It is crucial for fisheries to continue operating at this time, providing much-needed income to support the economic recovery as well as to enhance contribution to the food security of our people,” says Dr Manu Tupou-Roosen.

Pollution and climate change still major
Greenpeace Pacific’s Auimatagi says that other than poaching, pollution and climate change remain major issues in the Pacific.

“While marine wildlife poaching is, of course, a big issue, the biggest polluter is one of our nearest neighbours. Australia digs up, burns and exports climate destruction to the whole world in the form of coal.

“Climate change is the number one issue on all fronts, including the environment as it is a threat multiplier. The impacts of climate change such as rising sea levels and warming oceans make the impacts of cyclones and ocean wildlife poaching more severe and more difficult to manage.”

Not so in Tahiti as Bryant explains, where covid-19 has taken hold on that part of the Pacific paradise.

Covid-19 cases in French Polynesia (population 280,000) have now reached more than 2700 cases – including territorial President Edouard Fritch and 10 deaths, and Bryant say this crisis has pushed climate change and environmental issues into a secondary status.

“Attacks to our natural environment such as the exploitation of the biodiversity, our cars’ carbon emissions (Papeete has 120,000 cars but luckily, we are an island with regular easterlies) are of governmental responsibilities,” says Bryant.

“There is no clear scrutiny of the climatic effects on the town planning code for example; no compulsory measures for double glazing; using solar panels is not mandatory and the same for photovoltaic, not even for experimental purposes on
an urban area.

No environmental friendly designing
“There are no projects towards designing more environmentally friendly interisland means of transport in order to anticipate any energy crisis with petrol, for example. We carry on training our youth for the combustion engine,” he adds.

While Bryant laments the lack of action in Tahiti, the Greenpeace organisation remains committed to making a better, environmentally safer world.

“We have pushed for a green covid-19 recovery that puts people and nature first, and we are calling for the replacement of current industrial agriculture system with regenerative farming methods – where we farm in harmony with nature and don’t use synthetic nitrogen fertiliser,” says Young.

“Regenerative farming involves growing a large diversity of crops, plants and animals. Synthetic inputs like nitrogen fertiliser are replaced with practices that mimic natural systems to access nutrients, water and pest control required for growth.

“Replace unnecessary single-use products like plastic drink bottles with reusable and refillable options, including glass. Plastic bags, and bottles are just the tip of the iceberg,

“All of the core Greenpeace campaigns around transforming agriculture and energy, protecting the oceans and shifting away from single-use plastics remain active,” he says.

The last word on the issue comes from the Samoan who has been a strong activist for a greener world, Auimatagi Moeono-Kolio.

“When it comes to the environment, Pacific Islanders are always vigilant no matter what is happening in the outside world: It’s a question of means and resources and geopolitics, it’s a very complicated web.”

This is the fifth in a series of articles by the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch as part of an environmental project funded by the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN) Asia-Pacific initiative.

When I first learned about the mythical place called Hawaiki. I understood it to be Cape Reinga at the tip of Aotearoa New Zealand’s North Island, where the two oceans meet – the Blue Pacific and the Tasman Sea.

As Māori told me, it was the place where their tupuna (ancestors) departed.

In this three-part series Origins (TVNZ), Scotty Morrison, a Te Reo expert and host of Te Karare, goes in search of his Hawaiki and much more beyond. It is a journey through the origins of time in search of where Māori came from.

• READ MORE: The three episodes of Origins

It’s the universal question – who are we and how did we get here? Morrison travels “across the world and through time” to discover just that.

“When our ancestors were believed to be the last people on earth to inhabit these shores, I want to know who they were these people and how they got here,” he says.

He asks the question: “Were they great sailors or starving refugees?”

He goes back to his marae where the carvings depict his tupuna, including Tamate Kapua, captain of the first waka to bring his ancestors to these shores. However, the tales of legends is not enough to convince of roots.

Waka and names
The Ngati Whakaue man describes Hawaiki as the “Homeland” which is how the eldest of his three children is named.

As he explains, every iwi arrived on a different waka and his was no different, arriving as the Ngati Whakaue did on the waka of captain Tamate Kapua

After the tribulations, they finally arrived at Maketu where the Te Arawa iwi takes it name, settling in the Bay of Plenty. They believe the waka set of from a real place which he wants to visit.

In the first episode, he takes viewers of the documentary to the sacred archaeological site at Wairau Bar, or Te Pokohiwi, where some of the first people to arrive in Aotearoa, are buried.

“There is a whole lot of Hawaikis” says Sir Toby Curtis of Te Arawa. “The last Hawaiki is in the Pacific. The other Hawaikis are named in India and Africa before they moved to the Pacific.

“Wherever they stayed, that place was called Hawaiki.

“So, there are many places that are Hawaiki, but the Hawaikii we talk about is here is the Pacific,” the Te Arawa kaumatua says.

Keeps pointing to Rangitea
“The Hawaiki we talk about keeps on pointing back to Rangitea [in “French” Polynesia], and it is important because we want to know where we came from,” says Toby.

That is the quest that Morrison undertakes tracing the journey of the first people to arrive in New Zealand and also the history of the first people to walk the Earth which features him travelling from Polynesia to Asia to Africa.

As Morrison says, the story “starts here with us and the Māori story, but it turns into a story around human existence basically, and where we all seem to have originated from.”

The series was inspired by Meg Douglas of Scottie Productions who has worked on the project for nearly a decade and was motivated by the tales that her father narrated to her about his own epic journey to uncover and write about the origins of his own iwi.

And so, in 2018 Scottie Productions teamed up with Greenstone TV and TVNZ came on board to support the project.

Production started in early 2019. It was a massive task, with research being undertaken through immeasurable hours of sifting through papers, historical books, and talking to people all over New Zealand and the world.

The project began shooting in July 2019 and finished in January 2020 just before the covid-19 pandemic hit the world.

First tupuna to arrive
For Morrison, the next part of his journey was from the Wairau Bar, Te Pokohiwi, where some of the first tupuna to arrive are buried. After learning the secrets of history that the Bar had to offer him to give him a grounding it was time to move on.

Next, he goes to Tahiti, Eastern Polynesia where finds connections through language as he discovers that he can converse in te reo with a man speaking Tahitian Ma’ohi at the museum and similarities in language can only be described as remarkable.

The indigenous language is no longer commonplace but Ma’ohi is starting to enjoy a revival, as Morrison discovers.

He feels a connection to Tahiti even though the journey to Aotearoa is a 4000km and dangerous voyage.

As Jack Thatcher, a master builder from Aotearoa who prepares to sail his waka from Tahiti to New Zealand tells him: “Hawaiki is an ideal, it’s one of those places, it’s one of those places from whence we came and where we settled we had a Hawaiki back to Rarotonga, Tahitinui, Rangitea, so I think Hawaiki might just be moana,”

After travelling to Meheti’a, or Maketu, where voyagers made their final preparation, he then travels to Rangitea (or Rai’atea) to Taputapuatea, a Unesco World Heritage site on Rai’atea, which is said to be the launch place of Tamatekapua’s waka, Morrison’s Te Arawa ancestor.

“I feel as though I’m about to walk to into my tribe’s sacred places,” he says discovering that the Tainui, Te Arawa and Tokomaru waka left Rai’atea for Aotearoa.

Felt in the DNA
“This is a good point to start because when you come here we feel it in your DNA and genealogy as Maori and I think if you take the time to come here you’ll feel it to.”

The calm serenity on the beach where he sits on Rai’atea reveals that to be his personal Hawaiki.

Morrison learns how early Pākehā researchers got the origins of Māori so wrong. He is surprised to find that several traditional folktales in Samoa are replicated in Māori culture and he makes a shock personal discovery at an ancient Vanuatu urupa (burial place).

Much of Pakeha research is debunked by historian Dr Rawiri Taonui who says: “You really need to go in with your eyes and heart wide open because there is a lot of stuff in these books that are exciting and interesting but not true.”

Then in later episodes he explores links with Western Polynesia and goes to Western Samoa, Vanuatu and Taiwan, where Morrison says there are some linguistic similarities with te reo in an usurping discovery which tells the tale of his ancestors voyagers.

It surprises him that Māori may have travelled from Western Polynesia too and the discovery of Lapita pottery in Samoa then takes him to Vanuatu where it came from.

He is welcomed by a challenge by young warriors like a wero but it is the Lapita pots that gives a clue to the colonisation of Vanuatu where he similarities in the words found in common word.

Pots similar to Taiwan
But the Lapita pots are that similar to those found in Taiwan and in 2003 a major burial site or urupa (burial ground) was discovered.

In the final episode Morrison travels to Taiwan and Ethiopia to explore the place that is said to be the origin of us all, and he visits the Cook Islands – the stepping off point for waka heading to Aotearoa hundreds of years ago.

He travels to Eastern Taiwan which hasn’t been inhabited by the Han Chinese and ancient rituals still hold true.

Once again he finds similarities in the language when he ask an indigenous sailor to recite numbers to 10. And he travels inland to find a structure not to dissimilar to the Wharenui back home.

“It is extraordinary how similar this whare is to the whare back home,” Morrison says in astonishment.

However, his last stop 8000 km away in Addis Abba, Ethiopia, said to be “cradle of humanity” and one which Sir Toby Curtis spoke as a knowing elder of Te Arawa.

He discovers the bones of “Lucy” a 3.2 million-year-old woman whose relics can be found at the National Museum of Ethiopia.

Left in ‘search for food’
As it explained to him by the curator of the mueum, human beings left in “search of food”.

In Ethiopia, he visits the Omo Valley where the cradle of humanity is said to be and where the oldest, completely formed human skeleton was found.

The question of where we come from is “always going to be something that’s debated,” says Morrison, and there are many varying beliefs about how we came to be here.

While visiting with a traditional tribal group in the Omo River Valley, Morrison met a chief who took umbrage at the most popular theory of human evolution.

“I said through an interpreter, ‘Do you believe in the theory that eventually monkeys stood up and walked out of the bush and that was the evolution of human beings?’

“And the chief who I was talking to said to the interpreter, ‘Tell him if he says that to me again I’m going to take his head off’,” laughs Morrison

From visiting the Hamar people in Omo River Valley he then returns fron the 5000-year-old journey to the Cook Islands and to familiar surroundings to where three waka sailed – Te Arawa, Tainui and Takitimu.

The afterbirth is buried
As a master builder and carver from Rarotonga Mike Tavaoni says: Avaiki (Hawaiki) is where you are born, where afterbirth is buried. It is simply where you originated,” that is what it means to the Cook Island Māori.

“Ultimately (the journey) has strengthened my commitment to my own Maori culture and I finish in the firm belief that I visited my Hawaikii in Ra’aitea,” says Morrison.

The documentary is a mammoth feat of research and travel and does much to tell where Māori originated from.

• Origins: In search of the mythical Hawaiki and beyond (TVNZ), a three-part documentary series.
  Director: Dan Salmon
• Camera-man: Jack Bryant
  TVNZ On Demand

By Sri Krishnamurthi of the Pacific Media Centre

Climate change action has been “shelved” for the moment in Papua New Guinea says a postgraduate media researcher from the tourism and environmental friendly city of Madang.

“Climate change initiatives are on the shelf right now because the focus is on battling covid-19,” says Stephanie Sageo-Tapungu about the crisis facing her country.

Papua New Guinea is one of the worst hit countries by the global pandemic in a region where most Pacific countries have been able to keep the coronavirus at bay.

READ MORE: InfoPacific – the geojournalism project

She has reveal to me the impact of the coronavirus and how it has derailed climate change action in her homeland.

Sageo-Tapungu is concerned that covid-19 has forced climate change into a secondary role but it still remains a serious concern, especially for her home province of Madang.

She talking with the Pacific Media Centre’s Climate Change and Covid-19 Pacific project as part of a series of interviews which the PMC’s Pacific Media Watch has taken with funding from the Internews Earth Journalism Network (EJN).

Sageo-Tapungu was in the process of returning to her home and family after completing doctoral studies at Auckland University of Technology in Aotearoa New Zealand with concerns for both during this recent interview.

In the latest Papua New Guinea covid-19 statistics today, the country had reported 517 cases of covid-19 infection and seven deaths.

This is a video in a series of articles by the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch as part of an environmental project funded by the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN) Asia-Pacific initiative.

• More Pacific Media Centre Climate Change and Covid-19 Pacific project stories

Six years on from being appointed head of the Pacific Community, Director-General Collin Tukuitonga, a boy born on the tiny Pacific island of Niue, has a voice louder than a schoolboy rugby captain, a voice that serves him well as a Pasifika community leader.

There is little doubt his credentials are impressive for a boy who attended Niue High School and then the University of the South Pacific for foundation years 1 and 2 before arriving in New Zealand from Fiji after the 1987 coup.

Having done his New Zealand Medical Registration exams, he began to excel in the fields he chose.

READ MORE: InfoPacific – the geojournalism project

And excel he did, as his curriculum vitae reads: Director of SPC’s Public Health Division; Chief Executive Officer of the NZ Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs; Associate Professor of Public Health and Head of Pacific and International Health at the University of Auckland; Director of Public Health, NZ Ministry of Health; and Head of Surveillance and Prevention of Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases at the World Health Organisation, Switzerland.

He scoffs at the description of a little boy from Niue who has made it big in the Anglo-Saxon, neoliberal, covid-19 world of today.

“I don’t know about making it big, but it has been definitely different and professionally rewarding, and hopefully I’m making a useful contribution to the community,” he laughs heartily in the Pacific way.

But his contribution to all aspects of leadership in medicine and public service cannot be taken lightly.

‘No holds barred’
As Fijian Dr Api Talemaitoga,  a GP in South Auckland and chair of the Pasifika GP Network who is also part of the Health Ministry’s Pasifika response and who worked with Tukuitonga during the H1N1 flu epidemic in 2009, says:

“He is great because he tells you like it is, no holds barred, no sugar coating the truth,” he says of Dr Tukuitonga.

The fact that Dr Tukuitonga spoke out during the current pandemic crisis, calling for a new public health agency is evidence enough of this.

“Sars and H1N1 were epidemics but covid-19 is a much bigger threat. We can be certain there will be viruses like this in the future,” says Dr Tukuitonga.

“Even if this pandemic settles down it doesn’t protect us from something else coming along. So, it’s always going be a risk for communities right around the world.”

However, while he credits establishing Pacific public health services in West Auckland and the poorer Māori communities in Northland (Ngati Hine and the Hokianga) as deeply satisfying, it is his work as director-general of the Pacific Community (SPC) based in Noumea, New Caledonia, that is the cream of his public service to the Pacific.

But it was fraught with difficulties, which he found a surprise.

Fragile unity in the Pacific
“Being appointed Director-General of the Pacific Community (SPC) and running that organisation for six years was a highlight in my life,” he says.

But, “I learnt just how fragile unity is in the Pacific,” he says this with surprise.

“People talk about regionalism in the Pacific all the time and it is something people seek and desire but that actually is very difficult, elusive and fragile.

“Pacific regionalism and Pacific solidarity come with conditions, there is quite a level of distrust that exists and that’s holding back so many developments,” he says.

“But there are some good things going on – their collective approach to climate change has been impressive.

“Leading up to the 2015 Paris Agreement 2015 globally, nobody gave the Pacific a chance, but they banded together, and influenced some big players and got a good outcome in the form of the Paris agreement.

“The voices of the small Pacific Islands were heard at a global level that wasn’t because of chance. It came from the work of the Pacific Island leaders in communicating their concerns about climate change to the rest of the world,” he says.

Trying to push the polluters
“They were trying to push the polluters of the world to take responsibility for some of the things they had done.”

He praised the work done by Pacific leaders at a time when disunity could have been damaging.

“I do think they have done a tremendous job on climate change so that is an illustration of the Island nations having one enemy in common. Otherwise working together on regional issues is not so straight forward.

But it was considered better in the nation of his origins, he says.

“Niue is fortunate in the sense that if you talk about sea-level rise it is not an really an issue for Niue, but in term of the parts of climate change like killing coral and ocean acidification leading to coral bleaching they do affect Niue.

“They also feel the impacts of severe weather events like severe cyclones like everyone else around the Pacific.

“It is fortunate in that it is a high island and they don’t suffer from the sea-level rise parts but clearly they are vulnerable as everyone else with regards to climate change effects,” he says pensively.

Tokelau also at risk
However, Tokelau, as well as Kiribati, is also at a risk, says Dr Talemaitoga,

“When I visited there several years ago, the king tides were really something to see, the effects of climate change were starting to affect them then,” he says.

As for the heavy polluters, Dr Tukuitonga has a slightly different take on those countries,

“The Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) is in fact one of the important parts of the Paris agreement.

“That is why we spent quite a lot of time setting up the office in Suva to allow and enable the members to rethink and develop and introduce meaningful contributions

“So, I see it as a very important part of the implementation of the Paris agreement. But, like a lot of things, some countries take it seriously and some don’t,” he says.

