NZ's new Foreign Minister Winston Peters . . . although he has a track record, he has never been predictable, and now he is part of a very conservative government, in the midst of uncertain times. Image: MFAT/DevPolicy
ANALYSIS:By Terence Wood
In the wake of New Zealand’s recent election, and subsequent coalition negotiations, Winston Peters has emerged as New Zealand’s Foreign Minister again.
I’ve never been able to adequately explain to readers why a populist politician leading a party called New Zealand First would have an interest in a post that takes him overseas so often. But there you go.
Peters is foreign minister and, because New Zealand has no minister for development, he is the politician in charge of New Zealand’s aid programme.
Fortunately, for those who want to work out what Peters will mean for aid, he has a track record.
He was first elected in 1978. Although he’s been voted out numerous times since then, at some point in his political wanderings he clearly stumbled upon a pile of political athanasia pills.
He keeps coming back. As he’s done this, he’s managed to snaffle the role of foreign minister in coalition agreements with the centre-left Labour party twice, in 2005 and 2017.
In his first two stints as foreign minister he was responsible enough. He proved very capable at playing the role of statesman and diplomat overseas.
Dreary back-office work
He also did the dreary back-office work that ministers need to do efficiently. When it came to aid — although it Is almost impossible to know Peters’s real views on anything — he appeared to believe New Zealand had a genuine obligation to help the Pacific.
Beyond that, he was hands-off and happy to let the aid programme be run by NZAid (in his first term) and MFAT (in his second term). By the time of his second term as foreign minister this was suboptimal — as I pointed out in my assessment of Nanaia Mahuta’s tenure as minister, the aid programme has numerous problems and could do with a minister who pushed it to improve.
On the other hand, as former foreign minister Murray McCully demonstrated with such vigour, aid programmes can suffer worse fates than hands-off ministers. Much better a minister who doesn’t meddle than a hands-on minister who thinks they understand aid when they don’t.
Peters was also able to use his role as a lynchpin in coalition governments to get the New Zealand aid budget increased. I don’t know whether this reflected a sincere desire to do more good in the world or whether he simply wanted the prestige of being a minister presiding over a growing portfolio.
Either way, it was a useful achievement.
This time round matters will likely be different though. Peters will probably continue to be a hands-off minister. But the government he is part of is conservative, comprising Peters’s New Zealand First, the centre-right National Party (the largest member of the coalition and currently Morrison-esque in ideology), and ACT, a libertarian party.
New Zealand is currently running a deficit. And the government has promised tax cuts. It is unlikely there will be money for more aid.
Right-wing rhetoric to win votes
Peters himself uses right-wing rhetoric to win votes and — to the extent his actual views can be divined — is conservative in many aspects of his politics. (He only ended up in coalition governments with Labour because of bad blood between him and earlier National politicians.)
Peters, who is 78, doesn’t appear to care about climate change. He is also a strong supporter of New Zealand’s alliance with Australia and the United States.
His views in both of these areas are shared with National and ACT, which could be bad news for New Zealand’s recently improved climate finance efforts. It may well mean a stronger stance on China’s presence in the Pacific too, with the result that geostrategy casts an even larger shadow over the quality of New Zealand aid.
On the other hand, it is possible that even the current government will start to feel embarrassed turning up to COP meetings and having to admit it is doing less to mitigate its own emissions and less on climate finance too.
Similarly, New Zealand’s politically conservative farmers need China as an export market. Perhaps a mix of political economy and international political economy will moderate the government’s approach to the new cold war in the Pacific.
Winston Peters has a track record. But he has never been predictable, and now he is part of a very conservative government, in the midst of uncertain times.
“Predictions are difficult”, Yogi Berra is said to have quipped, “especially about the future”. It’s currently a very hard time to predict the future of New Zealand aid, even with a familiar face at the helm.
Owen Wilkes speaking at a protest at the US base at Christchurch Airport (Harewood) in 1973. Wilkes is wearing a Halt All Racist Tours (HART) badge. The Harewood demonstration was a key event in the later government decision to cancel a proposed Springbok tour in New Zealand. Image: Walter Logeman/Peacemonger
INTRODUCTION: By Mark Derby
Just weeks after Owen Wilkes’ sudden death in 2005, a van arrived at his basic bach in Kāwhia to carry away his lifetime’s collection of research materials. By the time the bach had been emptied of the carefully catalogued and labelled file-boxes and folders that lined every wall, the van was fully loaded.
Still more of Owen’s findings and analysis are held in other collections — at Canterbury and Auckland University libraries, and elsewhere. This exceptional public legacy of hard-copy information has been extensively drawn upon by several of the contributors to the book Peacemonger: Owen Wilkes: International Peace Researcher, who have, nevertheless, only touched on its extraordinary breadth and multifariousness.
Lifelong love for archaeology
Owen Wilkes was born in the Christchurch suburb of Beckenham in 1940. His parents ran a corner dairy (which still operates from the same site beside the Heathcote River) and later a Kilmore Street guesthouse. He went to Beckenham Primary School and then Christchurch West High School (now Hagley College) from 1954–58.
Owen was never a keen student but he displayed a capacity for hard work, an intellectual interest in field sciences and a love for the outdoors, particularly the chance to tramp in the backcountry. During one school holidays he worked in an abandoned goldmine in the Lake Brunner area. No gold was recovered but the experience began a long interest in the West Coast.
He generally made the long and demanding journey from Christchurch to the Coast by pushbike to ensure that he had transport when he arrived.
Intermittently between 1959 and 1966 Owen studied science subjects at the University of Canterbury, majoring in geology. He passed five units of the requisite eight for a BSc, but did not complete his degree and never regretted his lack of academic qualifications.
While at university he discovered a lifelong love for archaeology and even as an undergraduate student he made respected contributions to fieldwork, initially in the South Island.
Owen’s substantial, albeit somewhat informal and episodic, career as an archaeologist is described in this book by Neville Ritchie.
Peacemonger . . . the first full-length account of peace researcher Owen Wilkes’ life and work. Image: Raekaihau Press
In the summer of 1962 an opportunity arose to carry out fieldwork as an entomologist in Antarctica, for a project supported by and indirectly benefitting the US Navy. Owen threw himself into the work with his usual energy, relishing the physical challenges of a snowbound environment that somewhat resembled the South Island high country, and at that time untroubled by his project’s military and political undertones.
Further archaeological work in the Cook Islands was followed by another entomological research expedition, this time to the subantarctic Kermadec Islands. The expedition, he discovered, was part of a US military germ warfare research project. Subsequent expeditions in the Pacific were also sponsored by US government and military agencies, and Owen began to realise and question the role of the military in scientific research.
When he was given the chance to return to the US McMurdo base in Antarctica, he did so with the deliberate but covert intention of applying his formidable research skills to exposing the military use of nuclear power there. The outcome of that exercise is described in this book by Dr LRB Mann.
