Pacific Islands

Right when Australia finds itself with serious strategic interests in its neighbourhood, it has managed to turn its once influential international broadcasting voice into a whisper.  One that’s difficult to hear outside a handful of major cities across the region. 

A jet from the Papua New Guinea national airline Air Niugini missed the runway in the Federated States of Micronesia and ended up in the ocean. One passenger died. After significant delay, Fiji has announced the date of its general election for 14 November. In preparation for polls,

In July, the Marshall Islands signed a visa-free entry agreement with Taiwan, a clear testament to the strong diplomatic ties that Taiwan has achieved with some Pacific states in recent years. However, the competition for the Pacific Islands is far from settled. Four countries have

Unfortunately for Papua New Guinea, new cases of polio have been detected since July. Jamie Tahana traces the origins of the pandemic in PNG, and explains how the disease could have been avoided. In Australia, the National party has been pushing for a new agricultural visa,

The biggest diplomatic row between Fiji and Vanuatu in modern times was not over climate change, good governance, or Chinese investment in the South Pacific, but biscuits. Two MSG members are facing independence votes within the next year or so, from opposite sides of the ballot box. Vanuatu

The ABC’s Stephen Dziedzic analyses the current tensions of the region that might influence talks at the Pacific Island Forum underway on Nauru. Nauru’s government has limited the movement of journalists covering the summit and placed restrictions on who they can talk to. A

After changes of leadership and of government in Canberra, those of us who work on Pacific island issues are usually inclined to be optimistic. We hope that the incoming Australian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister might care more about the Pacific, might be inclined to spend more time in the

Preparations are under way for New Caledonia’s historic independence referendum just two months away. Ongoing constructive dialogue and peaceful campaigning have been marred by division and boycotts, and a worrying three-week long blockade over nickel mining by some young Kanaks. Broad media

Ahead of next month’s meeting of Pacific Islands Forum leaders in Nauru, the region’s foreign ministers met recently in Apia, Samoa. The Forum Foreign Ministers’ Meeting is one of two standing ministerial meetings in the region (the other is the Forum Economic Ministers’ Meeting). The 2018

Speculation about the future of the Panguna copper mine in Papua New Guinea’s autonomous region of Bougainville, which ignited a decade long civil war in the 1990s, peaked late last year when an application for exploration by former Rio Tinto subsidiary, Bougainville Copper Ltd (BCL), was put to a

The recent release of the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Aid Map has relieved some “strategic anxiety” around China’s growing influence in the Pacific islands. Beijing committed only 8% of total aid to the region between 2011 and 2018. If we want to live in a more peaceful world,

In 2015 the Lowy Institute released the Chinese Aid in the Pacific Map, authored by Philippa Brant and updated in 2016 by Danielle Cave. The map, the first of its kind in the Pacific, continues to draw attention for highlighting the breadth and significance of China’s engagement in the

In January, as Nauru celebrated 50 years of independence, President Baron Waqa announced that his country would cease to use the High Court of Australia as its highest appellate court. What wasn’t apparent until March was that Nauru had withdrawn from the bilateral treaty

“Being in the Pacific, of the Pacific” was an aspiration announced by New Zealand’s Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Fletcher Tabuteau at a recent conference in Wellington. New Zealand’s Pacific identity has been a continuing theme of the Pacific reset policy&

An article in Science details the crusade of Spanish doctor Oriol Mitjà, whose work on the Papua New Guinea island of Lihir has kick-started a 60-year-old global campaign to eradicate the tropical disease Yaws. ABC journalist Eric Tlozek’s posting in PNG is coming to

Chinese President Xi Jinping has offered to host a meeting with Pacific leaders in Papua New Guinea ahead of the APEC leaders summit in November. The invitation comes amid extensive discussion in Australia regarding China’s growing influence in the Pacific. Nauru announced last week that it

Speaking of “decolonisation” conjures memories of the 1950s and the wave of new nations that emerged, particularly in Africa, as European colonialism gave way to calls for emancipation in the post-1945 new world order. In contrast to the heady unrest which preceded the first referendum in 1987

He fainted on me. Big bloke, my local guide on Nauru, who in the sunbaked heat took me Topside on the island to steal a look at the refugee camp among the scraggy rocks known as the pinnacles. And down he went. Nauru was happy for reporters to visit the country then. In 2013, I was one of the last

Debate arose in Papua New Guinea last week over comments made by Communications Minister Sam Basil about the possible imposition of a month-long ban on Facebook. This partial internet shutdown, according to Basil, would allow the government to conduct research on the use of anonymous

The decision by a Fiji court last week to acquit four people charged with sedition is a welcome step in the current regional debate over media rights and responsibilities. The Fijian-language paper Nai Lalakai, part of the Fiji Times group, published a letter by Josaia Waqabaca in