And the impacts of covid-19 on climate change?

Covid-19 ‘an aggravation’
“In a sense, covid-19 is an aggravation because it would introduce health risks, limit movement of people and their ability to do things, such as their ability to try to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

“I see covid-19 as an additional challenge for the small islands to face on of top climate change,” he says.

The Pacific environment will also be vulnerable to climate change he believes.

Coupled by pollution and various other practices such as overfishing and over-consumption has had an effect, he says.

“The combination of climate change, pollution, population growth, and the exploitation of the environment is a serious threat to the sustainability of the Pacific environment,” he expounds.

“There is a very strong drive to build more hotels in pristine places around the region because the drive for economic development is relentless and that leads to the destruction of our natural environment, so I do think it is a serious concern,” he says about the proliferation of tourist hotels in the region.

“The Pacific Ocean is increasingly polluted by actually pollution from outside the region but also the sea life is being threatened with overfishing and with ocean acidification as a result of that overfishing.

Pollution getting worse
“It will get worse; it has started already. That’s why the UN sustainable development goals are really important because one of those is dedicated to the protection of the health of the ocean.

“It’s already underway and I think we clearly need to do more within the context of climate change to protect and promote the environment around the region.

The same care should be taken when it comes to wildlife in the region.

“Sustaining wildlife goes hand-in-hand with environmental degradation so whatever we do to promote and protect biodiversity should, in fact, look to protecting the few species of wildlife that we have,” he says.

“Most of the small atoll nations in the world have very limited diversity, except the Pacific Ocean is one of the world’s largest ecosystems with quite a lot of biodiversity, some of which we don’t know about yet,” Dr Tukuitonga says.

“I have always been a fan of ecotourism and for travellers who spend a bit more money than the average person. I have never been a fan of bums on seats tourism and especially to little places. Ecotourism is a very important part of development landscape in the region,” he says.

He for one warned against the complacency that has taken hold in the Pacific with regards to covid-19. As a public health specialist, he notices how lax the testing had become in June and warned against that practice publicly.

Complacency factor
“I would have thought testing should have continued in earnest, without a doubt I think complacency is a factor and we should have done more testing,” he says in a few words.

After being 102 days covid-19 free in New Zealand, he used to be keen on the travel bubble to the covid free islands – but no longer.

“I was a keen promoter of that idea, but I would suggest to them right away not to pursue this. I would say to stop it.

“The problem is we don’t know quite what the spread is like in New Zealand and people could go to the Cooks or Niue integrating the virus there, so even if you test for it before going there’s not a guarantee that people with the virus are travelling to the destination so I would discourage it.”

And he has a passion outside his “norm of life”, a heartfelt one at that too.

“I’m very concerned about the Niue language because it is one of the realm languages that is in dire straits because very few Niueans speak it now and there is a very real chance that it will disappear completely.

“I’m part of a community effort to try to revitalise the language to have the young ones to speak the language.

Good health numbers
“It isn’t so bad around Fiji, Samoa, Tonga because there are good healthy numbers still living in those islands but the Cooks, Niue and Tokelau where the majority population are in New Zealand they don’t speak their first language it’s a real concern.

“I believe that absolutely that it is likely to affect their cultural behaviour because language is such a central and critical part of the culture and so while you can participate in your culture without speaking the language it is not the same as being able to speak the language which allow you to participate more fully,” he says.

“So, remember each generation of Cook Islanders and Niueans born in New Zealand would be further and further away from their culture so it is going to be a challenge to maintain,”

And that is likely to bring its own problems as Tonga found out recently.

“People feel disconnected from their social norms and traditional values, family connections are disturbed and of course that is almost an inevitable consequence that young people in particular would turn to drugs and crime. That is why I see languages as a protective element for our people,” he says with conviction.

He admits to being annoyed at not winning the World Health Organisation (WHO) regional director post for the Western Pacific last year when several Pacific nations showed themselves to be at the whim of foreign currencies.

“Only because I felt I had much to offer the Islands, also the Islands have never had a Pacific person in that leadership role, but life has moved on.”

Now the associate dean Pacific and associate professor at the University of Auckland, Dr Tukuitonga has been seconded to the Auckland Regional Public Health Service (ARPHS) one day a week and the service does the covid-19 contact tracing.

“I am happy to come back home and get involved in this. It’s good because it gives me a lot of freedom to explore the things that matter and I’m enjoying it.”

This is the fourth of a series of articles by the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch as part of an environmental project funded by the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN) Asia-Pacific initiative.

A New Zealand youth MP Shaneel Lal is speaking out against education policies that exclude some Pacific Island people from Pasifika programmes and scholarships as unfair.

Lal, who is eighth generation Indo-Fijian, applied for a Pasifika scholarship at the University of Otago only to be told he had to prove he had “indigenous” Pacific Island ancestry because Indo-Fijians did not qualify.

He is not the only one to be rejected on the basis of race – even though he was born in Fiji – but he aims to take the matter up with the Education Minister Chris Hipkins.

• READ MORE: Universities excluding Pacific minorities from Pasifika programmes

Lal told Stuff: “I know I’m Fijian. I’m eighth generation Fijian. I have indigenous [ancestry] along the lines I just cannot draw a family tree and say, ‘this person is an indigenous person’.”

Lal said the policies were unfair as Indo-Fijian people experienced many of the same challenges as other Pacific Island groups.

He said that some universities that did not recognise Indo-Fijians as Pacific people “kind of highlights the subtle racism that’s going on in our Pacific community”.

The Auckland-based student said he struck the same problem when applying for Pasifika leadership opportunities while at secondary school and his cousin had a similar experience when she tried to apply for a place in the Māori and Pacific Admission Scheme (MAPAS) at the University of Auckland.

‘Not enough evidence’
He was told his passport and birth certificate were not enough evidence of him being of Pacific descent and he would need to get a Pacific community leader to vouch for him.

He said that would be difficult having come from Fiji to New Zealand in 2014.

The irony in his circumstance was that he was chosen as youth MP for Minister for Building and Construction, Minister for Customs and Minister for Ethnic Communities Jenny Salesa, who was not responding on the issue.

When asked for a response, a spokesperson from her office said: “Yes, but probably not from the minister. It will be around definitions and criteria.”

Meanwhile, Professor Vijay Naidu from the University of the South Pacific based in Suva – where all Fiji citizens are recognised as Fijian and the indigenous people are recognised as I-Taukei – had a historical perspective on the issue.

“Some years ago, Loraine Pillai who migrated to New Zealand many years ago and retired as a senior high school teacher over there wrote to then Prime Minister Helen Clark about Pasifika identity and Indo-Fijians,” he said.

“Her response was that Indo-Fijians were Pasifika. Apparently, Aotearoa had arrived at this decision when [founding Fiji prime minister] Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara had expressed his disaffection with the absence of Fijians of Indian descent at an official reception hosted for him.

“Back to Loraine’s letter. She wrote her letter because, at a workshop for school administrators in Wellington, she had been told by a woman by the surname of Wendt that Indo-Fijians were not regarded as Pasifika people.”

Education Minister Chris Hipkins has said universities set the criteria for Pasifika scholarships, not the government.

“Climate change may be slower but its momentum is enormous.” – Stuart Chape, Acting Director-General, South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP).

Does anyone remember Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish environmentalist who caused a worldwide climate change stir – particularly among the neoliberal believers – but was voted Time magazine Person of the Year 2019 for her actions before the coronavirus pandemic struck?

It all seems so long ago now that we have a new age of covid-19, but wait, her pleas last year in front of the United Nations served as a warning as does the call from Stuart Chape, Acting Director-General of SREP, late in June 2020 that climate change is still a stark reality – especially for the Pacific.

The momentum for climate change might have slowed, but it still looms larger than life as economies open up again producing greenhouse gases.

READ MORE: InfoPacific – the geojournalism project

As Stephanie Sageo-Tapungu, a doctorate candidate from the seaside town of Madang in Papua New Guinea, says:

“The sea levels are still rising, and the climate is unpredictable now, so we cannot be really sure or predict ‘like this is what is going to happen’.

“The sea levels are going really high; parts of the islands are under the sea and I’ve seen that firsthand because it is happening in my Madang province.”

Sageo-Tapungu adds: “Having a closed economy and other activities did a lot of good when it comes to climate change, but I think it put a lot of strain on people and that can lead to a lot of social problems such as the crime rate going up.”

Illegal logging
Laurens Ikinia, a West Papuan masters student, studying in Aotearoa New Zealand, says that while covid-19 has slowed climate change, his major concern is the illegal logging going on back home in his Indonesian-ruled province.

“A year ago, the governors of his province were invited to attend events held in Florencia, the capital of Caquetá department in the Colombian Amazon, for the civil society, indigenous and local communities, national governments, and international donors for the 2019 annual meeting of the Governors’ Climate and Forests (GCF) Task Force,”  Ikinia says.

“We have forests that are the second-largest producers of oxygen in the world.

“However, I would say because they have been given special autonomy to logging with regulations – and it is still happening in West Papua – so you have to say authorities are not really committed to the climate change agreements,” he says.

“In terms of covid-19 we don’t really know the outcomes or the impacts it has had on climate change because it is just too early to see any reports done on it even though you are aware that covid-19 would bring some good results of in terms of carbon dioxide sinks.

“But when it comes to the economy, from reports I’ve heard in recent days people are being affected by this pandemic and the local communities, unfortunately, cannot survive without help from the government,” he says.

However, SREP’s climate change advisor Espen Ronneberg maintains work is ongoing to address the issues which were thrashed out at the Conference of Parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP23) in Bonn, Germany.

Pledge to phase out coal
Countries pledged to phase out the use of coal and bring global temperatures down by 1.5 degrees centigrade.

Chaired by Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, the summit offered high hopes of gaining solutions and agreements.

However, the Nationally Determined Contributions (countries) (NDCs) continued working against the smaller fragile nations.

Ronneberg says work is still needed, and is going at present in spite of no face-to-face meetings, and technical support is being done remotely – or in some cases where there is in-country expertise (like consultants) they are able to assist SPREP which also faced  challenges to get equipment shipped.

He adds that covid-19 has demonstrated a new global phenomenon which has impacted not just on climate change but on social and environmental structures.

“Dramatically so – this has impacted on economic, social, and environmental scales/levels, and is what we have been saying about climate change for decades,” he says.

“Even though the most conservative estimates anticipate historic declines in carbon emissions this year because of the pandemic, the atmosphere continues to be loading up on too much carbon,” he says.

Claims backed up by lab reports
Ronneberg backs up his claims from lab reports such as that in Hawai’i.

“Atmospheric observations and measurements from labs such as that in Hawaii are observing that we are not seeing dramatic reductions in road transport emissions, nor from electricity generation, only flights and some maritime. Recall, the atmosphere takes quite some time to react to emissions – it’s a fairly turbid system, and gases can linger for many years as well,” he says.

Andrea Ma’ahanua, a Solomon Islander and the education chairperson at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Students Association in Fiji, says she personally believes that covid-19 has impacted on climate change initiatives in her country in various ways.

“Climate change initiative proposals would have to be put on hold due to the current COVID-19 situation.  Due to travel restrictions, expatriates with technical knowledge in this area cannot travel into the country to help facilitate climate change initiatives,” she says.

“Furthermore, movement of locals has been restricted due to the imposed lockdown and in addition, funding initially allocated to climate change initiatives would most likely be diverted to covid-19 related initiatives and activities,

“That is evidently a priority under current circumstances. Therefore, this would result in the decline in climate change initiatives within the country.”

The world’s dependency on each other had greatly impacted on people she went on to say.

Rapid covid-19 spread
“The rapid spread of covid-19 around the world and its impact on our way of life, social structures and economies indicate how globalisation has created interdependency between world states,” she says.

“This global phenomenon has altered our way of life in terms of loss of jobs, a decline in economic activities and restrictions on people’s freedom of movement.

“All activities have ultimately come to a standstill or been changed accordingly to align with current covid-19 regulations.

“This is apparent in the Solomon Islands, where government revenue has substantially decreased as a result of the decline in economic activities.  Furthermore, locals struggle to support their families under the current situation and there has been a noticeable movement of people from urban areas to rural villages in face of this economic hardships,” she says.

“In regard to the re-opening of borders to keep climate change down, I personally believe governments should continue to impose movement restrictions.”

In order to keep the Solomon Islands economy afloat, the government must allow technical staff specialised in the field of climate change or other key economic areas to enter the country, she believes.

And, yes, she thinks climate change has been pushed into the background by covid-19.

Less focus on climate
“I personally observed less focus on climate change initiatives in the Solomon Islands under the of covid-19 situation.  More and more stories being published in the Solomon Islands in previous months have been centred on covid-19 regulations and the state of emergency [SOE].

“In previous meetings, climate change was regarded as the utmost priority on the discussion table.  However, given the covid-19 phenomenon, there has been a major shift of government attention toward covid-19 preventative measures.  This means that climate change would be viewed as the last item of priority on the discussion table,” she says.

However, Richard Clark, who is the Special Assistant to the President (David Panuelo) and Public Information Officer for the Federated States of Micronesia, says climate change initiatives have continued to grow but at a slower pace.

“An example of continuing accomplishments is that in July 2020, President David Panuelo signed Public Law 21-76 which formally prohibited the importation of styrofoam and one-time-use plastic bags,” he says.

“However, the nations’ Blue Prosperity Micronesia programme – which intends to protect 30 percent of the nation’s marine resources – has delayed its scientific expedition until 2021.”

The Federated States of Micronesia is less dependent on air travel and therefore affected less in climate change pollution from that source, as they are from shipping, he says.

“The short answer is that air travel makes up an an incredibly small footprint in global greenhouse emissions. The global shipping industry – on which the FSM is reliant – and the energy sector at large make up the overwhelming majority of emissions,” he says.

Covid-free daily life remains
“As the FSM remains covid-19 free, daily life and structures remain largely the same. However, the pandemic has crippled the tourism sector with approximately 70 percent of formal employees in the sector either unemployed or at significantly reduced hours,” he says of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic globally on daily life.

“The FSM’s largest sources of revenue are through fisheries and through the Compact of Free Association, so from a purely government perspective the economic impacts have not been felt as hard – yet,” he says

“The price of tuna has decreased substantially, which will affect the Pacific region’s fisheries revenues in the next fiscal year. The nation projects a substantial economic decline,” he says.

However, Clark has an opinion too to offer those who would weigh up re-opening the economy as opposed to staying covid-19 safe as a way to keep climate change down?

“The covid-19 pandemic doesn’t play a significant role in fixing the world’s issues with climate change.

“President Panuelo is of the view that economies can die and be revived but human beings cannot be.

“The broader public opinion in the FSM is that the nation ought to keep its borders closed until a vaccine is prepared, but the focus there is on human health. environmental health, by contrast, has not yet arrived in the discussions in either the National Covid-19 Task Force or in the president’s meetings with his Cabinet,” he says.

Backward step? – yes and no
And has he seen evidence of climate change initiatives taking a backward step in the face of covid-19?

“In some respects, yes – and in some respects, no,” he says.

“In the answer of yes: covid-19 has delayed the construction and implementation of the integrated coconut processing facility in Tonoas, Chuuk, which beyond adding significant economic growth to the nation as arguably its most promising development opportunity, would also power Tonoas with sustainable energy,” he says.

“In the answer no: in July 2020 the nation prohibited the importation of styrofoam and one-time-use plastic bags; other climate change related initiatives remain ongoing.”

So, while Pacific countries remained constrained by covid-19, their ambitions to curb climate change remains a very large factor at the back of their minds.

This is the third of a series of articles by the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch as part of an environmental project funded by the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN) Asia-Pacific initiative.

Pacific health specialist Dr Collin Tukuitonga is worried that the latest community transmission of covid-19 in Aotearoa New Zealand “could get very messy”.

“The latest cluster is a worry because the source is unknown and highly probable as community transmission,” says Dr Tukuitonga, who was heavily involved during the H1N1 swine flu epidemic as the chief executive of the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs in 2009.

He has already been seconded to the Auckland Regional Public Health Service (ARPHS) one day a week- and service does the covid-19 contact tracing – apart from his role as  associate dean Pacific at the University of Auckland.

READ MORE: Six more covid cases take French Polynesia total to 77

“Community transmission may decimate the Pacific, Māori and other low-income communities. It is important we get on top smartly,” he told Pacific Media Watch as locked down Auckland braced for a cluster of 13 new cases.

He believes complacency had crept into New Zealand because it had gone 102 days covid-19 free.

“Yes, I think we became complacent – all of New Zealand, not just Pacific,” he said.

Back in early July he called for a designated population health agency saying the covid-19 pandemic had exposed major shortcomings in the funding and delivery of public health.