By 1968 Owen had decisively committed to researching and exposing the offshore facilities of the US war machine in his own country, elsewhere in the Pacific, and further afield. Supporting himself, his family and often his friends through a succession of low-paid jobs, he relentlessly absorbed official documents from publicly accessible sources, read between the lines to understand the unstated and covert information that the documents revealed, and then disseminated his findings at almost every possible level, from self-published pamphlets to learned papers in academic journals.
In the course of several decades, mainly preceding the era of the personal computer, he assembled an extraordinary body of documents, all carefully cross-referenced and freely shared with fellow researchers worldwide. In this book Nicky Hager describes Owen’s self-taught, unorthodox and remarkably efficient researching system, and its continuing value for addressing major political issues of the present day.
Although invariably non-violent, politically non-aligned and generally law-abiding, Owen encountered official opposition, harassment and intimidation in various forms as he became internationally known for the quality and impact of his peace research.
Diane Hooper describes the actions taken by the Buller County Council towards Owen’s self-built and structurally advanced eco-house, while he was working in Norway at the invitation of its renowned peace research institute.
Foreign military installations
Both in Norway and Sweden, Owen helped to reveal the presence and purpose of foreign military installations, some of them part of a worldwide network of nuclear weapon command and control systems. His Scandinavian colleagues Dr Ingvar Botnen and Dr Nils Petter Gleditisch describe his activities on the opposite side of the world from New Zealand, where he revelled in its natural wonders, yet eventually risked a lengthy prison sentence on charges of violating national security.
Owen spent much of his adult life under surveillance by intelligence services, and Maire Leadbeater reveals what is known to date of those services’ frequently inaccurate and unproductive findings.
Although a thorn in the side of governments of all shades, in time their officials were obliged to acknowledge the accuracy and importance of Owen’s work. In 1988 he became one of about 3000 New Zealanders to receive the NZ Commemoration Medal, a one-off decoration issued “in recognition of the contribution they have made to some aspect of New Zealand life”, in his case for services to peace and disarmament.
Owen’s adult life was lived periodically in rural, remote localities, growing much of his own food and regularly making long and physically challenging treks into the surrounding wilderness. He clearly preferred this simple, outdoor way of life to any other, yet he repeatedly abandoned it and returned to urban centres in order to apply his skills at research and writing more effectively, a pattern of residence that demonstrates a remarkable generosity of spirit.
Owen came to hold unchallenged authority within the peace and disarmament movement in Aotearoa and more widely, while remaining unassuming, accessible and collaborative in his working habits. As Dr David Robie, Ken Ross, Murray Horton and other contributors to Peacemonger make clear, he can be accorded a large measure of credit for his country’s nuclear-free status, for the nuclear-free Pacific movement, and for exposing covert military activity worldwide.
Craggy, fit, fiercely intelligent
I first met Owen Wilkes in 1975, on the South Island Resistance Ride. He was already a near-legendary figure — craggy, fit, fiercely intelligent, highly independent in thought and action. He became a major inspiration to me, along with many other young people eager to understand the various powerful forces we recognised as dominating our lives and directing our futures.
Owen and I collaborated occasionally afterwards, lastly in the 1990s for a TV news item about New Zealand’s WW2 chemical warfare stocks. The story was prompted by the release of Owen’s paper on the history of chemical weapon use in New Zealand, and especially by his revelation that in 1946 the Defence Department decided to dump obsolete cannisters of its chemical toxins in a deep offshore trench in Cook Strait. (Owen incurred the wrath of friends in the environmental movement for expressing the view that this was a reasonably safe and appropriate way to dispose of such dangerous waste — he was always prepared to advance an unpopular position if he believed that the science supported it.)
I asked him to come down to Wellington from his home in Kāwhia to front the news story, and he agreed without hesitation. Although he was a respected contributor to academic journals, Owen was equally willing to share his knowledge through mass media and less conventional channels, including publications aimed at young people.
He turned up in the capital on schedule, dressed in his customary outfit of baggy jersey and shorts, unencumbered with luggage but with all the facts at his command. He then gave a series of wry, relaxed and authoritative interviews to camera in front of the disused weapons bunkers on the Belmont hills above Wellington harbour.
The producer was delighted, and offered to thank his rangy interviewee by buying him a meal at any establishment of his choosing. It was a sunny day and Owen opted for fish and chips in Parliament grounds.
Sprawled comfortably in a shady spot on the grass, he remained continuously alert and pointed out something happening nearby that I hadn’t noticed. Parliamentary security staff were checking underneath all incoming vehicles with a large, wheeled mirror. Owen was fascinated. He had not seen this particular equipment in use before, and filed the observation away for future reference while speculating idly about the reasons for the heightened security.
I’ve never met anyone who made less distinction between their work and leisure. As this book explains, Owen could take a holiday on a remote west coast beach and discover a covert government communications facility. Or face espionage charges from the Swedish government after taking photographs from the roadside during a cycle tour.
The entire world kept revealing itself to him in ways both marvellous and outraging. It simply called for close and patient observation, followed by scrupulous analysis, and then dissemination of the findings. I learned a great deal from Owen’s uniquely critical engagement with his surroundings, and I continue to benefit from his example in my own work.
The contributors to this book are themselves leading figures in their respective fields, who all knew and worked closely with Owen. The editors hope that these collective memories and accounts will provide a lasting record of a uniquely impressive character, and also inspire others to confront the universal evils of militarism, imperialism, social injustice and environmental destruction. Owen was an admirable and unforgettable New Zealander — unpretentious, fearless, indefatigable, at times insufferable. All of us who contributed to this book consider ourselves lucky to have known him, and we hope in this way to sustain and extend his influence and example.
Published originally as the Introduction in May Bass and Mark Derby (eds.), Peacemonger: Owen Wilkes: International Peace Researcher, Raekaihau Press, Wellington, 2022. ISBN 9781991153869. Republished with the permission of co-editor Mark Derby.
"Kids want climate justice now" protesters in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Image: RNZ/Hilaire Bule
By Eleisha Foon
A new legal framework to support climate-displaced people and guarantee their human rights is being served up ahead of COP28.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference opens tomorrow and is being held in the fossil fuel giant United Arab Emirates (UAE) from November 30 to December 12.
The human rights advocacy centre — the International Centre for Advocates Against Discrimination (ICAAD) — wants to ensure climate frontline communities will not be neglected.
The UN is estimating there could be 1.2 billion climate-displaced people by 2050.
ICAAD and partners are calling for climate mobility justice to feature on the agenda of COP28.
The Human Rights Centre wants discussions around how to expand protections for climate-displaced persons to ensure their dignity is upheld now and in the future.
ICAAD director and facilitator Erin Thomas said more than 40 indigenous and climate activists and researchers from eight Pacific Island countries were advocating for COP28.
