New Caledonia’s pro-independence Union Calédonian has proposed September 24 this year as the date by which an accord should be reached with France to complete decolonisation.
The party, which wants independence for the territory by 2025, has chosen the date because it will mark the 170th anniversary of New Caledonia becoming a French colony on 24 September 1853.
The call was made by the party’s president Daniel Goa after reports from Paris that the French interior minister Gerald Darmanin would return to New Caledonia in early March to advance work on a new statute for the territory.
In three referendums, New Caledonia rejected full sovereignty, but the pro-independence Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), which includes the Caledonian Union, refuses to recognise the third vote, held in December 2021, as the legitimate outcome of the decolonisation process.
As the three votes concluded the Noumea Accord without New Caledonia becoming independent, the stakeholders concerned must be convened to discuss the situation.
The FLNKS is scheduled to hold its congress at the end of February to prepare its position for the bilateral talks scheduled with Darmanin.
On UN decolonisation list
New Caledonia has been on the UN decolonisation list since 1986, based on the indigenous Kanak people’s internationally recognised right to self-determination.
Goa said negotiations are only worthwhile if they deal with the emancipation of the country.
He said his side needs to know how the French state will withdraw and how it will compensate New Caledonia for 170 years of the “looting of its resources”.
The anti-independence camp says a revised statute should be in place for the 2024 provincial elections.
The pro-French parties have said that by then the restricted electoral roll must be opened to all French citizens.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Fiji journalist Lice Movono talks to Café Pacific publisher David Robie while preparing interviews for her media freedom podcast for Radio Australia's Pacific Beat. Image: Screenshot Café Pacific
Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat reports today on how Fiji has fared under the draconian Media Act that has restricted media freedom over the past decade.
There are hopes that state-endorsed media censorship will stop in Fiji following last month’s change in government to the People’s Alliance-led coalition.
Reported by Fiji correspondent Lice Movono, the podcast outlines former Fiji Times editor-in-chief Netani Rika’s experiences of repression under the former FijiFirst government.
Media veterans are also hoping for changes to Fiji’s controversial Media Act, or its complete removal, to protect freedom of the press.
Movono also reports on Islands Business editor Samantha Magick’s view on media freedom and retired journalism professor Dr David Robie, who founded the Pacific Media Centre, expressing his “scepticism” over whether the hoped for relaxed rules would go far enough for the global RSF Media Freedom Index which ranks Fiji at just 102nd out of 180 countries.
The media item is rounded off with an interview with Attorney-General Siromi Turaga who says the repression of the past should never have happened.
He said he would directly work on the changes to the Act, once the minister responsible for information moves to suggest changes.
“The coalition government is going to provide a different approach, a truly democratic way of dealing with press freedom,” Turaga said.
“We’re going to ensure they have freedom to broadcast to impart knowledge information to members of the public.”
Interviewed: Netani Rika, former editor of The Fiji Times and former Fiji Television manager of news and current affairs Samantha Magick, editor of Islands Business Dr David Robie, retired journalism professor and editor of Asia Pacific Report Siromi Turaga, Attorney-General of Fiji
In other items on today’s Pacific Beat:
Fiji’s top cop and head of prisons are suspended pending an investigation by a special tribunal.
A programme is launched in the Australian state of Victoria to get seasonal workers road-ready.
Pacific women take part in Tennis Australia’s leadership programme, coinciding with the Australian Open.
And scientists warn some sharks are on the brink of extinction.
Volunteer rescuers from Auckland's Muriwai lifeguard squad . . . New Zealand’s stormwater drain system was designed for the climate we used to have - 50 or more years ago. Image: Muriwai Search and Rescue/Twitter
The extraordinary flood event Auckland experienced on the night of January 27, the eve of the city’s anniversary weekend, was caused by rainfall that was literally off the chart.
Over 24 hours, 249mm of rain fell — well above the previous record of 161.8mm. A state of emergency was declared late in the evening.