Testing under par
“Clearly more is needed take for example that testing was under par and they are scrambling to cope with demand now.

“You could argue that this should have been anticipated,” he says.

“A lot depends on the number of new cases. If it is small we’ll cope but if there are many it could get out of hand,” he said.

“Testing levels have dropped and should have been maintained at a high level. We were flying blind,” he said.

His advice was the same as it was in 2009 during the H1N1 flu.

“Yes, we are in Level 3 and 2 and that means avoid mass gatherings, stay home, tangi, celebrations, church gatherings are to be avoided for everyone,” he said.

Following social distancing advice, washing hands and the new advice of wearing a mask in public were all prudent measures, he said.

“We may get more cases so this could get very messy,” he said.

A worry about source
“The worry of course is that we don’t know what the source is and there is a high likelihood of community transmission getting underway and that is the risk for Māori, Pacific and low-income New Zealanders.”

He said it could be the start of the second wave in Aotearoa, but it depended on how quickly the authorities could get on top of it.

“These viral threats are very common features and each outbreak will have its own unique features. It just depends on the outbreaks because some will cause more deaths than others,” Dr Tukuitonga said.

“Clearly covid-19 is much bigger and much more difficult to control.”

Pacific and Māori communities were in a very difficult position because of the level of co-morbidities such as diabetes and respiratory diseases, but more fundamentally there was the problem of overcrowding, housing conditions not conducive and not enough space for people to social distance.

”I’d say forget the kava bowl, forget mass gatherings because you just need one super-spreader in a big gathering and it will just explode,” he said.

The possibility of going to level 4 lockdown remained realistic, he said.

Cancel the rugby
As for the Super Rugby Aotearoa game that had been set down for a sold out Eden Park between the Blues and the Crusaders on Sunday, he said: “Cancel it”.

“If we get more cases tomorrow and the next day it would be just irresponsible to go ahead with that game,” Dr Tukuitonga said.

And having advocated for the opening of a travel bubble with Cook Islands, he now believed that a delay would make sense.

“I was a keen promoter of that idea, but I would suggest right away to stop it. The problem is we don’t know what the spread is like in New Zealand and people could well go to the Cooks or Niue and integrate the virus there. So I would discourage it.”

DOCUMENTARY: By Sri Krishnamurthi, who talks to Jim Marbrook about the making of Loimata – The Sweetest Tears.

Loimata isn’t just a true story of one of the Pacific’s great waka builders and sailors that has been captured in a stirring and visually gripping and poignant documentary.

It is also about the friendship between the aiga (family) of Ema Siope, a Samoan-born Kiwi and master waka builder and the palagi (pākehā) Marbrook family that they took into their hearts and made a magical documentary – that is relevant in this 21st century New Zealand.

Anna Marbrook, who has directed more than 150 episodes of Shortland Street and made documentaries focused on Pacific themes such Te Mana o te Moana – The Pacific Voyagers, and reality series Waka Warriors brings to life the tale of waka builder and captain Lilo Ema Siope who died in 2018 from cancer.

READ MORE: Loimata – Why this Kiwi doco will move you in ways you might not see coming

It is brave realistic tale of tragedy and redemption and the return of the Siope family to Samoa and what it meant to Ema captured with gentleness, tears and laughter by Siope’s friend Anna Marbrook.

The documentary also caught the full attention of Jim Marbrook, a senior film lecturer at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and himself a documentary maker including feature-length documentaries on speed chess maestros (2003 award-winner Dark Horse), psychiatric hospitals (Mental Notes) and environmental issues in New Caledonia (Cap Bocage).

“It was an idea of me talking about the idea making a family project, a family making a film about a family,” says Jim Marbrook about the documentary and the two families that become intertwined like the strands of a seafarer’s rope.

There is little doubt that the ties that bind Pacific families is very difficult to break into, particularly for outsiders and that this palagi Marbrook family managed to do just that was what makes this documentary that little bit extra magical because they give you the rare insight into the Siope family.

The ties binding two families
“So Anna and I have both known the Siope family for years, I have known the family for six years and Anna has known the family for the same number of years,” explains Jim, who is also a research associate and advisory board member of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre.

“We both knew them from different contacts; Anna knew Ema and I knew Fetaui and his son Joshua, and he is currently a master’s student at AUT, so we both knew the family pretty well,” Jim says of the ties that bind the two families.

“So we both knew the family were pretty special so it was obvious to me that this was a very interesting family.

“But I hadn’t met Ema until Anna introduced me, so Anna and Ema decided to start doing the movie and Ema asked me to come on board.

“I’ve done a lot of work before on mental health and mental health films and about communities who were suffering trauma.

“I was a bit hesitant about diving into such a deep and personal story; the moment I met Ema and she asked me on board …I thought she was a pretty interesting woman,” he says wistfully.

But what is it that made it so personal for him?

Films that offer solutions
“I’m a really big believer in doing films that offer solutions,” he says.

“Personally, all of my work has been about people who are proactive and seeking change.

“I guess my personal ethos as a documentary maker is, can I make a film that encourages change, can I present the public that helps them understand difficult situations and provides them not only the portrait of a really interesting person but a way out of that situation,” he says.

“When I heard Ema’s story I realised that here was a person who had used identification with waka culture, with tradition and navigation to change her world view, to get out of a situation where she did live some very difficult times in her youth and those times involved abuse,” he says thoughtfully.

“So, the moment I met Ema and the moment I understood what the story was about I realised, ‘hey this is a film that has the potential to encourage people to grow and change’.”
But the puzzling thing, I suppose, was how the aiga came to accept the Marbrooks as part of the larger family.

“I think both Anna and I have worked in all sorts of multicultural communities, so firstly I think we’ve developed a way of working alongside people. I think the very idea of working alongside each other was important.” he says.

“And I think if we hadn’t known the family for so long that work would have been impossible.

‘They kind of came to us’
“The fact is we didn’t come in and pitch the film to them. They kind of came to us and Ema came to Anna and then Ema came to me. That makes a huge difference in terms of the way you’re planning a project that becomes a partnership,” he says with a finality on the subject.

And how was Ema Siope as a person?

Here was a six-foot person, twice as strong as a man and an Amazon.

She was gender fluid and she was someone who knew what she wanted, and people followed her like the captain she was.

He recalls the time when he with camera in hand tried to keep up with her in Samoa.

“When we went to Samoa she was in a quite a bit of pain but there she was, picking up a machete in one hand and hibiscus flower in the other, chopping her way through the undergrowth and that was classic Ema.”

It is the redemptive tale of the waka builder and skipper Ema Siope’s final years, the stunning Loimata – The Sweetest Tears is a chronicle of journeys – journeys of migration, spirituality, voyaging, healing and coming home.

Confronting intergenerational trauma
Confronting intergenerational trauma head on, the Siope family returns to their homeland of Sāmoa.

For Ema’s father, this is his first time back to his birthplace since leaving in 1959. The result is a poignant yet tender story of a family’s unconditional love for each other, and a commitment to becoming whole again.

Ema was born and raised in South Auckland as a child of Samoan migrants. She captained both the Haunui Waka Hourua and Aotearoa One, both of which belong to the great waka master Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr.

Ema’s key role in the revival of voyaging saw her become an important mentor for future generations of voyagers

Jim Marbrook has only one wish – that everyone of Samoan heritage and the whole of New Zealand turns out to watch it.

• Loimata – The Sweetest Tears is having its world premiere in cinema in the Whanau Marama/New Zealand International Film Festival at ASB Waterfront Theatre in Auckland, on Saturday, July 25, at 7.00pm. It will then screen in select cinemas and venues across the country. It has already sold out for its first screenings in Auckland and Wellington. It will also play as part of the hybrid online festival, from August 2-8.

By Sri Krishnamurthi, reporting for the Pacific Media Centre

“Our journey to a bluer Pacific as we navigate through covid-19, we’ve all experienced the impact of covid-19 one way or another, our region has not been spared the adverse effects of covid-19. The focus here is to look at how are we maintaining the collective momentum in terms of protecting and conserving our ocean, emphasise ocean because our ocean speaks of who we are in this region, our ocean speaks of our joint identity, our entity, our shared ecosystem, our shared resources in the Pacific” – Kosi Latu, Director-General, South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SREP)

Unspoilt beaches, palm trees swaying in a zephyr of a breeze and the gentle sunlight dancing on the turquoise blue sea as the lapping waves shimmer on the breakwater make one imagine a Pacific paradise unspoiled.

But, that is until the best sounds come screeching like a broken record as it grates and gnaws away at the once-booming $4.2 billion Pacific tourism industry.

Tourism throughout the Pacific has been brought to its knees by the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, throwing thousands out of work and fearful about the future.

READ MORE: InfoPacific – the geojournalism project

While Fiji and the Cook Islands have been desperately trying get their economies going with a Pacific bubble with New Zealand and Australia that has not come into fruition – and isn’t likely to any time soon.

Neighbouring New Zealand and Australia are concerned about the pandemic taking hold in the Big Blue that is the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific Islands experienced a 6.6 percent increase of tourists in 2019 and the region welcomed 2.2 million visitors to the end of the year. Before covid struck, a boom year was predicted for 2020.

Over the short to medium term, visitor arrivals by air to the Pacific islands countries are predicted to grow by an average of 3.3 percent and expected to reach 2.7 million in 2024, according to the South Pacific Tourism Organisation (SPTO).

Established in 1983 as the Tourism Council of the South Pacific, the SPTO is the mandated organisation representing tourism in the region. Its 20 government members are American Samoa, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Kiribati, Nauru, Marshall Islands, New Caledonia, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Rapa Nui, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna, and Taiwan.

In addition to government members, the South Pacific Tourism Organisation enlists a private sector membership base.

Pacific quick to close borders
However, the tourism markets of Cook Islands, Fiji, Palau, Tahiti, Tonga, Samoa and Vanuatu were quick to close their borders to prevent covid-19 entering their countries.

Emerging tourism markets such as Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Tonga are also closed to mass arrivals.

The lockdown has had a major effect with job losses, right throughout and in its March, Pacific Insight the ANZ predicted that Fiji now stands to lose nearly 602,000 visitors by air this year (a whopping drop of 67 percent). This translates into a F$1.4 billion loss in tourism receipts.

Vanuatu’s economy is expected to decline (down by 13.5 percent), as are Samoa (-18.7 percent), Cook Islands (-60.4 percent) and Tonga (-7.9 percent)

When you consider that tourism contributes to almost 46 percent to Fiji’s gross domestic product – about F$2.1 billion (A$1.4 billion) according to the June ANZ Pacific Insight – and it employs more than 150,000 people in various industries it is devastating.

Last year alone, Fiji had 894,000 visitors. The bulk of its tourists came from nearby Australia (41 percent) and New Zealand (23 percent), which like many countries around the world have banned international travel.

Asian Development Bank estimates for this year are that Cook Islands, Fiji, Palau, Samoa and Vanuatu will experience negative or no economic growth.

Heavily dependent on tourism
“Economies such as Fiji, the Maldives and Tonga are heavily dependent on tourism, with shares of tourism in total exports reaching 52 percent, 84 percent or 47 percent respectively,” the ADB report says.

“In many Asia and Pacific countries, more than three in four workers in the tourism sector are informal jobs, leaving them especially vulnerable to the negative impacts of the covid-19 crisis.

“Informal sector jobs are characterised by a lack of basic protection, including social protection coverage.”

Economic growth in the Solomon Islands is expected to slow by 1.5 percent in 2020, and Vanuatu’s economy to contract from 2.8 percent in 2019 to minus 1.0 percent in 2020, according to the ADB.

“The COVID-19 pandemic will severely hit tourism, with the South Pacific economies the most affected. Growth and fiscal outcomes will be undermined in the Cook Islands, Samoa, and Tonga,” says the ADB.

“The Cook Islands’ economy is expected to contract from 5.3 percent in 2019 to -2.2 percent in 2020 due to a collapse in tourist arrivals. Growth is forecast to recover in 2021 to 1.0 percent. Samoa’s economy is expected to contract from 3.5 percent in 2019 to -3.0 percent, before slightly rebounding to 0.8 percent in 2021.

“Tonga, where economic growth was 3.0 percent in 2019, will see zero growth in 2020 due partly to a plunge in visitor arrivals. Growth will likely reach 2.5 percent in 2021, buoyed by tourism,” the same dire predictions state according to the report.

Regional unity is needed
“The ocean is our shared resource and our shared responsibility, a regional unity is required, covid-19 has exacerbated our vulnerabilities as individual economies and as a region where timely health public and border protections have protected our people from the worst of covid-19,” says Dame Meg Taylor, current secretary-general of the Pacific Forum and Ocean Pacific and Ocean Pacific Commissioner.

“Today the focus of all national economies is to revive their economy activity and production in our Island nations with many already facing the grim reality of recession.

“Covid-19 has also presented with us with a valuable opportunity, an opportunity to link global recovery efforts with the goals of the Paris Agreement and the 2030 agenda for sustainable development we must act differently,” she says.

She adds that with collaboration and co-operation, things could be achieved in the Pacific both in terms of tackling climate change and sustainable eco-tourism.

“With strong regional co-operation and collaboration, we can and will achieve our priorities an example of this is the Pacific regional human pathway and forum leaders priorities particularly those of those of climate action and ocean governance.

“It allows the forum to strengthen its hand by acting differently, strengthen its strategic approach, and coherence and collective approach across three separate but related multilateral action such as the COP-26, the second United Nations conference and COP-15 on diversity,” she says.

It is up to the forum nations to find solutions.

‘We must act differently’
“It is time to act differently and innovatively, we must act differently, creatively and constructively to make our Ocean bluer,” Dame Meg says.

Meanwhile, Umiich Sengibau, Minister of Natural Resources, Environment and Tourism of Palau, and a past chairman of SREP who will chair Our Ocean 2020 conference in December has spoken about the difficulties that his country has faced in the starkness of the pandemic.

“Palau has been fortunate to be one of the few countries in the world to be free of coronavirus global lockdowns that have helped keep our people safe,” he says.

“As in many other places in the world, commercial flights have been suspended and borders are closed but it has also reduced our tourism revenue, over 40 percent of our GDP to zero.”

He was not sugar-coating the truth about his country’s economic plight.

“This matters because our tourism economy and ocean protection go hand-in-hand,” he says.

“When life under our pristine waters thrive that is how we attract visitors to dive in and see it for themselves. Tourism and protection are part of the same sustainable economy, and one is undermined then so is the other.”

Imperative to protect the ocean
Truer words could not be said.

“Palau recognises the importance of sustainable eco-tourism to support employment, livelihoods and ultimately sustainable development. This is why it is imperative that we protect the ocean.

And he spoke about the exclusive zone surrounding the island state.

“This year we began the implementation phase of the Palau, 80 percent of our exclusive zone some 500 sq km is now a “no-take” area. We know such protected areas foster great marine diversity, strengthen resilience to climate impact and provide respite to fish stocks.

“Everyone benefits from a healthy ocean.”

But not so in Fiji which has seen its tourism industry collapse with locals returning to subsistence farming as seen on the reports that proclaim the demise of the tourist industry.

Tourism accounts for 46 percent of GDP and many who work within the sector and associated industries are now jobless.

Key industy shut down
“Tourism in Fiji contributes 46 percent to GDP directly and was the highest foreign exchange earner at $2 billion plus a year,” says Fantasha Lockington, chief executive officer for the Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association (FHTA) based in Suva.

“It is also the key industry with the biggest multiplier effects throughout the 333 islands that make up the Fiji Islands. The closing of the borders therefore effectively shut down the country’s biggest employment sector.

“We estimate that around 110,000 tourism employed staff (directly) have been put on leave without pay, terminated (with little or no benefits) or made redundant (with payouts per contractual requirements),” she says.

“Fiji has no backstop for wage earner or salary support mechanisms. Instead, the government allows workers to access small amounts of their superannuation funds.

“Many of the larger resorts provided food support or a living allowance to assist their workers – the large majority of whom come directly from the communities and villages the hotels and resorts are located near and from whom the land is leased,” she explains.

“Fijian workers need their jobs back – the next three months will be the most challenging for them as they do their best to return to their communities and villages and get into subsistence farming to ensure they can feed their families,” she says.

Whether it is time for Fiji to invest in eco-tourism has grown along with concerns around climate change and the environment?

Great record of ‘being concerned’
“Fiji has had a great record of being more concerned about climate change and the environment.

“But we do not do enough to walk this talk. Large numbers of tourism operators practice environmental sustainability, implement recycling and energy renewal practices out of necessity and cost-consciousness (being off the main island grids and trying to ensure they protect their untouched and serene isolated locations).

“These are not recognised by the government in any way or often enough. Instead, the tourism industry is the only industry that is charged the Environment Climate Adaptation Levy (ECAL) – which is 10 percent.