‘Right to life of dignity’
“This is part of our right to life of dignity project which we have been working on over a number of years,” she said.
“But one of the thornier issues that the international community has yet to respond to effectively is protecting those who are displaced across borders.”
The group warned that climate change is already creating human rights abuses, especially for those already migrating without access to dignified migration pathways.
At the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) annual meeting in Rarotonga two weeks ago, regional leaders noted that more than 50,000 Pacific people were displaced due to climate and disaster related events annually.
The leaders endorsed a Pacific regional framework on climate mobility to “provide practical guidance to governments planning for and managing climate mobility”.
They also called on development partners to “provide substantially greateer levels of climate finance, technology and capacity to accelerate decarbonisation of the Blue Pacific”.
Eleisha Foon is an RNZ Pacific journalist. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ and Asia Pacific Report.
University of the South Pacific staff protesting today in black with placards calling for “fair pay” and for vice-chancellor Professor Ahluwalia to resign. Image: Association of USP Staff (AUSPS)
University of the South Pacific (USP) staff gathered outside the Japan-Pacific ICT Centre today to protest over better pay and conditions as well as calling for the removal of the regional institution’s vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia.
The university’s main decision making body, the USP Council, is meeting at the Laucala campus this week.
Aggrieved employees of the university showed up in black, holding placards calling for “fair pay” and for Professor Ahluwalia to resign.
The staff are unhappy after the USP pro-chancellor chair of council Dr Hilda Heine did not include a staff paper on the agenda of the meeting today, according to local media reports.
“The Association of USP Staff (AUSPS) president Elizabeth Fong said the paper included a submission on staff salary adjustment and a recommendation to recruit a new Vice Chancellor who is originally from the region,” according to Fiji One News report.
USP staff are calling for a “fair pay” deal and for the university to recruit a new vice-chancellor who is originally from the Pacific region. Image: Association of USP Staff (AUSPS)
FBC News reports that the staff are calling for the “non-renewal Ahluwalia’s contract, claiming that he is no longer fit for the role” and that the vice-chancellor’s position to be advertised.
“Fong claims the VC is all talk and no action,” it reported.
The state broadcaster is reporting that USP staff want a 11 percent increase in pay and not the four percent they have received recently.
“We have staff shortages, vacancies which means people have doubled up and tripled up on their responsibilities. This is about keeping USP serving the region, serving its people,” Fong was quoted by FBC News as saying.
‘We remain hopeful’ — USP In a statement to RNZ Pacific, USP said its management “continues to work with the staff unions regarding their grievances” since they were raised earlier in the year.
“Through its meeting with AUSPS, the USP management has resolved some of the matters raised in the log of claims while discussion continued on the remaining issues.”
The university said that in October 2022, all USP staff received salary increments and the second increase kicked in in January 2023.
“Staff also received a bonus in the middle of the year (2023). Negotiations are continuing, and provisions have been made for another salary increase next year, subject to the Council approving our 2024 budget.”
The USP said the chair of the USP Council approved the council agenda, “and the USP management does not have a say in the matter”.
“As stated several times previously, the vice-chancellor’s relocation is decided by the council.
“The institution, as always, supports union rights and acknowledges that a peaceful protest is within its ambit.
“However, we remain hopeful that through USP management, we can continue to have discussions with the AUSPS about their grievances and follow proper channels to meet their demands until an amicable solution is reached,” it said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ and Asia Pacific Report.
Palestine's disappearing land -- illegally -- since Israel's forced explusions in the 1948 Nakba, the "catastrophe". Critics argue that Palestinians are facing a second Nakba with the Israeli war on Gaza 2023. Image: David Robie/APR
COMMENTARY: By Malcolm Evans
Since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israeli military positions and civilian settlements it has become the norm for any debate on Israel’s overwhelming response to open with a requirement that anyone supportive of the Palestinians, first damn the actions of Hamas on that day.
Clearly intended to put any support for Palestinians on the back foot, the tactic springs a “Catch 22” moral conundrum trap, in which to either condone or condemn the Hamas attacks risks tarnishing any case promoting the Palestinians’ position.
And, feeling trapped by moral principle, many feel obliged to concede, at which point Israel is then promptly presented as having acted strictly in accordance with international law, and so the debate is effectively over before its begun.
This is a gross and deliberate perversion of both the facts on the ground and that of any reasonable interpretation of the principles inherent in the international legal statute justifying war waged in self-defence.
It is the same as if it was argued that the 1943 razing of the Warsaw Ghetto, the slaughter of its defenders and the transportation of the survivors to death camps was justified, because the Jews there rose up and attacked their oppressors.
That aside, for any state to invoke the international law of “self-defence”, as justification for it waging war against an attacker, that state must surely, in the first instance, be at peace.
But the state of Israel hasn’t been at peace with Palestinians for a single day of its 75-year existence, in fact longer. The state of Israel illegally occupies or otherwise controls Palestine in its entirety, and in perpetuation and defence of that occupation it kills Palestinians every day.
“If you’re not careful . . . ” – Quote by Malcolm X. Image: The Daily Blog
Seduced by amoral media
However much we have been seduced by our amoral media, to believe Israel represents a haven of democracy, peace and virtue besieged by “subhuman terrorists” bent on its destruction, current events prove to all but those too blind to see that it is Israel which is the state bent on destruction of the other.
Make no mistake, whether by armed physical occupation, absolute control of all essential infrastructure, walled and fenced confinement on land and blockaded from the sea and subject to constant electronic supervision, Israel controls Palestinians lock, stock and barrel.
And any perceived semblance of a peaceful coexistence is only allowed to the extent it serves Israel’s ultimate purpose.
Hamas forces did not attack Israel on October 7, so triggering Israel’s claimed “right of self-defence”. Rather, Hamas rose up against the seventy-five-year-long attack which Israel’s vastly superior armed forces have been waging on recognised Palestinian territory, in defiance of international law and a myriad of UN resolutions, for all that time.
So, if any state has the right to invoke international law allowing retaliatory war to be waged in its own self-defence, it must surely be the Palestinians.
Protest placards at Auckland’s “ceasefire now” rally over the weekend. Image: David Robie/APR
But, with its dead hand firmly in control of the news narrative all the while clouding our comprehension of real events with stories so sickeningly puerile as to defy humanity, the mass media makes a mockery of its mission, shames true Jewish history, and makes us complicit in the genocide of innocents.
Would that there was an international legal statute that allowed for any institution found waging war on our understanding of the truth of events, so making us complicit in war crimes, to be arraigned before the international court of justice for crimes against humanity.
Malcolm Evans is an multiple award-winning cartoonist and commentator. He has been a professional cartoonist and critic of injustice since the 1960s. Republished from The Daily Blog with the author’s permission.