It has taken a terrible toll on Aucklanders, with three people reported dead and at least one more missing. Damage to houses, cars, roads and infrastructure will run into many millions of dollars.
Watching the images roll into social media on Friday evening, I thought to myself that I have seen these kinds of pictures before. But usually they’re from North America or Asia, or maybe Europe.
However, this was New Zealand’s largest city, with a population of 1.7 million.
Nowhere is safe from extreme weather these days.
🌧 Radar time lapse of the Auckland rain since yesterday morning
🔎 Look closely at the north-to-south line of torrential rain between 5-9pm directly over the city
🔺 Normally features like this move on relatively quickly, but not in this case, which was what made it so extreme pic.twitter.com/cv3jJaKr8R
How it happened The torrential rain came from a storm in the north Tasman Sea linked to a source of moisture from the tropics. This is what meteorologists call an “atmospheric river”.
The storm was quite slow-moving because it was cradled to the south by a huge anticyclone (a high) that stopped it moving quickly across the country.
Embedded in the main band of rain, severe thunderstorms developed in the unstable air over the Auckland region. These delivered the heaviest rain falls, with MetService figures showing Auckland Airport received its average monthly rain for January in less than hour.
Record breaking rain in Auckland. Although the heavy band of rain has moved off to the east there is still a change of showers so the total for rainfall could climb even higher. The impacts of the last 24 hours will be felt by many in Auckland for a long time. Take care out there pic.twitter.com/kiIm6Tsrro
The type of storm which brought the mayhem was not especially remarkable, however. Plenty of similar storms have passed through Auckland. But, as the climate continues to warm, the amount of water vapour in the air increases.
I am confident climate change contributed significantly to the incredible volume of rain that fell so quickly in Auckland this time.
Warmer air means more water There will be careful analysis of historical records and many simulations with climate models to nail down the return period of this flood (surely in the hundreds of years at least, in terms of our past climate).
How much climate change contributed to the rainfall total will be part of those calculations. But it is obvious to me this event is exactly what we expect as a result of climate change.
One degree of warming in the air translates, on average, to about 7 percent more water vapour in that air. The globe and New Zealand have experienced a bit over a degree of warming in the past century, and we have measured the increasing water vapour content.
But when a storm comes along, it can translate to much more than a 7 percent increase in rainfall. Air “converges” (is drawn in) near the Earth’s surface into a storm system. So all that moister air is brought together, then “wrung out” to deliver the rain.
A severe thunderstorm is the same thing on a smaller scale. Air is sucked in at ground level, lofted up and cooled quickly, losing much of its moisture in the process.
While the atmosphere now holds 7 percent more water vapour, this convergence of air masses means the rain bursts can be 10 percent or even 20 percent heavier.
Beyond the capacity of stormwater systems The National Institute of Water and Atmosphere (NIWA) estimates that over Auckland, one degree of warming translates to about a 20 percent increase in the one-hour rainfall, for a one-in-50-year event.
The longer we continue to warm the climate, the heavier the storm rainfalls will get.
Given what we have already seen, how do we adapt? Flooding happens when stormwater cannot drain away fast enough.
So what we need are bigger drains, larger stormwater pipes and stormwater systems that can deal with such extremes.
The country’s stormwater drain system was designed for the climate we used to have — 50 or more years ago. What we need is a stormwater system designed for the climate we have now, and the one we’ll have in 50 years from now.
Another part of the response can be a “softening” of the urban environment. Tar-seal and concrete surfaces force water to stay at the surface, to pool and flow.
If we can re-expose some of the streams that have been diverted into culverts, re-establish a few wetlands among the built areas, we can create a more spongy surface environment more naturally able to cope with heavy rainfall.
These are the responses we need to be thinking about and taking action on now.
We also need to stop burning fossil fuels and get global emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases down as fast as we can. New Zealand has an emissions reduction plan — we need to see it having an effect from this year.
And every country must follow suit.