“We have consistently requested that ECAL be reduced and spread to other industries that impact on the environment (mining, excavations and extractions of any kind, transport) or to allow environmental sustainability practitioners to get a credit back to both incentivise and change behaviour for the long term,” she sums up.

Then there is the vexed question of the Cook Islands which has tried desperately to twist New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s arm.

Businessman Tata Crocombe who had shut his three resorts in the Cook Islands, losing 200 staff, was a little more pragmatic when he said “New Zealand produces 70 percent of the visitors to the Cook Islands and so it is our call and major market – and vital that we reopen to New Zealand visitors.

“More and more tourism operators are becoming involved in ecotourism and I expect this trend to continue into the future.

Making properties more eco-friendly
“There are a number of initiatives that the various hotels, resorts and accommodated is have taken to make their properties more eco-friendly. There are a number of tours that have focused on ecotourism such as lagoon cruises, turtle snorkelling tours, cycling tours et cetera. In addition, more and more restaurants are incorporating organic fresh Island produce in their menus.

“The growth in eco-tourism reflects the growth in ecologically thinking in the population more generally because human beings as a species need to learn to live in harmony with our environment in nature.

“We have been instrumental in the creation and preservation of marine sanctuaries in front of all of our three resorts which of become major visitor attractions,” he says.

Of importance to the Cook Islands is the economy, as well as safety of the people, says Jonathan Milne, editor of the Cook Islands News.

“At present, the New Zealand government is effectively blockading the Cook Islands, it’s economy and its people. It’s painful for people here to realise that the country regarded as our closest friend, our closest relative, would do that to us – and we pray they reconsider very soon before the economy of this proud little Pacific paradise collapses entirely,” he says.

“Tourism is 10 percent of the NZ economy. In the Cook Islands, with all the multipliers spreading its impact through retail and hospitality, it’s nearly 90 percent of our GDP. But equally important, the connected heritage of our nations, the shared constitutional history, the fact that we remain a realm country and our people are New Zealand citizens – these are ties that New Zealand leaders cannot in good conscience ignore.

“The Cook Islands is not competing with Queensland and Rotorua; some people want to go skiing, some want to go to the beach – they are complementary. We need to work together to strengthen the New Zealand dollar through strengthening our intrinsically inter-linked economies,” Milne adds.

Both economy and safety needed
The Cook Islands needs both the economy and the safety of the people, he says.

“We need both; they can’t be separated. With New Zealand’s assistance, our health and community systems are well-prepared to deal with covid. But we also need the support of our Pacific family, especially in New Zealand, to help reopen our economy.

“It’s all very well-staying safe from covid, the greater danger now is that we can’t pay for food and electricity. And the answer isn’t aid – it’s trade, it’s tourism, it’s getting our resorts and restaurants running.

“You know what they say – teach a man to fish. Well, we know how to fish, but we need tourists to enjoy what we have to offer. I can vouch for the yellowfin tuna, fresh off the boat,” Milne says.

It was a similar scenario in Vanuatu with 10,000 jobs lost.

“Tourism has been decimated here,” Liz Pechan from The Havannah Vanuatu, a five-star resort on the island of Efate, told the ABC.

“I was shocked for a little while, I think I was a bit dumbfounded: like how can this happen, how can the world just stop?”

Majority of hotels have no bookings
Like the vast majority of hotels, Pechan currently has no bookings, and more than 30 staff have already been let go.

Rising sea levels and climate change underscore the problems covid-19 has brought to the blue Pacific Ocean shores.

And while the economy is predicted to come right in a year or two, it will be mainly through sustainable eco-tourism that does not do anything to allay the fears of climate change.

This is the first of a series of articles by the Pacific Media Centre as part of an environmental project funded by the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN) Asia-Pacific initiative.

Host Sherry Zhang interviewed the director of the Pacific Media Centre, Professor David Robie, about the tragic life and death of Jenelyn Kennedy from gender violence in Papua New Guinea today on the Southern Cross segment of Radio 95bFM.

Professor Robie discussed the rather horrific image of her lifeless body on the front page of The National newspaper and the ethical dilemma about publishing this photo to bring into focus gender-based violence.

The image was defended by senior journalist Rebecca Kuku who was criticised in social media for taking the stance.

LISTEN: More Southern Cross radio clips on Soundcloud

However, while Professor Robie supported publication of the photo and also published it on the PMC’s Asia Pacific Report, he said the newspaper should have also had a front-page editorial explaining why they ran the picture.

“Jenelyn’s story needed to be told – as a reporter, a woman, a mother, a sister, I failed to be her voice when she was alive and I’d be damned if I would fail her now in her death,” wrote Rebecca Kuku.

“Her voice needs to be heard and that picture was used to ensure her voice was loud and clear and to also awaken the authorities who seem to be sleeping, to open their eyes to the realities of gender-based violence (GBV).”

Jenelyn who eloped with Bosip Kaiwi when she was just 15, bore him two children and was killed at 19.

Then contributing editor of Pacific Media Watch Sri Krishnamurthi discussed the Cook Islands where members of Parliament (MPs) want to go to extraordinary lengths to ban a senior Cook Islands News journalist.

Rashneel Kumar who reported on MPs seeking travel perks was this week awaiting the decision of the Speaker of the House, Niki Rattle, while media groups have protested over the parliamentary move.

Miss Universe NZ 2019 beauty queen Diamond Langi is being trolled by thousands of Indonesians on social media for speaking up about discrimination against West Papuans.

“The post I had made was #FreeWestPapua with a video showcasing the discrimination West Papuans have had to endure for years,” she declared on Coconet TV’s Facebook and Instagram pages two days ago.

READ MORE: Seven Papuans jailed for treason amid drop charges call

On her “Women of the Islands – Diamond Langi” webpage on the Coconet TV website, the Auckland-born Tongan beauty queen is quoted as saying:

“I shared it because I wanted to bring awareness with what was happening with West Papuans, especially now with the Black Lives Matter movement.

“I had kindly asked Miss Indonesia (Frederika Alexis Cull), who I had met last year in America while competing at Miss Universe, to speak to the president of her country [Joko Widodo] to free the seven activists who were found guilty of treason for protesting against racism. 

She says that from that one post she has been hounded by Indonesian trolls who still exist on her Facebook page.

While there was support for her stance, some of the abuse from some Indonesians bordered on plain hatred, whereas others claimed the Melanesian region of West Papua belonged to Indonesia [it was annexed by Jakarta in in 1969 in a disputed colonisation process that has resulted in armed struggle and peaceful resistance ever since – Pacific Media Watch].

‘My Instagram was flooded’
“From that one post, my Instagram was flooded with abusive comments (at least 10,000 comments in a day) and they also started abusing my family, close friends, and even organisations that I work with,” she says on her Coconet TV webpage.

“I was like, wow if this is happening to me just from making a post, imagine what is happening to the people of West Papua!

“I’ve had to deactivate some of my social media for a little bit but don’t worry I’ll be back,” she says.

But she also had support for her stance.

“Very concerning that our beautiful Pacific sister, Diamond Langi’s public Facebook page is under attack by a few propaganda-fuelled keyboard warriors from Indonesia, because she’s chosen to use her emerging platform and political freedom to stand in solidarity with our indigenous whanau in West Papua,” @Oceania Interrupted said on Facebook.

“Black Lives Matter all over the world, even in the Pacific – and bullying someone for standing in solidarity with indigenous people in our Pacific context, who continue to be brutally oppressed, exploited, silenced and killed in their own land is sickening!

“If you haven’t already, please go on her page, show some love for what she is standing in solidarity for; And if you know a thing or two about THE REAL WEST PAPUA [sic] situation, please school the ignorant bullies on her page and in our world,” the cultural activist group says.

Earlier this year, Langi acted in a Polish-American feature film titled, Sosefina. The film is written by Manu Tanielu and Namualii Tofa and directed by Hinano Tanielu.

The theme of Sosefina has been to tell the story of a marginalised and overlooked Polynesian community. The movie was released in the United States on 31 January 2020.

Cook Islands Members of Parliament want to ban a journalist from Parliament for what they claim was inaccurate reporting over them seeking travel perks in the House.

They have asked the Speaker, Niki Rattle, to withdraw senior Cook Islands News journalist and political editor Rashneel Kumar after he wrote an article published on Friday titled “MPs seek allowance top-ups in downturn“.

Pacific Media Watch reports that in his opening sentence he stated that there was “public dismay” at MPs using House sitting time to raise the question about spousal allowances for travel.

READ MORE: Links to the Cook Islands News editorial and travel perks stories

The article reported on main opposition Democratic Party MP Terepai Maoate Jnr’s questioning of payment of his spousal allowance entitlement, and asking whether outer island MPs living in their constituencies were entitled to the same privileges as those living on Rarotonga.

“Maoate Jr MP from Aitutaki, used one of their Parliamentary questions to seek payment of a spousal allowance, which he said was already appropriated in the last Budget,” Kumar reported.

“A concerned member of the public, watching the session live on Parliament’s Facebook page, asked if the question was of national concern,” he wrote giving the headline used in the article credibility.

By yesterday, the article was a major talking point for all MPs with Deputy Speaker in the House, Tai Tura, raising a question in Parliament about the article.

‘A bit mad with the newspaper’
He said he was “disappointed and a bit mad with the newspaper” for tarring all MPs with the same brush for suggesting they had the intention of increasing the allowances.

And then the question: “Can we try and get these reporters out of Parliament for false information to the public?” he asked Prime Minister Henry Puna.

Puna’s Cook Islands Party is a minority government supported by independents; the Democratic party is the opposition.

“I beg to differ, it’s really pointing a finger at all of us here at this House that we are seeking a top-up or an increase in our allowance,” Puna was reported as saying.

“We have a responsibility to ensure that the media is responsible in their reporting of our proceedings in this House without sensationalising anything that they report. Because that headline certainly achieves that.”

After a motion declaring the article “incorrect and unfair,” they then agreed that the Speaker should decide whether Cook Island News journalist Rashneel Kumar should be banned from Parliament for some time as determined by the Speaker.

Covid-19 not the priority
In his editorial in Monday’s Cook Islands News, editor Jonathan Milne lamented about the unity of MPs who came together seeking the withdrawal from Parliament of the journalist rather than fight covid-19.

Additionally, he stood by his journalist, saying his reporting on Parliament was accurate.

“To be clear: Cook Islands News stands by its reporting of Parliamentary questions about MPs’ entitlement to their spousal travel allowances. Our report was fair, and it was accurate – one need only check back on the recordings of Parliament to recognise that,” he says in his editorial.

Milne is a highly respected former editor of Stuff in New Zealand before he moved to the Cook Islands.

Students sang with joy outside vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia‘s home at the University of the South Pacific following his reinstatement by a special meeting of the USP Council yesterday.

The decision came after seven-hour meeting with the council voting 22-9 in favour of the reinstatement.

Concerned #StandWithPal staff and students maintained strong support and solidarity for good governance over the past two weeks and welcomed the council’s decision to reinstate Professor Ahluwalia.

READ MORE: Special reports on the USP leadership crisis

“The Council, having considered the decision by the Executive Committee to suspend the Vice-Chancellor & President, agrees that the process prescribed in An Ordinance to Govern the Discipline of the Vice-Chancellor be followed in investigating any allegations against the VC & President of USP,” a statement from the USP council secretariat said.

“I am exhilarated and absolutely delighted at the USP Special Council decision to reinstate VCP,” Professor Vijay Naidu told Pacific Media Watch.

“He should be able to provide the leadership without interference to take the university forward as an asset in higher education institution for the communities and governments of the region.

“VCP Professor Pal Ahluwalia’s honesty and integrity showed through the spurious and false allegations by obviously crooked people who had vested interest in the cover up,” he said.

Investigations continue
However, questions remain, and FijiVillage website reported that it had been informed that the allegations of material misconduct against Professor Ahluwalia would still be investigated.

However, he would remain in office during the investigation.

Also there are questions about the future of pro-chancellor Winston Thompson, a retired Fiji diplomat, who recused himself an hour before the meeting ended due to a conflict of interest as he was the chair of the USP executive committee that decided to suspend Ahluwalia pending independent investigations.

After he left the virtual meeting, the President of Nauru and the incoming chancellor of USP, Lionel Aingimea was left to chair the meeting, according to Vijay Narayan and Semi Turaga of the FijiVillage website.

A former long-time staff member at USP, Dr Wadan Narsey, told the ABC Pacific Beat programme the crisis represented a “collective failure by all of its stakeholders”.

Professor Ahluwalia’s supporters claim he was suspended because last year he had raised allegations of financial mismanagement that occurred under his predecessor, Professor Rajesh Chandra.

Although appointed in November 2018, Professor Ahluwalia formally took up his role in January 2019.

Concerned staff allegations
Within six weeks of taking office, concerned staff had gone to Professor Ahluwalia with allegations.

In April 2019, Professor Ahluwalia sent a paper entitled “Issues, Concerns and Breaches of Past Management and Financial Decisions” alleging wrongdoing by the former administration.

Economist Dr Narsey said the issues identified by Professor Ahluwalia should have been noticed long ago by the university’s financial management team, the governing council and student and staff associations.

“USP is not a private company, it’s actually a public company owned by all the taxpayers of the region and all the governments,” he told Pacific Beat.

“Clearly the university council has failed to pick up all these things … academics at the university have failed to raise these issues … students have become a lot less active in the last decade,” he said.

Dr Narsey said Australia and New Zealand also needed to shoulder some of the responsibility for not stepping in earlier.

Fiji’s Minister for Education, Heritage and Arts Rosy Akbar, a member of the USP Council, told FijiVillage that it was not Fiji’s decision to not make the BDO New Zealand Report public, and Fiji had supported the appointment of the three-member committee which was still looking into the findings of the report.

Thousands of people took part in the Black Lives Matter protests in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin today.

Auckland’s Aotea Square protesters, largely peaceful and family oriented, marched to Custom Street and demonstrated outside the American consulate where protesters took a knee and observed a minute of silence for George Floyd.

This was one of two mass gatherings in Auckland today after the 23rd day in a row of New Zealand being covid-19 free.

READ MORE: George Floyd: What we know about the officers charged over his death

The other was at Eden Park which displayed a “sold out” sign after a capacity 43,000 tickets had been sold for the Blues-Hurricanes Super Rugby Aotearoa match this afternoon. This match and one between the Highlanders and Chiefs in Dunedin last night kicked of the world’s first post-covid live crowd rugby matches.

The Black Lives Matter protests around the world started with the death of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis, USA, on May 25 when white policeman Derek Chauvin was filmed kneeling on his neck for almost nine minutes.

Chauvin was videoed by Darnella Fraizer, a 17-year-old high school senior, as Floyd pleaded: “I can’t breathe.”

He has been charged with second degree murder, third degree murder and manslaughter. Three other policemen have been charged for aiding and abetting and all four officers were sacked from the police.

‘Keep it peaceful’
The Auckland protest march opened with a karakia at Aotea Square and a mihi whakatau from Graham Tipene of Ngāti Whātua, who told the crowd to “keep it peaceful”.

“Our kids are here, so let’s do it right and fight for what’s right,” he said.

Members of the black African communities addressed the crowd on the Black Lives Matter movement, along with social justice campaigner Julia Whaipooti, who talked about the use of armed police in predominantly Māori and Pasifika areas.

“For many of us this is not a new moment in time, not a hashtag on Instagram,” she said.

Emilie Rakete from People Against Prisons Aotearoa and the Arms Down movement spoke about armed police, particularly in South Auckland.

She said the “truth is that we live on a graveyard in Aotearoa”, with NZ police laying down the bodies.

“When the cops say hands up, we say arms down.”

‘They love to profit off our pain’
Auckland-based Somali-NZ rapper Mo Muse performed a piece written in the past two weeks, saying “they love to profit off our pain”.

“Tell Winston Peters he can see me in hell cos we won’t be silenced.”

Auckland University of Technology academic Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, who researched police discrimination against the African community in New Zealand, said racism was the knee on the neck of Māori, Pasifika and other communities of colour in New Zealand.

“Everyone is talking and thinking about the murder of George Floyd in the US and the knee that was on his neck. But I want to talk about the knees on our neck, the Black indigenous people of colour in Aotearoa”, said Nr Nakhid, who is also chair of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre.

She said things such as putting students into lower streams in schools, lower standards of health and the uplifting of children were the knees upon the neck of people of colour in this country.

“This protest is because we love who we are. Do not let them turn our love into hate against each other.

“We have to remain awake because we need to get those knees off our neck.”

Wellington, Dunedin rallies
In Wellington, RNZ News reports that thousands of people gathered in Civic Square, to march to Parliament in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

The march was organised by a group of community advocates, including Guled Mire.

In Dunedin, hundreds of people gathered at the Otago Museum reserve to show solidarity with the movement. They marched down George Street to the Octagon, where a rally was held.