PNG Communications Minister Timothy Masiu (centre) with the USP journalism students at the annual awards in Suva last night. USP journalism coordinator Associate Professor Shailendra Singh in seated on the right. Image: FBC News
PNG Communication Minister Timothy Masiu’s University of the South Pacific journalism awards speech in Suva last night was preceeded by a minute of silence to honour the memory of “our fallen comrades” in the Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Gaza conflicts. Other media people around the world who have “risked their own personal safety just to bring news and information to our citizens” were also remembered. At least 48 Palestinian journalists have been killed in the war on Gaza since October 7.
SPEECH:By PNG Information and Communication Technology Minister Timothy Masiu
It is good to be back here in Fiji five months after we planted the initial seeds of our closer cooperation between the University of the South Pacific (USP) School of Journalism and the PNG National Broadcasting Corporation.
I clearly recall the date — 19 June 2023 — when we officially signed the MoU between these two iconic regional media organisations.
In fact, we will begin the formal celebrations of NBC’s 50th week-long anniversary tomorrow until the actual day on Friday, 1 December 2023.
But before that, my managing director and I had to make this short visit to Suva to join in your own celebrations before we head back home again on Sunday.
Which now brings me to the primary reason for our gathering here this evening.
Tonight is all about the USP School of Journalism Awards.
USP Journalism Awards
It is about celebrating the outstanding achievements of our young journalists — our storytellers.
Today we recognise the hard work, dedication, and exemplary storytelling that has emerged from the vibrant and diverse community of journalists who have made their mark within USP.
The role of journalism as the Fourth Estate cannot be understated. The role of journalism is pivotal in our society.
It serves as the watchdog, the voice of the voiceless and the bridge that connects communities.
The journalists we celebrate today have embraced this responsibility with vigour, showcasing the power of words and the impact they can have on shaping our world.
In a region as rich and diverse as our Pacific, where cultures, languages, and perspectives converge, the role of journalism becomes even more crucial.
The stories told by our journalists contribute to the tapestry of our shared experiences, providing insight, fostering understanding, and building bridges across the vast expanse of our Pacific nations.
The USP Journalism Awards — founded in 1999 by former journalism coordinator Professor David Robie — not only recognise excellence in reporting, but also the commitment to ethical journalism, unbiased storytelling, and the pursuit of truth.
In an era where information flows abundantly, the responsibility of journalists to uphold these principles has never been more critical.
The stories we tell and the way we tell them shape the narrative of our societies, influencing opinions and, ultimately, driving change.
As we celebrate the nominees and winners today, let us also acknowledge the challenges that journalists face in the pursuit of truth.
The freedom of the press is a cornerstone of any vibrant democracy, and it is our collective responsibility to safeguard and protect it.
We must support the journalists who work tirelessly to uncover the stories that need to be told, even when faced with adversity.
To the winners, congratulations on your well-deserved recognition.
Your work serves as an inspiration to your peers, reminding us all of the power of journalism to illuminate, educate, and inspire.
Your commitment to excellence and your passion for storytelling are commendable.
To the faculty heads and mentors who have guided these aspiring journalists, thank you for your dedication to nurturing the next generation of storytellers.
Your influence goes beyond the classroom — it shapes the future of journalism in the Pacific and beyond.
Let me make another distinct observation before I conclude my short remarks.
This is especially where I feel that the NBC can play an even more greater role in training and mentoring our journalism students in our beloved Pacific.
And this is captured in the MoU we signed on 19 June 2023 in Suva between the USP Journalism School and NBC.
The MoU exemplifies the spirit of collaboration and commitment to excellence in journalism.
It is a testament to the recognition that the exchange of knowledge, resources, and expertise is essential in nurturing the next generation of journalists who will shape the narrative of our region.
The MoU signifies more than just a formal agreement — it represents a shared vision for the future of journalism training and mentoring in the Pacific.
By combining the academic rigour of the USP Journalism School with the real world experience and reach of NBC PNG, we are creating a dynamic platform for aspiring journalists to learn, grow, and contribute to the vibrant tapestry of Pacific storytelling.
Through this collaboration, students will have the opportunity to engage with seasoned professionals, gaining insights into the ever-evolving landscape of journalism.
The exchange of ideas, the practical experience, and the mentorship provided by NBC will undoubtedly enrich the educational journey of those who seek to make a difference through their words and images.
USP journalism awards founder Professor David Robie, guest speaker at the 2016 prizegiving, presents the awards. Pictured is the Storyboard Award. Image: Wansolwara
NBC editorial policy and content guidelines Another aspect that our young student journalists can also learn from is the NBC editorial policy and content guidelines.
This also could be the only comprehensive, written document in our Pacific Region that provides daily ethical guidelines to our newsrooms back home.
This also provides greater editorial independence for the NBC from political or advertising interference. NBC has a proven record of no government interference in its daily news operations.
I also understand that our MoU is ready for immediate implantation. Let us kick start this early next year.
I wish to see the first lot of USP journalism students being embedded in the NBC main newsroom next year.
I also intend to see the first lot of NBC staff enroll at your Suva campus in the first semester in 2024.
We will be guided by Associate Professor Singh and his team on the finer details.
Refresher courses and upskilling of non-journalists I also want to be guided by Dr Singh on suitable short term refresher courses here in Suva that our NBC staff can undertake.
Equally important, I wish for non-journalist NBC staff to also be given an opportunity to attain or upskill their qualifications too under our MoU.
I say this because, more often than not, we have broadcast officers, executive producers and producers who are forced to fill the gap on location when reporters are not readily available.
This is not a bad thing as reporters and broadcast officers can be encouraged and upskilled to areas of “specialist reporting”.
This means that the more knowledgeable and informed our broadcasters and reporters are, the better they can inform our general population.
I request that the USP School of Journalism or wider USP will have appropriate programmes to upskill or retrain our deserving NBC staff who are non-journalists.
In closing, let us embrace this moment as a reflection of the interconnected future we are building together.
May this collaboration inspire us all to continue championing the power of journalism to inform, unite and inspire positive change across the Pacific and beyond.
Thank you and congratulations once again to the winners of the USP Journalism Awards.
May your stories continue to resonate and contribute to the vibrant narrative of our shared Pacific identity.
Gaza devastation as the result of the relentless Israeli bombardment on the densely populated enclave with more than 14,500 Palestinians being killed. Image: TRT screenshot APR
REVIEW: By David Robie
Just months before the outbreak of the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza after the deadly assault on southern Israel by Hamas resistance fighters, Australian investigative journalist and researcher Antony Loewenstein published an extraordinarily timely book, The Palestine Laboratory.
In it he warned that a worst-case scenario — “long feared but never realised, is ethnic cleansing against occupied Palestinians or population transfer, forcible expulsion under the guise of national security”.
Or the claimed fig leaf of “self defence”, the obscene justification offered by beleaguered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his two-month war of vengeance, death and destruction unleashed upon the people of Palestine, both in the Gaza Strip and the Occupied West Bank that has killed at least 14,850 Gazans — the majority of them women and children — and more than 218 West Bank Palestinians.