As I said at the start, no community is immune from these extremes and we must all work together.
Former Fiji attorney-general Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum . . . "He has a total of nearly 16 years to reflect on -- and not all of us have forgotten." Image: The Fiji Times
COMMENTARY: By Richard Naidu in Suva
Breakfast they say, is the most important meal of the day.
But last Wednesday it was possibly also the most dangerous. Because that’s when many people were likely to be reading The Fiji Times and choking over their corn flakes.
They could have been reading more pontification from the former attorney-general Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum about “constitutionalism” and “rule of law” and “the embodiment of the values and principles surrounding constitutions” . . . etc.
I am not often at a loss for words. But the sheer brazenness of someone who, in the course of nearly 16 years in government, paid little regard to any of these things, brought me pretty close.
Last weekend Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum gave a rambling press conference complaining about all manner of things the new coalition government was doing. I was so irritated I put out a long statement debunking the so-called “breaches of the Constitution” he was alleging.
But the man doesn’t give up.
He is clearly unmoved by any embarrassment he may feel about having first accepted a Constitutional Offices Commission appointment that got him kicked out of Parliament under the Constitution he drafted; and then resigning the COC position when he realised he could not do that job and also be the FijiFirst party general secretary.
All in the space of three days. That’s the legal equivalent of shooting yourself in both feet.
So let’s begin by talking about “rule of law”, because I am beginning to wonder if anyone in the FijiFirst party even understands what it means.
Rule of law Let’s begin with what it does not mean. Rule of law does not mean “I made the laws, so I rule”. Rule of law is a much more complicated idea than that. Many people have tried to define it, in many different ways.
For those of us who are interested in it, it’s one of those things you sort of know when you see. But a central point of it, I think, is the idea that the law is more important than the people who make it or exercise power under it.
So that means that our rulers — like the people they make the rules for — must respect it in the same way that we have to. Lord Denning, a famous British judge (millennials — look up his role in Fiji’s history) repeated (and made famous) the words of the 18th century scholar, Thomas Fuller: “Be you ever so high, the law is above you.”
For more than a decade, the government of which Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum was part of, paid little heed to this idea. It followed the law when it suited them, but ignored it when it didn’t suit them.
Let’s assume, for the moment, that he believed that the 2006 military coup (which the grovelling Fiji Sun once memorably described as “a change in direction of the government”) was lawful, together with the military government which followed.
That government continued to tell us it would follow the 1997 Constitution. But in April 2009 Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum could no longer believe that the military government was lawful. Because, in a case brought by deposed by deposed Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, the Fiji Court of Appeal clearly told him that it wasn’t.
If you believed in rule of law, you would accept what the court had told you, quit your post and allow the lawful government to return, as the court required. He did not. Instead, he and his government decided that the 1997 Constitution had become inconvenient.
So they just trashed it. This was not rule of law. Aiyaz and the then government had instead decided that they were above the law.
The new constitution Fast forward to 2012 and the process of a new constitution. We were told (in a pompous government media statement on 12 March 2012) that the then government was “looking to the future of Fiji and all Fijians”.
“During the process of formulating a genuine Fijian constitution,” we were told, “every Fijian will have the right to put their ideas before the constitutional commission and have the draft constitution debated and discussed by the Constituent Assembl . . .
“As the process continues with the Constitution Commission and the Constituent Assembly all Fijians will have a voice.”
What actually happened?
The well-known constitutional scholar Professor Yash Ghai was flown in to chair a new constitutional commission. His commission travelled around the country, gathering the views of the people on what a new constitution should say.
Hardly a perfectly democratic process, but better than nothing. The Ghai Commission drafted a new constitution. But the government didn’t like it. So much for the “voices” of Fijians. Out it went — constitution, commission and all. Six hundred printed copies of the draft constitution were dumped into a fire.
Professor Ghai was sent packing. Instead we were handed the 2013 Constitution, pretty much from nowhere. No “Constituent Assembly”. Nobody “had a voice”. So, was that all a process Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum might call (his word) “constitutionalism”?