The Auckland march, which started at Aotea Square, headed down Queen St and ended at the US consulate, where protesters took a knee and observed a minute of silence for George Floyd.

The Secretary-General of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Dame Meg Taylor, is the latest figure to support Nauru’s call to convene a special meeting of the University of the South Pacific Council in the long-running leadership saga.

In a letter to incoming chancellor of the USP, Nauru President Lionel Aingimea, she has declared: “As a council member, I confirm my support for your proposal to convene a special meeting. I will await further advice of the details of the meeting, in due course.

“Thank you for your astute leadership on this matter.”

READ MORE: Nauru president accuses Fiji group of ‘hijacking’ USP in vendetta

The letter was posted on social media, which is widely used in the Pacific, by New Zealand journalist Michael Field, who broke the story about the controversial contents of the BDO Auckland report into alleged mismanagement at the USP.

Islands Business news magazine today published a full report which Field said was leaked to him and it outlines details of mismanagement of funds and cronyism at USP.

Suspended vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia believes he is the victim of a witchhunt at USP after he exposed an alleged system of rorts and questionable contracts in late 2018 when he took up the post.

“I have no doubt that this is a byproduct of that initial report that I took. Since then, I have been vilified and as a whistleblower, in most places where I come from in the world – including Australia and the UK where I’ve lived – whistleblowers are protected,” he told RNZ Dateline in an interview.

“Here I have been thrown under the bus.”

LISTEN: Dateline interview with Professor Pal Ahluwalia

Professor Ahluwalia also found himself locked out of his office and his email account at the university has been disabled.

Senior academics and staff at USP in Suva are accused in a special audit report of manipulating allowances to pay themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars they were not entitled to, as several Pacific governments say Fiji is using the covid-19 emergency as a cover to take over the university, according to Field’s report in Islands Business.

“The scale of allowance abuse has outraged Pacific member nations of USP, including Nauru, Samoa, Tonga and New Zealand. USP staff are accused of helping themselves to money intended to educate the people of the Pacific,” Field wrote.

“The payments took place under the leadership of Fiji vice-chancellor Professor Rajesh Chandra. They were revealed by his replacement, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, on November 1, 2018.

“Since then, vice-chancellor Ahluwalia and USP pro-chancellor Winston Thompson have been at loggerheads, with their opposing factions rallying behind them.”

The international accounting firm BDO was engaged to investigate and provide an independent report.  However, the report which names 25 individuals at the university has remained under wraps since last August.

Professor Ahluwalia was suspended on pay and privileges this week by the USP Council’s executive committee in what critics say was a breach of protocols to investigate allegations against him.

Vendetta a “nonsense”
Samoa’s Deputy Prime Minister, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, described the executive committee’s decision as “irregular” and that pro-chancellor Thompson’s vendetta was “nonsense”, according to the Samoa Observer.

“It is our view that the University Council had determined how it would deal with these issues and the council asked the pro-chancellor and vice-chancellor to work together and keep to their own mandates, but it had become very obvious that the pro-chancellor is very obstructive,” said Fiame.

Pro-chancellor Thompson today claimed that the executive committee acted within its powers to investigate allegations of material misconduct against Vice-Chancellor Pal Ahluwalia and to suspend him pending an independent investigation.

Thompson told a media conference at USP claims that the executive committee had acted illegally on Monday were incorrect.

He said he and acting vice-chancellor Professor Derrick Armstrong had offered to meet the students but this was rejected by the University of the South Pacific Students Association (USPSA) while the staff had agreed to meet this morning.

However, this morning the staff told him and Armstrong that they were not available to meet.

He claimed the staff asked about the press conference but they were told they had lost the opportunity as the meeting scheduled prior did not eventuate.

Australia and NZ ‘diplomatic’
Both Australia and New Zealand – the two largest donor countries for the 12-nation regional university – have reacted diplomatically over the crisis.

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said her government was concerned about the “leadership issues” at USP, reports FBC.

Payne said Australia recognised USP as an important and highly valued regional institution and tertiary provider in the Pacific.

She added that Australia was a longstanding partner of USP and it was  strongly committed to supporting education in the region.

Payne said she had also called for a special meeting of the USP Council.

A Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) spokeswoman told Pacific Media Watch:

“MFAT is closely monitoring the situation and has nothing further to say at this point.”

Largest donors
New Zealand was the 12-country USP’s second-largest funder behind Australia, contributing US$3.5m ($NZ5.3m) in 2017.

Australia contributed $US13m to the USP in 2017, the European Union $1.5m, Japan $2.3m and other partners $2m, according to the USP’s accounts for that year.

Established in 1968, USP is jointly owned by the governments of 12 member countries – Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Samoa.

Fiji is USP’s biggest member contributor.

Nauru president accuses Fiji group of ‘hijacking’ USP in vendetta

After Australia’s misguided attempts at handing over $17.1 of Australian-made television content to the Pacific region last month with programmes such as Neighbours and Border Control, questions have been asked about a $10 million New Zealand grant made in 2018.

At the 2018 Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) meeting in Nauru, New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced that New Zealand would spend $10 million on a Pasifika channel for the region over the next three years.

He said at the time that the plan would improve both the production of more Pacific content, including news and current affairs.

However, little was known of what became of Pasifika TV and today a MFAT spokesperson cleared the air.

“Pasifika TV was established to make New Zealand television content available to Pacific broadcasters,” she told Pacific Media Watch.

“In 2018, Pasifika TV moved from providing eight hours of content a day to become a standalone 24 hr TV channel, as announced by Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Winston Peters.

“This provided Pacific broadcasters the choice to recast it in its entirety alongside their own channels or select content to rebroadcast, reducing the operational demands on small broadcasters,” she explained.

As well as that developmental and skills training for staff in the Pacific was progressing at a steady pace.

“In addition, Pacific Cooperation Broadcasting Limited (PCBL) is providing training and development programmes for Pacific broadcasting staff and content creators to increase operational resilience and skills, including journalism, editing and broadcasting,” the spokesperson said.

“PCBL holds an annual regional conference for chief executives of associated broadcasters and has upgraded broadcasters’ decoders to enable high definition quality broadcasts and future online streaming.”

She also made clear what happened to the NZ Institute of Pacific Research (NZIPR) which was disestablished after an independent review in 2018 found it was not achieving its objectives.

“It has been replaced by ministry-commissioned policy-relevant research, focused on enduring or emerging issues facing the Pacific which align with the Ministry’s priorities.

“The research is published on the Pacific Data Hub, a digital repository of Pacific research knowledge hosted by the South Pacific Community (SPC).

• NZ Pacific research institute to be overhauled

A reprieve for the newsagency Australian Associated Press (AAP) is featured today on Pacific Media Centre’s Southern Cross segment on Radio 95bFM.

An article written by student journalist Jade Bradford of Curtin University in Perth tells of how AAP is being saved. The implications of the story is discussed given that the agency was supposed to have been ceased operations later this month.

It comes as a major relief to Pacific Island nations that rely on it for balanced coverage of the region.

LISTEN: PMC’s Sri Krishnamurthi and Southern Cross on Soundcloud

On Friday, AAP announced that a consortium of philanthropists and media executives had expressed an interest in buying the AAP Newswire service. Good news for a free media in the Pacific.

“There is now a generation of journalists in Fiji who have never known what it’s like to have a truly free press,” says PMC director Professor David Robie, who is also editor of Asia Pacific Report.

In fact, it was AAP foreign correspondent based in Suva at the time, Jim Shrimpton, who broke the story of Fiji’s first coup in May 1987.

Also discussed on Southern Cross was the Papua New Guinea police investigating death threats texted to Lae city chief Neil Ellery, who has a New Zealand father, and his wife.

There is also a chat with Debate writer and programme producer James Tapp about confronting Pākehā Privilege as a white male student.

Tapp is a Bachelor of Communication Studies and Bachelor of Business conjoint student at Auckland University of Technology, majoring in international business and advertising creativity.

• Pacific Media Centre’s Southern Cross segment on 95bFM
• Pacific Media Watch reporter Sri Krishnamurthi, The Wire presenter Sherry Zhang and producer James Tapp

Homegrown Australian television shows to the tune of $17.1 million will be broadcast in the Pacific in a bid believed intended to stymie China’s diplomatic and media rise in the region.

Shows such as The Voice, Border Security, Neighbours and are to be offered as the main fare to people who barely understand Australian culture, although Border Security could cause some animosity to those Pacific people who are denied entry into Australia.

However, some of those critical of the move say the funds could have been better used to develop Pacific broadcasting capabilities, strengthen independent journalism in the region or showcase content more relevant to Pacific audiences.

READ MORE: ‘Neighbours is irrelevant to most Pacific Islanders’

At the 2018 Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) meeting in Nauru, New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced that New Zealand would spend $10 million on a Pasifika channel for the region over the next three years.

He said at the time that the plan would improve both the production of more Pacific content, including news and current affairs.

“The expansion of the Pasifika TV service will dramatically improve the way in which New Zealand content is delivered across the Pacific,” Peters said at the time.

“While the existing service has demonstrated its ability to lift broadcasting and journalism in the region, it is the natural next step to promote the production of more Pacific content, including news and current affairs.”

Australian contrast with NZ approach
In contrast, Australia intends broadcast hours of Australian-made content and bombard the Pacific Islands in a bid to combat China’s charm offensive in the Pacific.

Minister for International Development and the Pacific Alex Hawke said the “PacificAus TV initiative is a terrific demonstration of shared cultural ties and links between Australia and the Pacific”, while Australia’s Foreign Minister, Senator Marise Payne, said: “Having the opportunity to watch the same stories on our screens will only deepen the connection with our Pacific family,” as ABC reported.

However, Jemima Garrett, co-convenor of the Australia Asia Pacific Media Initiative and a former Pacific correspondent for the ABC, said the initiative was a welcome recognition that Australia should have a broadcasting voice in the Pacific, but it needed additional programmes to be fit for purpose.

“Australia needs to talk ‘with’ not ‘to’ our region and include the rich diversity of Australian voices and voices from the region,” Garrett said.

“Watching rich, white people renovate their homes will not ‘deepen the connection’ with the Pacific or overcome perceptions that Australia can be paternalistic. Nor will providing Border Security in a region in which visa access is a sore point.

“If the PacificAus TV initiative is about building relationships, then co-productions made by Australian and Pacific media companies working together are the way to go.

“Currently the initiative does not provide for the involvement of Australia’s Pacific communities or for the involvement of the ABC, SBS or National Indigenous Television or independent producers with an interest in the region,” she said.

‘Lukewarm’ reaction in Fiji
Meanwhile, Shailendra Singh, head of the journalism programme at the University of South Pacific in Fiji, said the reaction to the news in Fiji had been “lukewarm”.

“Money certainly would have been put to better use developing local content,” he said.

“Even if the strategy meets Australia’s geopolitical needs, does it meet the needs of Pacific Islanders? Is Australia putting its needs ahead of the Pacific? These are some of the questions that people are asking,” he said.

“There is already some grumbling about cultural imperialism through media. This on top of long held concerns about the ratio of local versus foreign content.

“Some feel media is already too commercialised. There is already too much sports and entertainment in comparison to news. In Fiji Rugby sevens had been called the opium of the people because of slavish coverage,” he said.

“So even if the strategy meets Australia’s geopolitical needs, does it meet the needs of Pacific Islanders? Is Australia putting its needs ahead of the Pacific?” he asked.

“Money certainly would have been put to better use developing local content. In developing local content one can also develop local journalists and journalism. The benefits are both visible and tangible.

‘Great local analysis’
“Some great analysis written by local journalists have been published. Why was this working model bypassed?” he asked.

“Soft power move? That seems the obvious explanation. What is the gain for Australia in getting Pacific populations hooked on Neighbours?

“It is a bit baffling but no doubt the Australian government has thought over this carefully before unleashing this grand plan on us.

“It is not clear how the Chinese feel about it. They have reserved comment so far,” the academic said.

Dan McGarry, the former media director at the Vanuatu Daily Post newspaper, wrote that the announcement seemed “silly, seen from here”.

“Pacific islanders want news, they want weather updates, especially during cyclone season. But language and cultural differences make shows like Neighbours irrelevant to most islanders. Entertainment wasn’t what we asked for (except for The Voice – everyone loves that).”

The question is whether Australia was trying to curry favour as China is seen to be pandering to the Pacific media.

China regularly pays for Pacific journalists to visit China on see-for-themselves excursions as evidenced by nearly a dozen journalists from print media organisations in the Pacific going on a 10-day tour in Beijing in mid-2016.

Australian war correspondent and investigative journalist John Martinkus warns the West Papuan conflict is “reigniting” and “that’s happening now with new weapons and 20-year-olds”.

Speaking to a group via Zoom – including Pacific Media Watch – last night at the launch of his new book The Road: Uprising in West Papua, he believes the intransigence, atrocities and militarism of the Indonesian authorities has forced this response.

The book tells how a 4300 km Trans-Papua Highway is carving a slice through the jungles and mountains of West Papua to bring “development” and military outposts to remote parts of the vast territory.

READ MORE: West Papua’s highway of blood – a case of destruction not development

“I would love to go back,” said Martinkus in the “conversation” with Mark Davis – himself a renowned SBS television journalist – organised to mark the launch.

Davis has visited West Papua several times – sometimes in secret such as when he filmed the award-winning 2000 documentary Blood on the Cross, and also openly, as with West Papua’s New Dawn in 2014.

Davis has also known Martinkus for more than two decades before The Road author went off to cover the US-led coalition war in Afghanistan.

“The highlands – what the Indonesians have done is pushed this development into areas they’ve never gone,” said

‘Serious attacks’
“Then in the late 1970s and 80s these guys have been subject to pretty serious attacks,” he said.

“What we’ve seen in the last two years is these people are fleeing to Papua New Guinea to get away from the fighting.”

The Nduga and the Dani tribespeople had for centuries in the highlands used to fight each other, but now they had a different enemy to combat.

The highway heads up from the coast and punches through the highlands where the minerals are – copper and gold – which is what the Indonesians are after, regardless of the destruction.

“This is the largest equatorial crisis in the world,” said Martinkus.

“You can’t walk into there, its really, really hard, and they [Melanesians] don’t like their land being stolen.

“I’ve noticed that the conflict will reignite and that is happening now with new weapons and 20-year-olds.”

Invasion failed, diplomacy won
The conflict began in 1961-2 when Indonesian paratroopers invaded the Papuan region while the Dutch colonial authorities were preparing the Melanesians for independence.

The invasion was a failure but Indonesia subsequently won the diplomatic struggle and critics say Jakarta manipulated the United Nations into allowing it to annex West Papua through a sham “Act of Free Choice” in 1969.

West Papuans are campaigning for United Nations support for a new referendum on independence.

Martinkus spoke about 1 December 2018 when a bunch of roadside Indonesian workers were filming the West Papuans raising the banned Morning Star independence flag and were shot. The Indonesians sent in paratroopers and helicopters with phosphorus bombs in retaliation.

But this does not deter Martinkus.

As he says: “I would be quite open to going there because I think it is really important. It was an issue that I felt was unsettled, it is unfinished business.”

Alert level two looked like alert level “zero” today after more than a month of lockdown in Auckland when I caught a local bus into downtown.

There were people in every facet of business smiling and frowning just like Auckland in the old pre-covid days.

The barber shops, coffee shops, takeaways were busy as people returned to their normal routines of keeping their businesses open.

What was disappointing, however, was there was no social distancing on the bus – or elsewhere, even though the bus signs said a maximum of 39 people.

Was I taking a risk? I suppose I was but that is the price you pay when you’re a journalist.

Did anyone on the bus feel threatened? No, a few had face masks on … even fewer people were wearing gloves.

Scent of a hairdo
I could smell the scent of the woman in front of me with her hairdo, which was fragrant and pleasant – so much for keeping your distance.

There were others on the bus, like a woman who sat across from me looking really busy as she answered her phone.

The others looked busy too as we picked up passengers on the way to Newmarket where young men and women would alight. And again there was no social distancing.

Whether they were girlfriends and boyfriends, I wouldn’t know but the sheer joy of seeing each other was something to behold after such a long time of being locked away.

Westfields at Newmarket was open, and it seemed that nothing new had happened. Again I was aghast at the no social distancing.

It was appalling to say the least. It was like the shackles had been taken off and people had come out to play on a sunny day.

Onehunga was busy as the mall returned to business, you couldn’t get a place to park your car, which was a far cry from level 4 or even level 3.

Thai pie and coffee
The joy of having a chicken and mushroom pie and a coffee made by the Thai couple down the road before I caught the bus was palpable. Finally, I could return to something normal – even though it was bad for me.

As were the kids at the playground in Onehunga, I saw from the bus. They were going down the slide after lockdown, and their joy was unbridled.

I stopped off at AUT University – where I study. It was closed with a QR barcode on the door which I didn’t bother to try.