As Loewenstein had warned in his 265-page exposé on the Israeli armaments and surveillance industry and how the Zionist nation “exports the technology of occupation around the world”, a catastrophic war could trigger an overwhelming argument within Israel that Palestinians were “undermining the state’s integrity”.
That catastrophe has indeed arrived. But in the process as part of growing worldwide protests in support of an immediate ceasefire and calls for a “free Palestine” long-term solution, Israel has exposed itself as a cruel, ruthless and morally corrupt state prepared to slaughter women and children, attack hospital and medical workers, kill journalists and shun international norms of military conflict to achieve its goal of destroying Hamas, the elected government of Gaza.
Author Antony Loewenstein . . . Gaza is the most most devastating conflict in eight decades since the Second World War. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Interviewed by Al Jazeera today after a four-day temporary truce between Israel and Hamas took effect, author Loewenstein described the conflict as “apocalyptic” and the most devastating in almost 80 years since the Second World War.
He also blamed the death and destruction on Western countries that had allowed the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) to “get away with things that no other country could because of total global impunity”.
‘Genocide Joe’
The United States, led by a feeble and increasingly lame duck President Joe Biden – “genocide Joe”, as some US protesters have branded him — and several Western countries have lost credibility over any debate about global human rights.
As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan says, the US and the West have enabled the ethnic cleansing and displayed a double standard by condemning Hamas for its atrocities on October 7 while giving Israel a blank cheque for its crimes against humanity and war crimes in both Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.
The Israeli-Palestinian captives exchange deal mediated by Qatar. Image: AJ screenshot APR
We are relieved to confirm the safe release of 24 hostages.
We have facilitated this release by transporting them from Gaza to the Rafah border, marking the real-life impact of our role as a neutral intermediary between the parties.
In fact, as Erdoğan has increasingly condemned the Zionists, he has branded Israel as a “terror state” and says that Israeli leaders should be tried for war crimes at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
It has also been disturbing that President Biden has publicly repeated Israeli lies in the conflict and Western media has often disseminated these falsehoods.
Media analysts say there is systemic “bias in favour of Israel” which is “irreparably damaging” the credibility of some news agencies and outlets considered “mainstream” in the eyes of Arabs and others.
Loewenstein, who was awarded Australia’s 2023 Walkley Award in the book category tonight, warned in The Palestine Laboratory that “an Israeli operation might be undertaken to ensure a mass exodus, with the prospect of Palestinians returning to their homes a remote possibility” (p. 211).
Many critics fear the bottom line for Israel’s war on Palestine, is not just the elimination of Hamas — which was elected the government of Gaza in 2006 — but the destruction of the enclave’s infrastructure, hence the savage assault on 25 of the Strip’s 32 hospitals (including the Indonesian Hospital) and bombing of 49 percent of the housing for 2.3 million people.
Loewenstein reports:
“In a 2016 poll conducted by [the] Pew Research Centre, nearly half of Israeli Jews supported the transfer or expulsion of Arabs. And some 60 percent of Israeli Jews backed complete separation from Arabs, according to a study in 2022 by the Israeli Democracy Institute. The majority of Israeli Jews polled online in 2022 supported the expulsion of people accused of disloyalty to the state, a policy advocated by popular far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir” (p. 211).
Dangerous escalation
Loewenstein saw the reelection in November 2022 of Netanyahu as Prime Minister and as head of the most right-wing coalition in the Israel’s history as ushering in a dangerous escalation of existential threats facing Palestinians.
The author, who is himself of Jewish origin, cites liberal Israeli columnist and journalist Gideon Levy in Haaretz reminding his readers of “an uncomfortable truth” after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Levy wrote that the long-held Israeli belief that military power “was all that matters to stay alive , was a lie” (p. 206). Levy wrote”
“The lesson Israel should be learning from Ukraine is the opposite. Military power is not enough, it is impossible to survive alone, we need true international support, which can’t be bought just be developing drones and drop bombs.”
Levy argued that the “age of the Jewish state paralysing the world when it cries “anti-semitism” was coming to a close.
The daily television scenes — especially on Al Jazeera and TRT World News, arguably offering the most balanced, comprehensive and nuanced coverage of the massacres — have borne witness to the rogue status of Israel.
Nizar Sadawi of Turkey’s TRT World News, one of the few Arabic speaking and courageous journalists working at great risk for a world news service. Image: TRT screenshot APR
Turkey’s President Erdoğan has been one of the strongest critics of Netanyahu’s war machine, warning that Israel’s leaders will be made accountable for their war crimes.
His condemnation has been paralleled by multiple petitions and actions seeking International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutions against Israeli leaders, including an arrest warrant for Netanyahu himself.
Toxic ideology
According to Loewenstein, Israel’s “Palestine laboratory” and its toxic ideology thrives on global disruption and violence. As he says:
“The worsening climate crisis will benefit Israel’s defence sector in a future where nation-states do not respond with active measures to reduce the impacts of surging temperatures but instead ghetto-ise themselves, Israeli-style. What this means in practice is higher walls and tighter borders, greater surveillance of refugees, facial recognition, drones, smart fences, and biometric databases (p. 207).”
By 2025, Loewenstein points out, the border surveillance industrial complex is estimated to become worth US$68 billion, and Israeli companies such as Elbeit Systems are “guaranteed to be among the main beneficiaries.”
Three years ago Israel spent $US22 billion on its military and was is 12th biggest military supplier in the world with sales of more than $US345 million.
The potency of Palestine as a laboratory for methods of controlling “unwanted people” and a separation of populations is the primary focus of Loewenstein’s book. The many case studies of Israeli apartheid with corporations showcasing and profiting from the suppression and persecution of Palestinians are featured.
The book is divided into seven chapters, with a conclusion, headed “Selling weapons to anybody who wants them,” “September 11 was good for business,” “Preventing an outbreak of peace,” “Selling Israeli occupation to the world,” “The enduring appeal of Israeli domination,” “Israel mass surveillance in the brain of your phone,” and “Social media companies don’t like Palestinians.”
How Israel has such influence over Silicon Valley — along with many Western governments — is “both obvious and ominous for the future of marginalised groups, because it is not just the Jewish state that has discovered the Achilles heel of big tech”.
‘Real harm’ against minorities
Examples cited by Loewenstein include India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi successfully demanding that Facebook remove posts critical of his government’s handling of the covid pandemic of 2020, and evidence of Facebook posts causing “real harm against minorities” in Myanmar and Russia as well as India and Palestine.
The company’s global policy team argued that they risked having the platform shutdown completely if they did not comply with government requests. Profits before human rights.
Loewenstein refers to social media calls for genocide against the Muslim minority having “moved from the fringes to the mainstream”. Condemning this, Loewenstein remarks: “Leaving these comments up, which routinely happens, is deeply irresponsible” (p. 197).