Did things get any better?
So, at least the new Constitution, and the elections of 2014, were a new start. Maybe we could expect the new elected government, of which Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum was chief legal adviser, to begin thinking about “rule of law” and “constitutionalism” and “embodying values and principles surrounding constitutions”?
Here’s one more important point about rule of law. It’s not just about the laws which tell you what to do and what not to do. It’s also about the law protecting your rights and freedoms — and protecting what you are allowed to do.
Your rights and freedoms under the 2013 Constitution include your rights of free expression, your rights to assemble and protest, your right to personal liberty — yes, the right not to be locked up at whim — among many others.
They even include the right to “executive and administrative justice” — that is, to be treated fairly by the government and its institutions. So a government that is applying the laws of the land ought to, while applying them (in the words of Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum) “embody the values and principles” of that Constitution.
How, then, were the “values and principles” of our Constitution being embodied when unions were repeatedly being denied the right to assemble and protest? How were they being embodied when under our media laws, journalists were threatened with jail for writing stories which were “against the national interest” (whatever that meant)?
How were the “values and principles” of our Constitution being embodied when public servants lived in permanent fear of arbitrary dismissal?
How were the “values and principles” of our democratic Constitution being embodied when the government passed important laws in Parliament, affecting things like our voting rights, citizenship, our rights to a fair trial and the regulation of political parties, all by surprise, on two days’ notice?
No cell time There was an outcry earlier this week when police, over two days of questioning our former attorney-general, did not put him in a cell overnight. After all, former opposition politicians such as Sitiveni Rabuka, Biman Prasad and Pio Tikoduadua, when taken in for questioning for objecting to bad laws, were not so fortunate.
They got to spend a night in police custody. Why, people asked, was Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum getting special treatment? The answer? He was not getting special treatment. What was actually happening was that — for the first time in many years — the police were applying the law correctly.
If the person you are questioning is not a flight risk, there’s no need to lock him up. He is innocent until proven guilty. His personal freedom is more important than the convenience of the police.
He can sleep in his own bed and come back for more questioning tomorrow.
That would be, in Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum’s words, “embodying the values and principles of the Constitution”. But that is not something his government appeared to extend to its opponents when the police came calling. So I think we all deserve to be spared his lectures on “constitutionalism” for a little while.
Perhaps instead our former attorney-general might find it more valuable to take some time to quietly reflect on how well the governments of which he was part “embodied constitutional values and principles”. He has a total of nearly 16 years to reflect on — and not all of us have forgotten.
That ought to take a little while. And a few of us might then be able to enjoy more peaceful breakfasts.
Richard Naidu is a Suva lawyer and former journalist (although, to be honest, not a big breakfaster). The views in this article are not necessarily the views of The Fiji Times. Republished with permission.
A word of caution: don’t treat opinion polls as gospel, and try not to let them become self-fulfilling prophecies. Image: Getty Images/The Conversation
With a new prime minister sworn in and a cabinet reshuffle imminent, it is no exaggeration to say the election year in Aotearoa New Zealand has begun with a bang. Already the punditry and speculation are ramping up, with anticipation building for the first opinion polls.
There will be more polls to come, of course, but a word of caution is in order: don’t treat them as gospel, and try not to let them become self-fulfilling prophecies.
At this point, we cannot predict who will form New Zealand’s next government, and it could yet be a tight race.
Furthermore, political polling has not had a stellar record in recent times. Former prime minister Jim Bolger’s famous remark from 1993, after he didn’t get the election majority he expected, still resonates: “Bugger the polls.”
It’s not just a local phenomenon, either. The results of the Brexit referendum and the Trump–Clinton presidential contest in 2016, and the 2019 Australian election, were all out of line with preceding opinion polls.
In 2020, the US presidential polls were off by about four percentage points. And the 2022 US midterm elections didn’t produce the landslide (or “red tsunami”) many Republicans had predicted.