Next was a trip to High Street, it seemed nothing had changed, just as busy as ever.

Auckland, had returned to normal it seemed. Covid-19 has been banished …or has it?

Story and pictures by Sri Krishnamurthi

Covid L2 ... or L zero?

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Was New Zealand media giant NZME trying to pull a “fast one” when the company sought urgent approval to help to buy out rival media company Stuff for $1.

The New Zealand Herald owners filed an urgent Commerce Commission application on Monday for the purchase – for $1 – and wanted to have the transaction complete by May 31.

In a who-will-blink-first move, it was seeking the government’s help with urgent legislation to help clear the way for the application.

READ MORE: NZME forces media merger issue – Colin Peacock, Mediawatch

The company revealed in a market announcement to the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) that it had entered an exclusive negotiation period with Stuff’s owner, Australian-based Nine Entertainment, on April 23.

However, Nine have said it “terminated” negotiations without a satisfactory conclusion.

As Andrew Holden, a journalist for more than 30 years, including five as editor of the Christchurch daily newspaper The Press, and four as editor-in-chief of The Age in Melbourne, told RNZ’s Nine-to-Noon programme yesterday:

“How strange it is, as Alice in Wonderland would say, it has become curiouser and curiouser.”

“At 9.34am, the New Zealand Herald website announcing precisely that, NZME has gone to the government and that it sought special legislation so it could circumvent the Commerce Commission and allow it to go ahead with the purchase,” the media commentator said.

“Pretty quickly Sinead Boucher, the CEO for Stuff comes back, and says the announcement was surprising to both to Nine and ourselves and not sure why NZME took this step given the clear message from our owners that there will be no transaction.

“That became more brutal when Nine entertainment issued its own statement to the Australian Stock Exchange saying not only that, but it had terminated further engagement with NZME,” he said.

Exclusive period
That forced NZME to issue another statement to the NZX saying as far as it was concerned it had an exclusive negotiation period with Nine and that had not finished.

“Further to that, we’ve had the regulator for the NZX asking some questions of NZME as to why their initial statement at 9.31am hadn’t mentioned the fact that talks had broken down, so there may be some further consequences,” Holden said.

“So basically, they are in a fundamental standoff and some of the commentators saying it was an attempt to bully the government,” he said.

“It leaves us in a very murky situation.”

There were also suggestions that a private equity firm in Australia were interested in Stuff, as was National Business Review owner Todd Scott.

With a day until the budget, and the government having already announced a $50 million first tranche of support for media, the question is whether NZME were already aware of what is in the budget?

Not so, said Dr Gavin Ellis, a former editor of The New Zealand and media commentator. He had a different take on what had taken place.

Budget process
“The budget process is such that it is not flexible enough to entertain 11th hour and 59th minute alterations,” Dr Ellis said.

“It is a bit puzzling I have to say,” he said of the whole process.

“The only development I’ve seen yesterday was a piece in The Australian about a medium sized private equity company having been in talks with Nine, apparently in conjunction with Todd Scott (NBR) but whether that was part of the ongoing discussion they had with a large number of people over a period of time with the possible sale of Stuff, I don’t know,” Dr Ellis told Pacific Media Watch.

His take was that there was a misunderstanding between the two parties.

“It seems to me that, both NZME and Nine, having made statements to their relative stock exchanges, that this appears to me not a matter of gamesmanship, so much as fundamental misunderstanding between the parties,” he said.

“They would not have made statements to the stock exchanges unless they believed it to be to current position because the consequences of misinforming the stock exchange are onerous.

“Particularly given that NZME share price rose yesterday,” Dr Ellis said.

‘Believed negotiations live’
“They must have believed the negotiations were live and that they were enlisting the aid of the Commerce Commission and potentially the government to ease the way for that sale to take place.

“The only unknown element is the role of Commerce Commission and the government, it is conceivable, and we’re privy to the financial details of Stuff or the liabilities that NZME would take on, but it is possible that if the government or the commerce commission were minded to facilitate a merger that they may put in place a number of binding conditions,” he said.

Meanwhile, Patrick Smellie of BusinessDesk in his column said: “Nine is ready to close Stuff down by May 31.

“It hasn’t said that publicly but BusinessDesk reliably understands that Nine has delivered that stark message to government ministers and officials,” he said.

“If Stuff were to close or were perhaps placed in receivership or liquidation next month, that could be the end not only for the country’s most-trafficked news website, but also a string of regional newspaper titles that are household names.”

That includes Wellington’s Dominion Post, Christchurch’s The Press, Hamilton’s Waikato Times, the Taranaki Daily News, the Timaru Herald, the Southland Times, and the Nelson Mail.

Before Ben Ryan (2016 Fiji gold medal winners at the Rio Olympics) there was George Simpkin, officially the technical director, but in fact Fiji coach at the 1987 rugby World Cup.

Last week he died aged 76 at his Waikato home, but that is not how I remember him.

The year 1987 was the time of the first Fiji military coup by Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka who I interviewed two years ago and who repeatedly apologised for carrying out the coup – but I digress.

READ MORE: International rugby community farewells George Simkin

As the sports editor at The Fiji Times at the time – along with my Fiji Sun colleague Matai Akoula who once saved me from a “mob lynching” at Nadi’s Prince Charles Park after a Farebrother Sullivan Challenge Trophy match (akin to the Ranfurly Shield here in New Zealand) when Nadi lost to Suva – we both found George a warm, kind-hearted man.

However, he could bristle like a man standing before you with hand on slim hips with a hernia. He could look so pained at what you had written, like you had done him so wrong – all about rugby.

Many a time, he strode into the old Gordon Street wooden building of The Fiji Times to lean on my desk while he fired questions at me,”why…did you write that”. And the whys came thick and fast followed by the inevitable “what were you thinking of when you wrote that?”

To the stage where he asked me to attend a clinic at the Fiji Rugby Union where he explained the finer points of forward play.

Role of the hooker …
What the loosehead did, what the tighthead did and the role of the hooker; but much more than that …what was function of the first lock, second lock and the loose forwards.

“The number 7 is first at the breakdown, followed by the number 8 and then the number 6, with locks and the props coming after,” he explained then.

For a boy who had hopes of doing a football degree in Germany, and being an Indo-Fijian, rugby didn’t come naturally to me.

I finally understood rugby, and did I love it – and that is why I think Sir Michael Jones was peerless as a Number 7. Thanks to George Simpkin.

He was head coach of Waikato from 1976-1984, taking the Ranfurly Shield off Auckland, moving the province into first division. He would have loved to coach the All Blacks, and to me it was a mystery why he wasn’t selected.

George grabbed opportunities to coach in Fiji then Hong Kong, China, Sri Lanka and Germany.

And he took to drinking yaqona like it was going out fashion, many a talanoa (chat) was had over a bilo (bowl) or three.

Fijian gait
As he explained to me at one such sitting, the Fijian gait was such that it was more suited to rucking than mauling because in the tropical climate Fijians tended to conserve their upper body energy.

So, he taught the Fijians the ruck-and-run game that worked so well at the first rugby World Cup and took them to the quarterfinals against France.

However, I did collaborate with him in getting Fiji to 1987 World Cup.

The book Real Men Drink Aftershave, by Alison Kervin, accurately describes this:

“… [B]ut the outside world still had no idea whether the Fijians would be in New Zealand. Sri Krishnamurthi, sports editor of The Fiji Times newspaper arrived at his desk only to be told by the editor that the rumours were circulating that Fiji were going to be replaced by Samoa….Krishnamurthi said he didn’t think so but would find out for definite. He headed down to the military base (where Fiji were training) and told Simpkin there were huge concerns in New Zealand. ‘We will be there,’ said Simpkin…’Leave it to me I’ll tell them’.”

“Krishnamurthi rushed back to phone his friend Dean McLachlan at Rugby News in Auckland but he couldn’t get a line out of the country. He dialled the operator and explained that he needed to get a message to New Zealand urgently to say the Fijian team would be at the World Cup, she opened the line and put him through to Auckland. Krishnamurthi duly spoke to McLachlan who passed the message to NZRFU that the Fijians were coming.”

And that’s how Fiji came to play in the first rugby World Cup in 1987 just a mere couple of weeks after the first military coup.

George Simpkin accumulated a wealth of achievements at school, club, provincial and international rugby level but on May 7, the 76-year-old husband and father lost his battle with cancer at Waikato Hospital in Hamilton.

Haere Ra George, Fiji will remember you with great fondness.

As New Zealand prepares to go to alert level 2 in the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, the attention turns to the recovery of the economy – and we must spare a thought for the economies of the Pacific.

Most of the Pacific relies on tourism, as does New Zealand, however devastation of the industry has rendered it almost non-recoverable.

As Ingrid Leary, who was director for New Zealand and the Pacific for the UK cultural relations organisation British Council for 11 years, says, the recovery is going to be “tricky” for the Pacific.

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While it is easy to dismiss her as just another Pākehā voice in the distance – who is standing in the Dunedin safe seat of Taieri for Labour, succeeding Clare Curran – nothing can be further the truth.

She has a deep love for the Pacific, in particular Fiji, having gone there in 1997 and helped develop the University of the South Pacific journalism school with the Pacific Media Centre’s Professor David Robie for several years.

Leary understands the Pacific’s estimated US$4.2 billion tourism industry has been destroyed and with no social welfare to fall back on this leaves the people of the Pacific facing poverty and unemployment.

“The question of Pacific tourism is very tricky and yes thousands of jobs are lost, as indeed in New Zealand as well,” she says.

Tourism ‘devastated’
“The tourism industry has been devastated by covid-19 and it is going to take a lot of imagination and rethinking to get the industry back up and running.

“I think some of the answers will be around eco-tourism and also making use of the fact most Pacific Islanders didn’t experience any cases of covid-19,” Leary told Pacific Media Watch.

She hopes that the trans-Tasman bubble can be extended to the Pacific in due time.

“So, promoting tourism within the region and when New Zealand and Australia form a bubble then perhaps extending that bubble to the Pacific when it is safe to do so, so there can be regional tourism and regional travel,” says the award-winning former television journalist who went to Banda Aceh after the 2004 tsunami and covered the devastation there.

“And that climate change and climate orientated services and products are very much at the centre of that tourism offer,” says Leary, who is also a lawyer.

Ironically, covid-19 might be a blessing in disguise for the environment and climate change when it comes to rethinking tourism, she thinks.

“If that does happen then covid-19 in the tourism sector might be a blessing in the Pacific because the rate of destruction of the environment through climate change was so massive as the Fijian government knows and has led on,” she says.

Projecting the environment
“Having a reset and having tourism being done differently so that it protects the environment and the communities which survive on it would be a fantastic long-term outcome from what is otherwise been a devastating pandemic,” she said.

No one can doubt her sincerity, as I found out myself  when returning to Fiji after 30 years away.

“Recently, in my role with the British Council I was working on a project to vision the new art gallery with the Fijian government,” she recalls.

But it is the next sentence which left me gobsmacked – here is a woman who doesn’t just love the islands but belongs there.

“Every time I got off the plane the familiar smell of Fiji, warmth and vibe just reminded me that I was home again, my second home and that feeling will never leave me.

“I love Fiji. I have two Rotuman children from my time in Fiji. As much as it is my second home, Fiji has such complex cultures, and politically and there are always surprises and for that reason I will always find Fiji fascinating,” Leary says.

The expectation is that the tourism industry will take at least two years to get back on its feet.

Pacific tourism report
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) commissioned a report in conjunction with the Pacific Tourism Organisation (SPTO) titled “Pacific Tourism: Covid19 Impact & Recovery, Sector Status Report: Phase 1B” which was released last week on May 5.

The major focus on countries in the report are Cook Islands, Fiji, Niue, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Tonga.

The report says: “At this time, all tourism in the Pacific has ceased. All borders to Pacific countries, including New Zealand, are closed to commercial air traffic and cruise ships.

“There are currently no commercial air services, and global tourism has halted. Flights are operating on a charter basis only.

“Currently, there are no cases of covid-19 in Cook Islands, Niue, Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu.

“There are confirmed covid-19 cases in Fiji, French Polynesia, New Caledonia and PNG.

“Impact on all Pacific nations is significant, with the tourism sector and all associated businesses and sectors effectively shut down commercially and in maintenance mode at best,” the report says.

For instance, Fiji’s economy is projected to shrink by 4.9 percent in 2020, Cook Islands 2.2 percent, Samoa 3 percent, Tonga zero growth, Vanuatu 1 percent and Tuvalu 2.7 percent.

“If there were limited cases and no travel restrictions, New Zealanders are willing to travel,” the report goes on to say.

https://corporate.southpacificislands.travel/spto-releases-pacific-tourism-impact-report/

• Lockdown on Waiheke
• Pacific tourism ‘catastrophe’

The pressure goes on re-elected World Rugby chairman Bill Beaumont to investigate Fiji Rugby Union chief Francis Kean for allegedly using homophobic slurs in a recording during his role in charge of the Fiji Prison Service. 

The slurs emerged from an audio recording reportedly made during his prison job and revealed today by Rugby Pass following last month’s London Sunday Times investigation.

Kean was recently stood down as a candidate from the vote for World Rugby’s all-powerful executive committee over the allegation and it is understood to be at Beaumont’s request. 

READ MORE: Inquiry into Francis Kean, the convicted killer whose Fijian union is backing Bill Beaumont’s World Rugby bid

Overnight, the Pacific Rugby Players Welfare (PRPW) organisation, headed by former Samoan international Dan Leo sent a second letter calling for “urgent enquiries on the status of the investigation”. 

It could become an embarrassment for Beaumont if he does nothing after New Zealand Member of Parliament Louisa Wall, who represented New Zealand in netball (Silver Fern) and rugby (Black Fern), outlined to Pacific Media Watch that Beaumont had called for “diversity” in the game. 

“In 2015, World Rugby and International Gay Rugby (IGR) signed an agreement to progress strategies to keep homophobia and intolerance out of rugby,” Wall said. 

“It was an expression by World Rugby of its commitment through these alliances for rugby to live up to its stated values of integrity, respect, discipline, passion, and solidarity.” 

‘Proud of inclusivity’
She went on to say that World Rugby chairman Bill Beaumont had said at the time: “We are proud of our partnership with International Gay Rugby to promote inclusivity, equality and friendship as rugby continues to reach out, engage and inspire.

“It’s important to us that rugby remains a sport for all, that it embraces diversity, celebrates difference and shuns intolerance.” 

Without pointing a finger at Kean, she had a word of advice for World Rugby. 

“For rugby to be able to fully embrace diversity and inclusion it should be a requirement that all council members and elected executive members commit to these stated values and be able to demonstrate commitment to these values.” 

“Eradicating homophobia, sexism and misogyny requires deliberate action and any person appointed or nominated to these positions should sign a code of conduct that includes a commitment to the stated values of World Rugby.  

“Anyone who cannot commit to those values or has acted in contravention of these values should not be eligible for appointment,” Wall said 

“And, I am an advocate that board quality is dependent on board diversity. World Rugby does need a combination of skills and experience and this transcends gender and should include ethnicity, and a range of people passionate about rugby and who appreciate the value of sport to society.  

‘Need to meet future threats’
“We need World Rugby to be in the best position to embrace new approaches to meet future threats and opportunities” – wise words for Beaumont and his executive. 

The PRPW in the letter, quoted in the Rugby Pass publication, said World Rugby had a regulation that it could invoke. 

“While  World Rugby  have no fit-and-proper-person test for anyone standing as a union official, PRPW have identified World Rugby regulation 20.4 (c) in relation to misconduct which refers to ‘acts or statements that are discriminatory by reason of sexual orientation’.” 

In the letter following the  Sunday Times  story that broke the original controversy ahead of World Rugby’s vote, PRPW director Dan Leo wrote: “I note that, although it is more than two weeks since an investigation was first promised to the media, at the time of writing this letter no request has yet been received by the Sunday Times from WR (World Rugby) for a copy or transcript of the Kean recording or any other material generated in support of the April 19 report.” 

One of the PRPW board members is former Fiji international Josh Matavesi, who told  RugbyPass:  

“I don’t know what [Kean] adds to the FRU. I am embarrassed by his comments. As a Fijian, I know how hard the team has worked in the last decade to pride itself on the morals and values that it holds,” Matavesi said. 

More scathing words
Lord Robert Hayward who is secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Group in the United Kingdom for rugby union had more scathing words about Kean’s actions. 

“The alleged comments attributed to Francis Kean are unacceptable. If World Rugby are to stand by the game’s values and moreover their own regulations, we need more clarity about the undertaking of their investigation and any subsequent steps,” he told Rugby Pass. 

“Taking swift and appropriate action against anti-LGBT remarks is what everyone in rugby should expect of those in the highest office of the game,” Lord Hayward said. 

Kean was convicted of manslaughter in 2007 after he punched and killed John Whippy at a wedding in Suva. 