He argues that his book is a warning that “despotism has never been so easily shareable with compact technology”. He explains:
“The ethnonationalist ideas behind it are appealing to millions of people because democratic leaders have failed to deliver. A Pew Research Centre survey across 34 countries in 2020 found only 44 percent of those polled were content with democracy, while 52 percent were not. Ethnonationalist ideology grows when accountable democracy withers, Israel is the ultimate model and goal” (p. 16).
The September 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and Washington “turbocharged Israel’s defence sector and internationalised the war on terror that the Jewish state had been fighting for decades” (p. 49).
Grief for one of the 48 journalists killed by Israel during the seven weeks of bombardment. Image: RSF screenshot
War against journalists
Along with health workers (200 killed and the total climbing), journalists have suffering a heavy price for reporting Israel’s relentless bombardment with at least 48 dead (including media workers in Lebanon, the death toll has topped 60).
The Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters without Borders has accused Israel of seeking to “eradicate journalism in Gaza” by refusing to heed calls to protect media workers.
“The situation is dire for Palestinian journalists trapped in the enclave, where ten have been killed in the past three days, bringing the total media death toll in Gaza since the start of the war to 48. The past weekend was the deadliest for the media since the war between Israel and Hamas began.”
RSF also said Gaza from north to south had “become a cemetery for journalists”.
Of the 10 journalists killed between November 18-20, at least three were killed in the course of their work or because of it. They were: Hassouna Sleem, director of the Palestinian online news agency Quds News, and freelance photo-journalist Sary Mansour who were killed during an Israeli assault on the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on November 18.
According to RSF, they had received an online death threat in connection with their work 24 hours prior to them being killed.
Journalist Bilal Jadallah was killed by an Israeli strike that hit his car directly as he was trying to evacuate from Gaza City via the district of Zeitoun on the morning of November 19.
He was a prominent figure within the Palestinian media community and held several positions including chair of the board of Press House-Palestine, an organisation supporting independent media and journalists in Gaza.
Global protests have been growing with demands in many countries for a complete ceasefire to the attack on Gaza. Image: TRT screenshot APR
Killed with family members
Most of the journalists were killed with family members when Israeli strikes hit their homes, reports RSF.
It is offensive that British and US news media should refer to Hamas “terrorists” in their news bulletins, regardless of the fact that the US and UK governments have declared them as such.
As a former journalist with British and French news agencies for several years, I wonder what has happened to the maxim that had applied since the post-Second World War anticolonialism struggles — one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. Thus “neutral” descriptions were generally used.
Loewenstein argues in his book that Israel has sold so much defence equipment and surveillance technologies, such as the phone-hacking tool Pegasus, that it had hoped to “insulate itself” from any political backlash to its endless occupation.
However, the tide has turned with several countries such as South Africa and Turkey closing Israeli embassies and recalling their diplomats and as demonstrated by the UN General Assembly’s overwhelming vote last month for an immediate humanitarian truce.
There is a shift in global opinion in response to the massive price that the Palestinian people have been paying for Israeli apartheid and repression for 75 years. While Iran has long been portrayed by the West as a threat to regional peace, the relentless and ruthless bombardment of the Gaza Strip for seven weeks has demonstrated to the world that Israel is actually the threat.
However, Israel is on the wrong side of history. Whatever it does, the Palestinians will remain defiant and resilient.
Palestine will become a free, sovereign state. It is essential that international community pressure ensures that this happens for a just and lasting peace.
New research argues the priority now should be addressing the real driver of multiple ecological crises -- our own maladaptive behaviours.Image: The Conversation/Getty
ANALYSIS: By Mike Joy and Phoebe Barnard
As the world grapples with multiple ecological crises, it’s clear the various responses over the past half century have largely failed. Our new research argues the priority now should be addressing the real driver of these crises — our own maladaptive behaviours.
For at least five decades, scientists have worked to understand and document how human demands exceed Earth’s regenerative capacity, causing “ecological overshoot”.
Those warnings of the threats posed by the overshoot’s many symptoms, including climate change, were perhaps naive. They assumed people and governments would respond logically to existential threats by drastically changing behaviours.
The young researchers in the 1970s who published the Limits to Growth computer models showed graphically what would happen over the next century if business-as-usual economic growth continued.
Once people saw the results of the research, the authors believed, they would understand the trajectory the world was on and reduce consumption accordingly. Instead, they saw their work dismissed and business-as-usual play out.
The behavioural crisis During these past five decades, there have been innumerable reports, speeches and data, ever more strident in their predictions. Yet there has been no change in the economic growth trajectory.
The first world scientists’ warning to humanity was published in 1992 as an open letter, signed by hundreds of scientists and detailing how human activities damage the environment.
A second notice in 2017, which thousands of scientists signed, included this stark statement:
If the world doesn’t act soon, there will be catastrophic biodiversity loss and untold amounts of human misery.
Many of those working in the natural sciences felt they were doing what they could to prevent this “ghastly future” unfolding. Researchers even laid out a framework of actions for the world to take, including human population planning and diminishing per capita consumption of fossil fuels, meat and other resources.
But few meaningful changes have been achieved.
By taking a different perspective, our research explores intervention points and demonstrates the behavioural roots of ecological overshoot. It is a collaboration with behaviour-change strategists in the marketing industry, and grew partly from their disaffection with the outcomes of their work on human and planetary health.
Behind the research sits a stark statistic: the wealthiest 16 percent of humanity is responsible for 74 percent of excess energy and material use. This reflects a crisis of human behaviour. It is the outcome of many individual choices involving resource acquisition, wastefulness and accumulation of wealth and status.
Some of these choices may have served humans well in the evolutionary past. In a modern global economy, however, they become maladaptive behaviours that threaten all complex life on Earth.
The ‘growth delusion’ Current interventions to restrain climate change — just one symptom of ecological overshoot — are failing to curb emissions. Last year, global emissions of carbon dioxide reached a new high, partly as a result of air travel rebounding after the covid pandemic.
We argue that trying to fix an accelerating problem with slow solutions is itself the problem. Instead, we need to treat the root causes of ecological overshoot and its behavioural drivers, rather than be distracted by patching up its many symptoms.
Japanese solar power system operator Advantec signed a memorandum of understanding with the Philippines on Thursday to supply renewable energy to factories, aiming to eventually set up emergency backup power systems in the country.https://t.co/SVMeveVCXS
A prime example is the current “solution” to climate change through a full transition to renewable energy systems. This simply replaces one form of energy with another, but doesn’t address the rising demand for energy that enabled overshoot in the first place.
Such interventions are incremental, resource intensive, slow moving and flawed: they aim to maintain rather than manage current levels of consumption. This “growth delusion” offers a false hope that technology will allow human society to avoid the need for change.
An emergency response To overcome the critical disconnect between science, the economy and public understanding of these issues, an interdisciplinary response will be needed.