Election night 2020 . . . polls consistently underestimated the Labour Party’s eventual majority. Image: Getty Images/The Conversation
The 2020 election miss It is a similar story in Aotearoa New Zealand. In 2020, the polls immediately prior to the election overestimated the National vote and underestimated Labour’s.
Taking the averages of the results of all six polls published during the month before election day, National emerged on 30.9 percent and Labour on 47.2 percent. In the final three polls during the two weeks when advance voting was open, the averages were National 31.4 percent and Labour 46.3 percent.
The gap was closing and Labour would land on about 46 percent, or so it seemed. As Labour’s trend in the polls since mid-2020 was already downward, 45 percent looked plausible. But predictions based on the opinion polls were significantly wrong.
Labour’s election result was 50 pecent, National’s only 25.6 percent.
The polls in the final fortnight were overestimating National by an average of 5.8 percentage points. They were underestimating Labour by 3.7 points. The Green and Māori parties were also underestimated (1.1 and 0.7 points, respectively).
There were even bigger failures in polls showing Green candidate Chlöe Swarbrick running third in Auckland Central with about 25 percent of the vote. Instead, she got 35 percent and won the seat.
Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick on election night 2020 . . . polls had placed her third but she won the Auckland Central seat. Image: Getty Images/The Conversation
Statistics 101 The opinion polls and the election — the only poll that counts, as the saying goes — use different methods with different samples. They are intended for different purposes, and hence their results will differ, too.
An opinion poll is a snapshot of a sample of potential voters. By the time it’s published, it’s already in the past. Surveys normally ask which party you would vote for if the election were held tomorrow.
But you may change your mind by the time you actually vote, if you vote at all.
Furthermore, surveys are prone to random error. So, no matter how scientifically rigorous, they only estimate — and cannot replicate — the relevant population. It is in the interests of the polling companies to be accurate, of course, especially when close to an election.
But we need to read their results critically.
Samples are normally about 1000 people, and pollsters try to ensure they closely resemble the demographic makeup (ideally by age, gender, ethnicity, education and location) of the eligible population, giving voters of all kinds an equal voice.
Post-survey weighting boosts results from social groups with low response rates.
The proportion of the population that holds a specified preference is estimated, and all estimates are subject to variance.
This is expressed as a margin of error, which is normally plus or minus three percentage points.
The margin of error is the range in which the pollster bets the “true” results should probably fall, with the true figures being outside that range only 5 percent of the time. In other words, pollsters are 95 percent confident the actual results will fall within that range. It is only a statistical estimate.
But the quoted margin of error doesn’t apply evenly. If a given party is polling at 50 percent, then the quoted margin of error applies. If a party is polling higher or lower, then the margin of error narrows percent the further you get from 50 percent, the narrower the margin of error.
How new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins fares in the first opinion polls of 2023 will be closely watched. Image: Getty Images/The Conversation
Beyond the margin of error Another concern is whether respondents will give honest answers. Some may be unwilling to reveal their voting intentions or they will wilfully mislead the poll.
And often a large proportion of a sample doesn’t know yet whether they’ll actually vote, or for whom they’ll vote. Responsible pollsters will report the percentage of “don’t know” responses.
But the conservative bias in the pre-election 2020 opinion polls was systematically outside of the margins of error, and hence not due only to random variation.
Apparently, pollsters did not obtain samples that resembled the population that actually voted. It looks like younger leftwing voters were especially hard to reach or unwilling to participate.
Or their election turnout may have been underestimated.
Polling companies are now using online panels to help correct such biases. We’ll have to wait for the next election’s results to judge how it’s working.
Reading the tea leaves A series of opinion polls can reveal trends and thus serve a purpose as public information. But they’re not suited for forecasting. One result taken out of context may be misleading, so it is disappointing when major news organisations over-hype polls.