He is also the brother-in-law of Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama. 

By Sri Krishnamurthi, contributing editor of Pacific Media Watch

Papua New Guinea’s two daily newspapers – the PNG Post-Courier and The National – which dominate the market, demonstrated “overwhelming deference” to the office of former  Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, says a new report about the country’s media freedom.

Transparency International Papua New Guinea (TIPNG) released a preliminary statement from a research report on World Press Freedom Day last Sunday, saying it found “much wrong” with the PNG media. 

The full report, which says public trust in the media is eroding, will be available later in the year.

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The global WPFD20 theme this year was “Journalism Without Fear or Favour” and the Transparency International statement featured media trends in Papua New Guinea and the issue of bias in reporting on governance issues among print media. 

Analysing a period from June 2017 to August 2018, the report examines the balance of coverage on governance issues in particular. 

“The threats to PNG’s media freedom are most obvious when it comes to major national events that require objective reporting in the public interest,” the statement said.

Hampered by other interests
“Recent instances where the ability of the media to report have been hampered by other interests (often political) include:

• the 2017 national election;
• the 2018 APEC Leaders Summit;
• the 2019 Political Transition [after the ousting of O’Neill and the formation of a new government led by current Prime Minister James Marape]; and
  
• the 2020 Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic public spending.

“Journalists in PNG are further disadvantaged by the lack of Right to Information (RTI) legislation to enable them to obtain public documents from the state.” the statement added.

“In the absence of a RTI law in PNG the media outlets are further beholden to political interests as sources of information – which further erodes public trust in news outlets.”

Transparency International also said: “While PNG has enjoyed a relatively free media, this has been under threat in recent years. For instance, the 2020 Reporters Without Borders (RSF)  World Press Freedom Index  assessed PNG to have a press whose independence is ‘endangered’, with a corresponding drop of eight places in rank since last year,” the report said. 

“Interestingly one of the reasons cited by RSF for the diminished ranking is that journalists nonetheless continue to be dependent on the concerns of those who own their media.” 

‘Crisis on multiple fronts’
Commenting on the report, Scott Waide, the Lae bureau chief of EMTV News,  told Pacific Media Watch “what we have here is a crisis on multiple fronts“.

“Debate is stifled, journalists are threatened, abused and ridiculed, editors, CEOs and board members are put under pressure – you are excluded from events  or deliberately not informed,” he said. 

“Politicians feel invincible because of the image we reinforce in the media. They want us to  report the facts  but  not  report the  why and how. They avoid live debates, or live interviews, unless  they feel they have some control over them.

“They avoid interviews unless you push them into a corner, if they cannot fully control them, they will influence them.” 

Waide said he had given lectures on the misgiving of the PNG media which become beset with many problems. 

“Politicians are put on a pedestal and adored, corruption is normalised and legalised. Politicians feel that government policy should not be questioned, and critical thinking  is largely absent in public debate.” 

The problems stemmed from the overall decline in the quality of training at universities where students took journalism as second or third choice. 

‘A constant void’
“As well as the steady exit of senior  journalists, taking with them years of accumulated institutional knowledge, younger journalists leave after an average of five years, there is always a constant void that needs filling in newsrooms and the absence of critical debate driven by the media,” he said. 

He pointed out there was a general absence of proactive action to question, analyse and explain bad government decisions, and fact checking of political statements was non-existent. 

The Transparency International report said: “To reach its potential, however, professional and ethical journalism standards need to be raised in the face of increasing political pressures.”

However, Waide was forthright in his assessment: “The solution is cross-sectoral and  can’t be done only by media organisations.” 

Meanwhile, in Samoa similar problems were expressed by Samoa Observer editors and reporters of not being informed of press conferences by the government. 

The newspaper, one of the region’s leading advocates of media freedom, produced a video on social media speaking about the virtues of media on World Press Freedom Day. 

“You are talking about giving the media the ability to go out there and reach out to the masses, give them a voice, give them the ability to reach out to the leaders of this country, give them an opportunity to tell them this what you should do,” said co-editor Alexander Rheeney, who is also a former editor of the Post-Courier in Port Moresby. 

Samoa media ‘encroachments’
His co-editor, James Robertson, said: “There regular updates on this coronavirus situation in Samoa to which we are not invited, there are regular press conferences by the prime minister to which we are not allowed to send reporters to ask questions.” 

“And these are significant encroachments of press freedom in Samoa,” he said. 

 Rheeney was more philosophical, asking the reporters not to take their jobs for granted. 

 “I asked them not to clock-in in the morning and clock-out in the evening Monday to Friday without thinking about their work as reporters, and the power they have in their hands to change the lives of ordinary Samoans for the better and to influence government policy decisions for the benefit of the people,” he told Pacific Media Watch. 

“There is a big difference between working for a daily newspaper that publishes ordinary news stories Monday to Friday without thinking about the ‘big picture issues’, unlike at the Samoa Observer where we urge our reporters to think outside the box. 

“We strive to get our reporters to tell the bigger story and not just focus on news that gets fed from the Prime Minister’s Facebook livestream or at a press conference where the questions that matter don’t normally get asked,” he said. 

After nearly five weeks of alert level 4 covid-19 lockdown and a further week at level 3, there is only one voice most New Zealanders rely on – Prime Minster Jacinda Ardern. 

While there has been clamouring to get the economy going from the likes of former prime minister Sir John Key and opposition leader Simon Bridges, Jacinda Ardern has remained firm. 

Sir Key said during an interview on TV3’s Rebuilding Paradise with Paul Henry: “It’s crucially important we get to a freer, more open economy. In a funny kind of way, I think the levels system was a good idea and it did its job – it defined what we had to do, but in a lot of ways it defined what we couldn’t do.”

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However, there is no economy without healthy people, and Prime Minister Ardern realised that very early in the pandemic. 

On March 23, Ardern stood on the Beehive Theatre stage to announce she was putting New Zealand into lockdown, she gave a warning with five words: “Tens of thousands could die.” 

I know for sure with underlying health conditions that I have that I would perish should I get covid-19. 

That’s why I have trusted the Prime Minister through this lockdown – and she has been proven right. Yesterday’s zero new cases for the first time in eight weeks is a good sign.

‘Proof from New Zealanders’
“The thing that has probably given me confidence in our response has been the proof from New Zealanders today that as long as people see the need, people know why you’re making that decision, that you’re sharing all of the information, and people are coming on that journey with you then they will do extraordinary things,” she told The New Zealand Herald.

“It’s just been about trust. 

“Human behaviour changes as long as people trust they have all the information they need to support the decision you are making on their behalf.” 

While Jacinda has cut back on her appearances on the Beehive Theatre stage, she does appear – if only to provide reassurance to the public just as she did during the Christchurch massacre last year and the White Island volcanic explosion. 

The level of trust she has engendered can be seen in Ardern’s popularity is at a record high, taking 65 percent of the preferred Prime Minister rating in the latest UMR poll which came out on May 1. 

Amnesty for overstayers call
Meanwhile Tonga’s  Kaniva News  has called for an amnesty for New Zealand overstayers to help check virus spread. 

While not condoning remaining illegally in New Zealand, the leading Tongan news website says that overstayers’ families and children are particularly vulnerable in the current crisis. 

Papua New Guinea expects a spike of covid-19 cases this month – but so far no new cases have been detected in the country beyond the eight previously reported. 

In Guam, there are now 145 cases with five deaths, and there are now 1100 cases among the USS Theodore Roosevelt crew.

Northern Marianas has 14 cases with two deaths, French Polynesia now has 58 cases while Timor-Leste has 24 cases. 

The collapse of tourism across the world in the face of the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic could plunge thousands of people into poverty in the Pacific, predicts a new International Labour Organisation report.

Thousands of jobs in countries like Fiji, Samoa and Tonga are dependent on visitor numbers, which have fallen to zero.

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The crash will have serious impacts on many island economies.

“Economies such as Fiji, the Maldives and Tonga are heavily dependent on tourism, with shares of tourism in total exports reaching 52, 84 or 47 percent respectively,” the report says.

“In many Asia and Pacific countries, more than three in four workers in the tourism sector are informal jobs, leaving them especially vulnerable to the negative impacts of the covid-19 crisis.

“Informal sector jobs are characterised by a lack of basic protection, including social protection coverage.”

Thousands of jobs lost
Thousands of jobs have already been lost, with resorts and hotels closing in Fiji, the Cook Islands and Samoa, countries where tourism makes up more than half the economy, reports RNZ News.

And the ILO says that with the pain brought by the pandemic expected to be long-lasting, workers with previously stable incomes are sliding into poverty.

Many of these people are also informal workers, with few protections if their jobs fall through.

They don’t have a social welfare system to fall back on, unlike New Zealand or Australia.

The ILO says few Pacific countries have the money to fully cope with the coronavirus response, and solidarity from the likes of Australia, New Zealand and the World Bank will be vital.

The economies of the Cook Islands, Fiji, Palau, Samoa, and Vanuatu are the Pacific countries likely to feel the brunt of the covid-19 pandemic most, according to a separate new report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) earlier this month.

Assuming even just a three-month interruption in travel and trade, the tourism-based economies are all expected to contract this year, with Tonga forecast for zero growth, according to the latest  Asian Development Outlook (ADO) 2020, ADB’s flagship economic publication.

Pacific contraction
Growth of ADB’s Pacific developing member countries (DMCs) in 2020 is forecast to contract by 0.3 percent, as the covid-19 pandemic directly impacts on tourism and trade flows, while also affecting construction activity.

The recovery in 2021, at 2.7 percent, will rely on improvements in tourism numbers, the commencement of delayed construction projects, and the resumption of labour mobility and cross-border trade

“While most Pacific countries moved quickly and decisively to restrict travel from a fast-growing list of COVID-19 affected countries, such restrictions can come with a high economic cost,” says ADB director-general for the Pacific Leah Gutierrez in a statement.

“ADB is committed to supporting the Pacific cope with the covid-19 pandemic and help address immediate needs.

“We are providing grant financing and support to procure needed medical goods and equipment in selected countries.

“We are also working with Ministries of Finance to assess their budget support needs and coordinating on these closely with other development partners. Strengthening social protection will be key to safeguarding vulnerable groups during this downturn and will also help support the eventual recovery process.”

Economic growth in Papua New Guinea in 2019 was 4.8 percent, tempered by the deferral of large investment projects.

Construction decline
Agriculture, forestry, and fisheries continued to expand, but construction is estimated to have declined. The  ADO 2020 says the government faces important challenges in managing public debt.

The covid-19 pandemic is an added shock for the PNG economy and is already negatively affecting commodity prices. Growth in PNG is expected to remain weak at about 0.8 percent in 2020, rising to 2.8 percent in 2021, it said in its statement.

After uninterrupted growth for the past nine years, growth in Fiji is estimated to have slowed to 0.7 percent in 2019, a hangover from the effects of cyclones Winston and Harold.

Fiji’s economy is projected to further decline by 4.9 percent in 2020 due to the covid-19 pandemic.

The tourism and air transport sectors are expected to be the worst hit. The report suggests the government must strengthen and empower the private sector to innovate, diversify, and drive the economic recovery after covid-19, while finding the right balance between investing in climate resilient

infrastructure, limiting debt exposure, and building fiscal buffers. As a priority, Fiji needs to improve its business and investment climate, while encouraging business innovation. The report says growth will improve in 2021 and reach about 3.0 percent.

Economic growth in Solomon Islands is expected to slow to 1.5 percent in 2020, slightly down from 2.6 percent in 2019, as exports fall because of the covid-19 pandemic.

Continuing logging decline
Growth is expected to recover to 2.7 percent in 2021 as construction on large infrastructure projects offsets a continuing decline in logging.  ADO 2020  says that with the logging sector contributing less to growth over the longer term, reforming the tax system will become critically important to ensure that it supports broad-based growth in other areas.

Vanuatu’s economic growth is forecast to contract from 2.8 percent in 2019 to -1.0 percent in 2020 as travel restrictions arising from covid-19 undermine tourism. Growth should recover and reach 2.5 percent in 2021. The report notes that with more workers accessing labour mobility schemes, policies must ensure that the benefits are both broadly enjoyed and sustainable.

The covid-19 pandemic will severely hit tourism, with the South Pacific economies the most affected.

Growth and fiscal outcomes will be undermined in the Cook Islands, Samoa, and Tonga. The Cook Islands’ economy is expected to contract from 5.3 percent in 2019 to -2.2 percent in 2020 due to a collapse in tourist arrivals.

Growth is forecast to recover in 2021 to 1.0 percent. Samoa’s economy is expected to contract from 3.5 percent in 2019 to -3.0 percent, before slightly rebounding to 0.8 percent in 2021.

Tonga, where economic growth was 3.0 percent in 2019, will see zero growth in 2020 due partly to a plunge in visitor arrivals. Growth will likely reach 2.5 percent in 2021, buoyed by tourism recovery and faster government implementation of rehabilitation and recovery from Cyclone Gita, says the ADB report said.

More covid-19 cases
Meanwhile, Guam has recorded more positive covid-19 results, taking cases there to 144 and five people have died from the virus in the US territory.

In the curious case of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, now docked in Guam there were 840 cases, but the origins of covid-19 remain a mystery.

In New Zealand, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield announced today that there were three new cases, two confirmed and one probable.

The new national total of confirmed and probable cases is 1472.

And, as New Zealand moved to alert level 3, the queues at MacDonalds and other takeaway sites after four weeks of lockdown were something to behold.

In the Northern Marianas they had 14 cases and two deaths, New Caledonia 18 cases, French Polynesia 58 cases, Timor-Leste 24 cases and Hawai’i has 607 cases with 16 deaths.

Pacific Nations could hold sway this weekend as the World Rugby vote for a chairman takes place between England’s Bill Beaumont and Agustín Pichot of Argentina, setting the tone for future development.

However, the vote has not been without controversy, especially where Fiji is concerned.

Fiji has been at the centre of attention after being forced to withdraw their nomination, Francis Kean, from World Rugby’s all-powerful executive committee.

READ MORE: Trad turkeys of World Rugby unlikely to vote for Christmas on election day

His manslaughter conviction, allegations of homophobia while he was head of Fiji’s prison service, and discrimination were laid bare in The Sunday Times in the United Kingdom and by Pacific Rugby Players Welfare head Dan Leo, who wrote a scathing press release condemning his nomination.

Confirming Kean’s withdrawal this week, World Rugby said in a statement: “While it is important to stress that any allegations must be validated, following dialogue with World Rugby, the Fiji Rugby Union recognises the seriousness of the allegations made and the need for them to be fully investigated, and that it is in the best interests of the sport that Mr Kean steps down from the council and his executive committee candidature be withdrawn.”

However, Kean, who is Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama’s brother-in-law remains chairman of the Fiji Rugby Union.

“The Pacific nations are in a position now where they can use the situation for a bit of leverage, if it is okay for the incumbents to start offering out incentives or dangling carrots, whatever you want to call it,” SkyTV rugby commentator Tony Johnson, who has covered a lot of Pacific rugby, told Pacific Media Watch.

Possible kingmakers
“So, they are suddenly in a situation where they can be kingmaker.

“It is an intriguing situation that has arisen. The Kean situation has perhaps made changes a little bit possible.

“Given that his vote was going to support the status quo [Bill Beaumont and Bernard Laporte], and I’m not sure why they would do that.

“But it maybe opens it up again, it is a unique situation. The battle lines between north and south have been drawn so you have the six nations driven very much by England and France with everyone else falling into line behind them.

“And then you’ve got the SANZAR [South Africa, New Zealand and Australia] nations on the other side, so for me it is going to be the unions who are so often referred to as the ‘smaller nations’. it’s not a name that reflects their contribution to the game but that’s what people tend to call them,” he said.

The powers in rugby get two votes and the lesser nations one vote.

“Well, it’s always been lopsided. You’ve got to hope whether there is a change in thinking brought about by this current vote, then the voice will be greater,” Johnson said.

“The big question now is what happens with Fiji’s vote. I have no idea why, but Fiji was going to vote for the Bill Beaumont and Bernard Laporte ticket.

“He [Kean] was going to sit on the world rugby executive, I’m not sure what is going to happen now.

“Whether they reassess their position, who they are going to vote for, I think that is going to be quite important.”

Status quo favourites
According to him the status quo looked odds on favourite at the moment.

“If it were a presidential race then I would say Beaumont is ahead, but that can change,” he said before adding, “i’ve got too much respect for the Pacific nations to tell them who to vote for, they should vote for whatever is good for them.

“As I say, they can use this situation for some leverage, to win some concessions.

“Then I think it’s okay for those countries whose votes they are going to need to start laying out a few conditions.

“They’ve been plenty of promises broken in the past.”

Asked how he thought SANZAR would vote, he said: “You would think they [SANZAR nations] would vote for Pichot, I don’t think there is anything to be gained from backing the status quo.