Paradoxically, the marketing, media and entertainment industries — central to the manipulation of human behaviours towards resource acquisition and waste — may offer the best way to reorient that behaviour and help avoid ecological collapse.
Logically, the same behavioural strategies that fuelled consumerism can do the reverse and create the necessary desire for a stable state.
Understanding the many dimensions of the behavioural crisis, including the influence of power structures and vested interests in a market economy, is crucial. Defusing and even co-opting those forces to reform the economy and reverse the damage is the challenge.
It will require a concerted multi-disciplinary effort to identify the best ways to produce a rapid global adoption of new norms for consumption, reproduction and waste. The survival of complex life on Earth is the goal.
This research was led by Joseph Merz of the New Zealand-based Merz Institute and its Overshoot Behaviour Lab. Other authors include energy researcher Chris Rhodes; economist and ecologist Bill Rees; and behavioural science practitioner and vice chair of advertising company Ogilvy, Rory Sutherland.
The United Nations has called for an independent international investigation into the devastating blast at the packed Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City earlier this week which killed more than 470 people. Image: Al Jazeera screenshot/PMW
Major media organisations all over the world are copping criticism for the way they are reporting what is happening in Gaza and Israel. Mediawatch has asked BBC news boss Jonathan Munro how they are handling it — even when it is coming from the UK’s own government.
“Palestinian health officials in Gaza say hundreds of people have been killed in an explosion at a hospital in Gaza. They’re blaming an Israeli strike on the hospital.
“But the Israel DefenCe Forces said an initial investigation shows the explosion was caused by a failed Hamas rocket launch.”
That was how RNZ’s news at 8am last Tuesday reported the single deadliest incident of this conflict so far — and likely to be the deadliest one in all of the five times Israel and Hamas have fought over Gaza so far.
The Israeli Defence Force also singled out Islamic Jihad for the atrocity — but the absence of hard evidence put the media reporting it in a difficult position.
“It’s still absolutely unclear. There are varying bits of information that are coming out for now. I don’t think anybody can quite say . . . it’s most likely to have been Israel,” the BBC Middle East editor Sebastian Usher told RNZ on Wednseday night.
“They said it seems like it might be a misfired rocket,”
Huge anger on streets
“We can’t say for now, but I don’t think — in terms of the mood in the Arab world and the Middle East — that that really matters. People out on the streets are showing huge anger and they will reject any investigation, any Israeli claim, to say that Israel is not responsible,” he said.
Reporting those claims and counterclaims creates confusion among the audience. It’s also stoked the anger of those objecting to reporters’ choice of words.
CNN’s Clarissa Ward, for example, was criticised heavily on social media for mentioning the Israeli Defense Force claims — and then expressing doubt about them at the same time.
A video showing a pro-Palestinian protester calling Clarissa Ward “a puppet” has gone viral on social media. So did another falsely accusing her of faking a rocket strike.
The longer version of the video of Egyptian podcaster Rahma Zein confronting CNN reporter Clarissa Ward at the Rafah crossing. It’s raw, sincere, and powerful. Much respect for Rahma, she expressed our collective pain at the Western media’s dehumanization of the Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/yfB7zFYPwe
Her CNN colleague Anderson Cooper was also criticised online for referring to a huge civilian loss of life during the live report from Tel Aviv in Israel and repeating himself, but then without the word “civilian”.
“Who was behind the Gaza hospital blast? – visual investigation” Image: 4News Screenshot/PMW
“Israel and Hamas can tweet what they like. The truth of what happened here requires independent expert investigation — not happening,” was Alex Thompson’s bleak conclusion.
‘A fierce information war’
“Any doubt is due to a fierce information war that in truth matters little to the victims of the Gaza hospital tragedy,” another British correspondent — ITV Jonathan Irvine — said on Newshub at 6 last Tuesday.
At times, broadcasters have used the wrong words and given audiences the wrong idea.
Last week the BBC’s main evening news bulletin made a rapid apology for describing pro-Palestine protests in the UK as “pro-Hamas”.
“We accept that this was poorly-phrased and was a misleading description,” the presenter told viewers just before the end of the bulletin.
And earlier this month, people protested outside the BBC News headquarters in London about the BBC’s long-standing policy of not labeling any group as “terrorists”.
“You don’t seem to be particularly interested. If the BBC seems to refuse to call terrorists even though the British Parliament has legislated them terrorists — that is a question I haven’t heard the BBC answer yet,” UK government Defence Secretary Grant Shapps told the BBC radio flagship news show Today.
“Have you not seen any of the coverage on the BBC of the atrocities, the dead, the injured, the survivors?” the startled presenter asked him.
“How can you say that we’re not interested?” she replied, when Shapps said he had.
An obligation to audiences
The BBC’s deputy chief executive of news Jonathan Munro was at Sydney’s South by Southwest festival this week to talk about how the BBC delivers news from and about conflict zones.
BBC’s deputy chief executive of news Jonathan Munro . . . “We’ve already seen journalists lose their lives in this country, working for organisations who are also facing the same dilemmas as we are.” Image: RNZ Mediawatch
“We’ve already seen journalists lose their lives in this country, working for organisations who are also facing the same dilemmas as we are,” said Munro, who is also the BBC’s director of journalism.
“We’ve got an obligation to audiences to explain what’s going on and that involves lots of people on the ground as witnesses to events, but also the analysis that comes with expert knowledge,” he told Mediawatch.
“Expertise is just invaluable. People like Jeremy Bowen (former Middle East editor and current international editor of BBC News) and our chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet and correspondents who are based in that region,” he said.
“But the main story here is the catastrophic loss of life and the appalling conditions that people are living in and that the hostages are being held in — the humanity of that,” he said.
A lot of reporting people will see, hear and read will come from Israel. Reporting from Gaza itself is difficult and dangerous — and access to Gaza at the border is restricted by Israel.
“We have a correspondent in Gaza, but he’s moved from Gaza City to Khan Yunis in the south of the strip, a safer option. But he can’t report 24 hours a day, and he is looking after his family which is paramount.
Need for transparency
“So we do have to add to that [with] reporting from Israel and from London by people who know Gaza very well,” he said.
“We have to be transparent about that and tell the audience and then the audience knows that wherever it’s coming from, and you still hold editorial integrity.”
A lot of what people will be seeing from Gaza is amateur footage and social media content that’s very difficult to verify.
The BBC recently launched BBC Verify, dedicated to checking out this kind of material and vetting its use.
“There’s a huge amount of video out there on social media we can all find at the touch of a button. The brand of BBC Verify is a signpost that the material . . . has been checked by us using methods like geolocation and looking at the metadata,” he said.
Even when verified, there are still ethical dilemmas.
For example, BBC Verify used facial recognition software to analyse images of an individual in the Hamas surprise attacks on October 8. It identified one gunman as a policeman from Gaza.