When party-vote percentages get converted into numbers of seats, journalists are reading tea leaves and not reporting news. Meanwhile, the market research firms are getting massive publicity.
Accurate or not, opinion poll results can have self-fulfilling or “bandwagon” effects on people’s voting behaviour. People might want to back a winner, or not waste their vote on a party that’s polling below 5 percent. Or some might vote for a party other than their favourite, with an eye to post-electoral negotiations.
Perhaps the best advice for voters is this: when deciding which party to vote for, try not to think about the polls. And poll-watchers should prepare for surprises on election night.
Revelations about the degree with which outgoing New Zealand Prime Ministet Jacinda Ardern has faced unprecedented vitriolic abuse and threats of violence against her four-year-old daughter, Neve, and her partner Clarke Gayford as well as herself have shocked the nation. Image: RNZ News
By David Robie
Aotearoa New Zealand has been shaken to the core by the sudden resignation of one of its most iconic and revered prime ministers amid a fierce controversy over misogyny and death threats stirred by the global coronavirus pandemic.
Jacinda Ardern, the world’s youngest female prime minister at 37 when she was elected in 2017 on a stardust wave of “Jacinda-mania”, stepped down this week after emotional scenes at her last official function wrapped in a traditional Māori feathered cloak at the historic Rātana church.
This was barely a week after her resignation had caught the nation by surprise and has thrown this year’s general election due on October 14 wide open.
Ardern told New Zealanders that after five and a half years as leader of the left of centre Labour Party and with the biggest mandate in modern times she “no longer had enough in the tank to do the job justice”.
Outgoing Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern . . . “love, empathy and kindness – that is what the majority of New Zealand has shown to me.” Image: Al Jazeera screenshot APR
Her party had been trailing in opinion polls in the face of a revived conservative National Party led by former airline executive Christopher Luxon and the rightwing ACT party but she was still the most preferred prime minister in spite of her eroding popularity.
Ironically, her resignation has opened the door to some changes in her party that may bolster support in the remaining nine months to the election with the unanimous election of “blokey” and boyish faced Chris Hipkins as leader and thus Prime Minister, and the country’s “historic” first deputy prime minister of Pacific heritage, Carmel Sepuloni.
“Ardern led during an incredibly divided time in New Zealand and abroad. She and her government have had some strong supporters – but also many detractors,” noted the country’s leading daily newspaper, The New Zealand Herald.
‘Enthral or aggravate’
“Through her prime ministership, Ardern had the capacity to enthral or aggravate with a degree of passion more than any [New Zealand] prime minister in living memory.”
The newspaper said this was a world destabilised by the impacts of a pandemic, and given voice as never before by unfettered social media amplification.
“We are now entering into the post-war period for this generation. New Zealand is not immune to stress from enforced lockdowns and rampant residual inflation due to emergency economic measures.”
New Prime Minister Chris Hipkins . . . pledged to give priority to “bread and butter” economic issues in the face of record inflation. Image: Angus Dreaver/RNZ News
The new Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, 44, is a pragmatic politician with a reputation of getting things done — “Mr Fixit” — and was one of Ardern’s most dedicated lieutenants. He was elected to Parliament, as the member for Remutaka, the same year as Ardern in 2008.
A staunch defender of the public education system and the right for every child to have a free education, he has held the portfolios of education, police, public service and as Leader of the House in the Ardern government before becoming prime minister.
However, his most important role was as Covid-19 Response Minister for 20 months from late 2020 when he played a key part in New Zealand’s impressive performance in keeping the virus out of the country until it had reached more than 85 percent vaccination of the eligible population.
He has declared that his priority would be the “bread and butter” economic issues of dealing with inflation and the cost of living in the country, although New Zealand’s 7.2 percent level appears to have peaked and is below comparable countries, such as Australia (7.8 percent), United Kingdom (10.5 percent), United States (8.5 percent) and the European Union (11.1 percent).
Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni . . . historic appointment as New Zealand’s first deputy prime minister of Pacific heritage. Image: TVNZ screenshot APR
A formidable team
Many pundits believe Hipkins and deputy Carmel Sepuloni, the Minister of Social Development who will continue in that role, make a formidable team for a Labour reset.
New Zealand’s Pacific community leaders say the appointment of Sepuloni, daughter of a migrant and of Samoan and Tongan descent, will bring positive change.
She also made history 15 years ago when she became New Zealand’s first Tongan MP.
Speaking on the public broadcaster RNZ Morning Report programme, a Methodist Church minister said Sepuloni’s promotion would serve as an inspiration for younger Pacific Islanders, particularly girls.
“Carmel being a Tongan, Samoan woman as deputy prime minister is a profound contribution . . . to eliminating negative stereotypes and reducing unconscious bias against us,” said Reverend Setaita Veikune.
“This alone does more for our communities than many realise, such as reducing advancement barriers, which are biased against us in different spaces.”
Another Pacific community leader, Sir Collin Tukuitonga, a former director-general of the Noumea-based Secretariat of the Pacific Community and currently the inaugural Dean Pacific at the University of Auckland’s Medical School, said it was a historic moment not only for Pasifika people, but for the whole country.
“I think it’s a statement of ourselves as a nation that perhaps we’re maturing and being serious about inclusivity.”
Auckland is the city with the largest Pacific Islander population globally, with almost 390,000, earning the city the epithet “the Polynesian capital of the world”. The city has a total population of 1.7 million in a country of 5 million.
Communicator ‘without peer’
Meanwhile, a national debate about Ardern’s contribution as prime minister continues. In its editorial, The New Zealand Herald said that as a communicator she was “without peer but in government, [her] performance was mixed”.
“The record shows that she led the nation through some of the most difficult times in its history. She rallied with distinction in unprecedented adversity — a tragic volcanic eruption, a vicious act of terrorism, and a global pandemic.”
Revelations about the degree with which she has faced unprecedented vitriolic abuse and threats of violence against her four-year-old daughter Neve and her partner Clarke Gayford as well as herself have shocked the nation.
Jacinda Ardern bids farewell as New Zealand PM at last event at Rātana. Video: A Jazeera
Threats against the former prime minister almost tripled over three years against a background of growing conspiracy theories and strident opposition to vaccination, although she has played this down. Among her final messages was a tribute to the “love, empathy and kindness” shown by most New Zealanders.
According to data released under the Official Information Act and reported by the television channel Newshub, while police recorded just 18 threats against Ardern in 2019, this increased to 32 in the first year of Covid-19, and then 50 in 2021.
Anti-mandate and far-right protesters during a three week occupation of Parliament in early 2022 — which ended in a riot — called for a public trial and execution of Ardern (along with threats to other politicians, public servants and journalists). They claimed that promoting vaccination was a “crime against humanity”.
In July 2022, a founder of a white supremacist party who claimed he “had the right to shoot the prime minister”, was sentenced on a charge of threatening to kill or do grievous bodily harm.
The 45-year-old Christchurch man, who founded the so-called “Pākehā Party”, was one of eight such cases involving threats of violence currently going through the lawcourts.
In spite of Ardern’s waning popularity, The Herald said she “should be remembered as an inspirational prime minister who ignited passions and showed us who we could be, both great and not”.
Author Phil Kafcaloudes (centre) with Australia Calling editor Kellie Mayo (from left), ABC Radio Australia's Hilda Wayne, journalist Caroline Tiriman, and producer Vaimo'oi'a Ripley at the launch of the book. Image: ABC
REVIEW: By Rowan Callick
Radio Australia was conceived at the beginning of the Second World War out of Canberra’s desire to counter Japanese propaganda in the Pacific. More than 70 years later its rebirth is being driven by a similarly urgent need to counter propaganda, this time from China.