“The worry I have is that SANZAR doesn’t always present a united front. They always say they will, but it hasn’t always worked that way.

‘Pichot is the guy’
“If we genuinely want to change the landscape of the game and make it more equitable, level the playing field, then personally I think Pichot is the guy.”

But whatever happened, both Pichot and Beaumont had rugby politics to contend with, he said.

“Don’t get me wrong, Bill Beaumont is a very nice guy but he has been hamstrung in what he would like to do by rugby politics,” Johnson added.

The vote is to take place on Sunday.

Nominated for chairman: Beaumont and Pichot

Chairman Sir Bill Beaumont is standing for a second term and has been nominated and proposed by the Fédération Française de Rugby and seconded by the Fiji Rugby Union.

Vice-Chairman Agustín Pichot (Union Argentina de Rugby) was nominated and proposed by Unión Argentina de Rugby and seconded by Rugby Australia and Sudamérica Rugby.

Nominated for vice-chairman: Bernard Laporte

Fédération Française de Rugby President Bernard Laporte has been nominated and proposed by the Rugby Football Union and seconded by Federația Română de Rugby.

Where contested, chairman and vice-chairman candidates must achieve a simple majority of the votes held by the members of council present, in line with the electoral process set out under the bylaw. The vote numbers will be published.

Executive committee nominations:

Eight nominations (now seven) have been received for the seven available positions on the World Rugby Executive Committee

Mark Alexander (South African Rugby Union), nominated and proposed by Rugby Africa and the South African Rugby Union and seconded by New Zealand Rugby and the South African Rugby Union.

Khaled Babbou (Rugby Africa), nominated and proposed by Rugby Africa and seconded by the South African Rugby Union and the Fédération Française de Rugby.

Bart Campbell (New Zealand Rugby), nominated and proposed by New Zealand Rugby and seconded by the South African Rugby Union.

Gareth Davies (Welsh Rugby Union), nominated and proposed by the Scottish Rugby Union and seconded by the Welsh Rugby Union.

John Jeffrey (Scottish Rugby Union), nominated and proposed by the Welsh Rugby Union and seconded by the Irish Rugby Football Union.

*Ratu Vilikesa Bulewa Francis Kean (Fiji Rugby Union), nominated and proposed by the Fiji Rugby Union and seconded by the Fédération Française de Rugby. (Now withdrawn)

Bob Latham (USA Rugby), nominated and proposed by USA Rugby and seconded by Rugby Americas North.

Brett Robinson (Rugby Australia), proposed and nominated by Rugby Australia and seconded by the Unión Argentina de Rugby.

*Ratu Vilikesa Bulewa Francis Kean (Fiji Rugby Union), nominated and proposed by the Fiji Rugby Union and seconded by the Fédération Française de Rugby – but now withdrawn after The Sunday Times report.

To be elected, executive committee nominees need to be one of the seven candidates who win the highest number of votes.

The chairman, vice-chairman and executive committee will be elected for a period of four years commencing immediately after the results are announced by the auditor to council on May 12.

New Zealand’s Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media Kris Faafoi today announced the first tranche of support initiatives for the media, most of it going to broadcast.

Minister Faafoi announced a package worth $50 million to help the media get through the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.

His announcement comes a week after the media fronted the parliamentary Epidemic Response Committee via Zoom.

READ MORE: Covid-19: Government announces support package for media

Faafoi said the intent of the initial tranche was to free up cash for commercial media companies following the drop in advertising revenue that occurred when New Zealand went into level 4 lockdown last month.

The bailout coincided with the release of a report by Auckland University of Technology’s Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD) centre which showed a relative high trust of the media in New Zealand.

The poll, which was carried out by Horizon Research, a marketing company that found in comparison trust in news in New Zealand was generally high with 53 percent of people agreeing they could trust “most of the news most of the time”.

The report, by AUT academics Dr Merja Myllylahti and Dr Greg Treadwell, found 63 percent of New Zealanders trusted the news they personally consumed.

Trust in news consumed via social media and search engines in New Zealand was low when compared internationally.

Faafoi said that this package alone won’t be enough for the media industry to survive a prolonged period of lockdown restrictions and redu

Second tranche planned
Minister Faafoi said that the first tranche of support for the media industry would not be enough to survive a prolonged period of lockdown restrictions and reduced advertising, and that a second tranche package was being put in place that would be submitted for budget discussions next month.

He gave a breakdown of where the money was going:

• $20.5 million to cut television and radio transmission fees for six months;
• $16.5 million reduction in media organisations’ contribution fees to NZ On Air for the 2020/21 financial year;
• $11.1 million for specific targeted assistance to companies;
• $1.3 million to purchase central government news media subscriptions;
• $600,000 to completely cut RNZ AM transmission fees for six months;
• A commitment to further develop the Local Democracy Reporting pilot.

Of that, the $11.1 million for targeted assistance to media companies was unclear but was assumed to be for commercial print or online media.

“The proposals in this package were generated by the industry themselves in a recent series of workshops to identify means of delivering immediate support to the sector. We have chosen the proposals that have a relatively quick impact to get support out the door as fast as possible,” Faafoi said.

“This support reflects the essential role media play at this time in delivering access to reliable and up to date news coverage and keeping New Zealanders connected while in lockdown.

“There is evidence New Zealanders are turning to trusted news sources in record numbers at this time, so it is critical the media is supported to keep doing the great job they have been doing,” he said.

He added that the media sector was only behind primary health care and aviation, to receive a specific pool of funding on top of the wage subsidy scheme.

Media struggling
Faafoi said most companies in the media were struggling to provide, local, regional and investigative journalism and that was a problem with the media eco-system pre-covid-19.

Asked by the press corps present in Parliament whether he was willing to let some media entities fail, Faafoi said: “We’ll deal with everything on a case by case basis as it comes to us.”

“No one is not susceptible to the challenges, as in any sector,” he said.

Meanwhile, he said the merger between Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand was on the backburner for the time being.

“Let’s say it’s on ice … while it’s on ice, it doesn’t mean it’s dead,” he said.

Last week, both Stuff and NZME announced pay cuts of 15 percent for staff as well as NZME laying off 200 staff, including those at Radio Sport.

Stuff has resorted to using the Press Patron platform as a means of generating cash from readers and subscribers in a model reportedly similar to The Guardian.

Bauer Media was the first of dominoes to fall with it folding its New Zealand operations taking with it 237 jobs.

PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY: By Sri Krishnamurthi, self-isolating in Auckland under New Zealand’s Covid-19 lockdown as part of a Pacific Media Watch series.

Papatūānuku – earth mother is breathing,

The mere suggestion that you can see and hear tūī and kererū in Auckland was once a myth… but no longer as Covid-19 keeps the traffic at bay.

Even in Auckland you can now hear birds as clear as daylight as the air clears over New Zealand’s biggest city, reputed to be the largest Polynesian city in the world.

READ MORE: Al Jazeera coronavirus live updates – Europe death toll passes 100,000

The tūī, with a distinctive white throat tuft, is usually very vocal, with a complicated mix of tuneful notes interspersed with coughs, grunts, and wheezes. In flight, their bodies slant with the head higher than the tail, and their noisy whirring flight is interspersed with short glides.

And the kererū, or wood pigeon, is a large bird with iridescent green and bronze feathers on its head and a smart white vest. The noisy beat of its wings is a distinctive sound in our forest.

You don’t hear them normally in urban New Zealand, but the air has been so clean that  they are back, and many people have commented on hearing the birds chirping in their gardens.

That is because our earth mother, Papatūānuku, is breathing.

Celebrating silence
A video that celebrates the silence of our biggest city in the Covid-19 lockdown has become the biggest ever global hit on the Visit Auckland YouTube channel – 218,940 view at last count.

Papatūānuku is breathing, narrated by 11-year-old Manawanui Maniapoto Mills, pans across Auckland’s natural landscapes as human activity almost stops during the lockdown.

“Stop, listen, Papatūānuku, the earth mother, is breathing, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland is still,” it begins.

“Out tūī, our kererū, now need not fight with the daily hum of our busy lifestyles.”

And at the end: “Dream, plan, and when the time is right, we welcome you, but for now listen, Papatūānuku is breathing.”

Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (Ateed) destination general manager Steve Armitage told The New Zealand Herald the video’s message was “designed to be simple: this is a time of rest; take a moment to appreciate the stillness and the beauty of our region”.

“We hope the video is encouraging for Kiwis entering their third week of lockdown,” he added.

Within just days of its release on social media, the video has amassed more than half a million views and generated the most engagement for ATEED.

It has been viewed by not only New Zealanders, but by people in Australia, the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.

Translated into French, Spanish
It has even been translated into French and Spanish by “inspired viewers”.

It is a haunting video that shows the best of New Zealand.

Meanwhile, more than 40,000 Pacific people in New Zealand have benefitted from the government’s Covid-19 support packages.

The Pasifika Medical Association through Pasifika Futures- the Whanau Ora commissioning agency for Pacific families – said nearly 7500 packages had been delivered to families since the lockdown was announced on 23 March.

Data to determine if community transmission of Covid-19 is occurring in New Zealand will be a big factor in tomorrow’s decision on whether to extend the level 4 lockdown, reports RNZ News.

At a media briefing yesterday, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield reported nine new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand. All were linked to existing cases.

There were now 18 people in hospital, including three in intensive care, with two in a critical condition and 1098 cases, while more than 4000 tests were processed in laboratories yesterday. Dr Bloomfield also confirmed a death that occurred in Invercargill last week was a Covid-19-related death, taking the total to 12.

17 cases in Fiji
Fiji going into the weekend had 17 cases. A 21-year-old who had been a travelling companion of a man who visited India to go to a religious festival who flagrantly disregarded all self-isolation rules has now infected several people.

Also going into the weekend, Papua New Guinea, which is ill-prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic, had prime minster James Marape confirm they had five new cases taking the total to seven.

Guam had 135 cases and five deaths going into the weekend and the sailors off the USS Theodore Roosevelt had 615 positive cases.

Northern Marianas has 13 cases and two deaths, Tahiti has 55 cases and New Caledonia is still at 18.

In all going into the weekend there were 250 cases in the Pacific with seven deaths around the Pacific.

Meanwhile, Reporters without Borders (RSF) is alarmed to learn that Indonesia’s police have been ordered to combat not only disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic but also criticism of the president and government.

NZ lockdown – day 25: Nine new cases – community spread key to lockdown

The thin veneer of a seemingly robust New Zealand media was ripped off like a plaster on a scab in front of Parliament’s Epidemic Response Committee today exposing its frailties. 

The heads of all New Zealand’s media companies appeared via Zoom and all spoke of the desperate times ahead. 

Stuff, NZME, Television New Zealand, MediaWorks, RNZ, Newsroom, The Spinoff and Businessdesk as well as iwi representation appeared before the Epidemic Response Committee, which is chaired by opposition National Party leader Simon Bridges. 

READ MORE: Media rescue package needed to save industry ‘on its knees’

What was unusual was that all reported that their audience and readership numbers were “skyrocketing” because people needed factual news, whether it was digital readership, broadcast or television. 

However, advertising revenue was at a nadir and that is what was hurting the media owners. 

Former New Zealand Herald editor and media commentator Dr Gavin Ellis in his opening submission said advertising revenue for media companies was estimated to drop between 50 and 75 percent, and there was concern that it would not return even after the Covid-19 pandemic crisis was over. 

“Magazine publishers are indispensable gurus of our unique culture and our habitat, they’ve got to be urgently granted as an essential business status,” he said. 

Media environment plight
“One media representative described the plight of the media environment as it needed an emergency triage and I think that’s right. 

“The government really needs to adopt a three-stage process to deal with the media systems,” he said. 

“The most immediate need is to help them recover some of that cashflow through diverting already committed government enterprise spend for example suspending regulatory and transmission costs for broadcasters, there is a large number of things that can be done. 

“In terms of magazines, just let them publish, post-lockdown government needs to fast-track media restructuring or buying media to find long term solutions and really fast-tracking, sidestepping the Commerce Commission and the process that exist even for distressed businesses,” he added. 

 He backed the proposed merger of Stuff and NZME to buy them some time. 

“There is a number of ways the government can make these businesses more attractive by changing the tax status,” Dr Ellis said. 

“And finally stage three is the post Covid-19 reconstruction, it needs a total rethink redefining the media ecosystem and replacing outmoded ownership structures with a more sustainable model.” 

More redundancies feared
He added that he feared the redundancies at Bauer and NZME would not be the end of it. 

“The elephant in the room is the social media companies, Google, Facebook, syphoning money off media companies,” he said. 

“The bottom line is there will be contractions.

“I am fearful if the financial standing of the owners of MediaWorks and Stuff decline sufficiently they may be minded to follow Bauer and simply close New Zealand operations,” he sounded a warning. 

In response, the Minister for Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media, Kris Faafoi, said “the government is developing a short-and-long-term package for support to the media industry to deal with the challenges they identified. 

“I’ll be able to hopefully announce those next week but the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the first tranche of support for struggling media companies would be announced next week. 

At the same time, she defended advertising on social media, saying that’s where New Zealanders were. 

Nervous times

Next up at the Committee hearing was Sinead Boucher, the CEO of Stuff, who admitted the company, with the largest website, faced nervous times. 

She said ongoing government support was necessary – either through New Zealand on Air or through other mechanisms – because advertising revenue has “dropped off a cliff”, more than halving in the weeks since March and looking “particularly dire” for April. 

Like all those who appeared, she said the government should shift its advertising from social media giants like Facebook and Google to New Zealand media companies, and also consider special tax breaks. 

Shayne Currie, managing editor of NZME, again pressed for being allowed to purchase Stuff, something which the Commerce Commission has rejected previously. 

“We believe there is a sustainable model there and at the same time it will allow us to be equally strong,” Currie said. 

“I like the moves that just have been announced in France – and France is the first major country which has moved in this direction – and I think Australia will follow very quickly. 

“Last week, it was announced that France has ordered Google, and targeting Google in the first instance, they now need to start negotiating with media companies to pay them for the content that appears on their search engines. 

Moving ahead
“That is a really significant move and I think the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is certainly making similar recommendations along those lines. 

“They are moving ahead this year and it can’t come soon enough in New Zealand,” he said. 

As Kevin Kenrick, the TVNZ CEO, pointed out: “I will just reinforce every dollar the government spends on Google and Facebook is a dollar that is not spent supporting local media by New Zealand.” 

Michael Anderson, who said several people at Mediaworks had been tested for Covid-19, said the difference between TV3 and TVNZ was that TV3 had debts that they had to pay back. 

Meanwhile, in Australia the announcement of almost A$100 million in federal funding and support for regional newspapers and broadcasting during the coronavirus crisis is welcome but a long-term plan is needed to ensure the sector’s future, says the union for Australia’s media workers. 

The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) welcomes the belated support for regional media in the form of a $50 million Public Interest News Gathering programme and tax relief for commercial TV and radio.  

This comes after the closure of more than a dozen publications around the country due to reduced advertising revenue due to the pandemic, the statement read. 

MPs ‘understand what is at stake’
It prompted the Journalism Education Association of New Zealand (JEANZ) president Greg Treadwell to say: “The Australian government has moved to help the news media and I expect the NZ government to do the same.  

“It was clear, I thought, during the media company representations to the pandemic committee today that MPs understood the importance of what was at stake. That was something of a relief, to be honest. 

“Media bosses, too, seemed to understand their long-running struggle for financial security has just changed fundamentally in nature. In the background was some of the regular positioning we’ve seen from the various players over recent years – for example, Mediaworks’ resentment that a state-owned company, TVNZ, eats up much of the commercial advertising dollar.  

“But in the foreground was the urgent need to create enough security to enable the serious job of public communications to be done well. After all, these politicians will need the media with an election looming,” he added. 

He said he thought that the NZME-Stuff merger was probably “on again” because there was “little chance of both thriving now, if there ever was”.

The committee appeared “pretty keen” on the idea that there was “no possibility of a plurality of voices if there was not first economic sustainability in a market model”.

“In other words, actually existing diversity is, in the end, treated as a nice-to-have,” Dr Treadwell said. 

“I think one of the main messages today was that the market shouldn’t be killed off in an attempt to save it.  

“The work done on developing new models like The Spinoff, Newsroom and BusinessDesk, should not be lost in the rescue.”

Appearing before the committee today were: media commentator Dr Gavin Ellis; CEO of Stuff Sinead Boucher; managing editor of NZME Shayne Currie, CEO of TVNZ Kevin Kenrick; CEO of Mediaworks Michael Anderson; RNZ CEO Paul Thompson CEO; co-editor of Newsroom Mark Jennings, managing editor of Spinoff Duncan Grieve; co-founder of BusinessDesk Patrick Smellie; and Peter Lucas-Jones representing iwi broadcasters.