Independently verifying claims
“It’s case-by-case — but something shouldn’t go out on the BBC without us knowing it’s true. There are occasions we would broadcast something and we would tell the audience that we’ve not been able to independently verify a claim . . . and we need to caveat our coverage of the reaction to it with the fact that we do not have our own verification of source material,” he said.
Major media outfits all over the world are copping criticism for the way they’re reporting what’s happening in Gaza and Israel. Mediawatch asks BBC news boss Jonathan Munro how they’re handling it – even when it’s coming from the UK’s own government https://t.co/gm8Fyv4ar1
Even before the Al Ahli hospital catastrophe amplified emotions, intense scrutiny of reporters’ work was adding to the stress of those reporting from the region.
“Every word you say is being scrutinised so closely and is likely to be contested by one side or the other more or both — and that definitely adds to the pressure,” Channel Four correspondent Secunder Kermani told the BBC’s Media Show last week from Gaza.
“In the Israel Gaza situation it is critical. Every word can be checked and rechecked and double checked for any implication which is either inferred or implied by accident.
“Because our job is to be impartial, tell the reality of the story, and most importantly, share the witnessing of that story by our correspondents,” Jonathan Munro told Mediawatch.
“That’s why we’ve got a significant number of correspondents in Israel and back in the newsroom in London are adding explanations and leaning into that scrutiny on language,” he said.
Adjectives ‘can be dangerous’
“We’re using expertise, our knowledge as an organisation and we’re making sure that at every stage of that every sentence, every paragraph is reflective of what we know to be true.
“But adjectives can be dangerous, because they may imply something which is more emotive than we mean. We have to be quite clean in our language in these circumstances,” he said.
“Of course, people can come on the BBC and express their views in language of their choice. All of those things help to keep our coverage straight and honest and ensure that correspondents on the ground aren’t in danger by slips or mistakes that are made in good faith elsewhere in the BBC output.”
Last week at its annual conference, senior members of the Conservative Party — which is in power in the UK — heavily criticised the BBC for alleged bias and elitism. Some — including home secretary Suella Braverman and former prime minister Liz Truss made a point of praising GB News — the new right-wing TV channel backed by billionaire Brexiteers — for disrupting the news.
“The criticism of the BBC from politicians is as old as the BBC itself. Just because they’re habitual critics doesn’t mean they’re wrong, but we’ve got a well developed set of editorial guidelines which have stood the test of time over many, many difficult stories,” Munro told Mediawatch.
“The editorial guidelines are robust and public. You can go online and look at them. All of our journalism abides by those guidelines and if you have guidelines that you believe in as an organisation, that’s a significant defence to some of the less well-founded attacks that we sometimes find ourselves on the end of,” he said.
Colin Peacock is RNZ Mediawatch presenter. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Fiji flag flies high in the middle of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Auckland’s Aotea Square today. Image: Del Abcede/APR
About 5000 pro-Palestinian supporters gathered in Auckland’s Aotea Square and marched down Queen Street today calling for a ceasefire and humanitarian aid in the War on Gaza. A co-organiser, Ming Al-Ansan, said: “We want our voices heard. Palestinian lives matter, so if we don’t do this then the media is not going to notice us.” Palestinian human rights advocate Janfrie Wakim gave the following address to the supporters.
“There is no ‘both sides’ to a genocide” . . . solidarity messages of New Zealand pro-Palestinian supporters in Auckland’s Aotea Square today. Image: David Robie/APR
SPEECH: By Janfrie Wakim
Tena koutou Tena koutou Tena koutou katoa
Salaam Aleikum Ma’haba
Greetings to you all and thank you for coming here today to express your solidarity with the Palestinian people — in Gaza particularly — but Palestinians everywhere.
Free Free . . . Palestine!
I acknowledge the indigenous people of Aotearoa — Māori tangatawhenua, who 183 years ago signed the Tiriti o Waitangi with colonists from Britain. Also, Ngati Whatua of Orakei, manawhenua, on whose land we gather today and who battled the settler-colonialism at Takaparawha-Bastion Point in the 1970s.
History matters!
I stand here in solidarity with the indigenous people of Palestine who also have been dispossessed by the settler-colonialism of Zionist Jews.
An unfolding catastrophe
Today we are especially mindful of Palestinians in Gaza who are experiencing an unfolding catastrophe of epic and genocidal proportions.
We appeal to our elected leaders, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, and outgoing prime minister Chris Hipkins, to demand an immediate ceasefire and stop the carnage.
“From the river . . . ” placard in Auckland’s Aotea Square. Image: David Robie/APR
Throughout the world we see the massive outpouring of support for Palestinians. Not from the leaders and politicians but from ordinary citizens — like us — especially those who have some capacity to act.
History matters. Facts matter. Human rights of all people matter.
To take a stand you must understand.
Rightly we know and are reminded of European racism which culminated in the Holocaust.
About 5000 pro-Palestinian marchers took part in today’s march down Queen Street in the heart of Auckland. Image: David Robie/APR
Sustained by lies
The bloodshed of today and the past 75 years traces back directly to the colonisation of Palestinian land and the oppression and horror caused by Israel’s military occupation.
Israel is sustained by lies: from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to its birth in 1948 when the indigenous Palestinians were driven out — most to Gaza. (750,000 of the 1 million inhabitants of historic Palestine).
It’s a lie that Israel wants a just and equitable peace and will support a Palestinian state.
It’s a lie that Israel respects the rule of law and human rights.
Free Free . . . Palestine.
We must ensure the history of the Palestinian struggle for justice is known and understood. Hold our media and leaders to account.
John Minto is the chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) and he regularly speaks out.
Western politicians and Western media are the source of the problem. If this war had been reported accurately from the outset, Palestinians would have the state of Palestine where religion, ethnicity and human rights were respected — as they were before European colonisation of Palestine early last century.
Hope is not enough. We must take action — Go to www.psna.nz and keep in touch with the local movement. Voice your alarm. Educate your friends, inform your workmates, challenge politicians — local as well as national.
Show your solidarity
Visit your MPs — insist on meeting face to face. This is especially important now that we have new MPs.
Join our monthly rallies in Takutai Square . . . show your solidarity.
That justice for Palestinians is achieved is not only a matter for the Palestinian people but also a symbol of overcoming injustice everywhere for all humanity.
As a mother and grandmother, I say: “Make Peace Not War!”
Nelson Mandela, who roundly applauded actions of the anti-apartheid movement in Aotearoa New Zealand, said: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
Justice is the seed . . . peace is the flower. Kia Kaha Mauri Ora!
Janfrie Wakim is a New Zealand campaigner for human rights in Palestine.
“Israel and the USA have blood on their hands” and New Zealand’s “silence” over the Gaza genocide came in for condemnation in today’s pro-Palestinian demonstration. Image: David Robie/APR
Loewenstein, who was 