Set up within the towering framework of the ABC, Radio Australia was, and remains, an institution with a lively multilingual culture of its own. Sometimes it has thrived and sometimes, especially in recent decades, it has struggled as political priorities and media fashions waxed and waned within the ABC and the wider world.
Phil Kafcaloudes, an accomplished journalist, author and media educator who hosted Radio Australia’s popular breakfast show for nine years, was commissioned by the ABC to write the service’s story for the corporation’s 90th-anniversary celebrations. The result is a nicely illustrated and comprehensively footnoted new book, Australia Calling: The ABC Radio Australia Story, which uses the original name of the service for its title. (With appropriate good manners, Kafcaloudes acknowledges previous accounts of the Radio Australia story, by Peter Lucas in 1964 and Errol Hodge in 1995.)
The overseas service’s nadir came in 2014 after the election of the Abbott government. At the time, Inside Story’s Pacific correspondent Nic Maclellan described in devastating detail the impact in the region of the eighty redundancies brought on by the government’s decision to remove the Australia Network, a kind of TV counterpart to Radio Australia, from the ABC. The network had controversially been merged with key elements of Radio Australia to create ABC International.
Among the casualties was the legendary ABC broadcaster Sean Dorney, known and loved throughout the Pacific. Programmes for Asia were axed, as was much specialist Pacific reporting, with English-language coverage to be sourced from the ABC’s general news department.
The ABC’s full-time team in the Pacific was reduced to a journalist in Port Moresby and another (if it counts) in New Zealand. Australia’s newspapers had already withdrawn their correspondents from the region, and online-only media hadn’t filled the gap. Where once, in 1948, Radio Australia had helped beam a signal to the moon, the countries of our own region now seemed even more remote.
Despite the steady erosion of the service over decades, though, Kafcaloudes’s book has a happy ending of sorts. Its final chapter, titled “Rebirth: Pivoting to the Pacific,” tells how Radio Australia benefited from the Morrison government’s “Pacific Step-Up,” launched in response to China’s campaign to build regional connections. Steps to rebuild Radio Australia’s capacities have since been enhanced by substantial new funding from the Albanese government.
Placing listeners at scene
When current affairs radio is at its most effective, it places listeners at the scene. Kafcaloudes tells of being on air when a listener in Timor-Leste called to tell of an assassination attempt on José Ramos-Horta and Xanana Gusmão.
“Radio Australia instantly changed its scheduling to broadcast live for three hours so locals would know whether their leaders were still alive.”
But, as Kafcaloudes explains, “for all the good work, global connections and breaking news stories, the truth is, for many Australian politicians there was little electoral capacity in a service that a domestic audience did not hear.” Thus the abrupt funding reverses and the constant tinkering.
Former ABC journalist and manager Geoff Heriot describes how, during a challenging phase for the ABC about 25 years ago, managing director Brian Johns’s desire to defend the ABC meant that, “if necessary, you could cut off limbs.” And Radio Australia was the limb that often seemed most remote from the core.
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, Kafcaloudes says, the service “was often at or near the top of the polls as the world’s best.” Many listeners, especially in China and elsewhere in East Asia, testified to having learned English from listening to Radio Australia.
Its popularity in Asia and the Pacific was boosted by the fact that it broadcast from a similar time zone, which meant its morning shows, for instance, were heard during listeners’ mornings. In 1968 alone, the station received 250,000 letters from people tuning in around the region.
For decades, broadcasts were via shortwave, the only way of covering vast distances at the time. But the ABC turned off that medium for good in 2017, so Radio Australia now communicates via 24-hour FM stations across the Pacific and via satellite, live stream, on-demand audio, podcasts, the ABC Listen app, and Facebook and Twitter.
New audiences emerging
With new audiences emerging in different places, the geography of Radio Australia’s languages have changed too. As the use of French in the former colonies in Indochina declined, for instance, new French-speaking audiences developed in the Pacific colonies of New Caledonia and French Polynesia.
One of the continuities of Radio Australia is the quality and connectedness of its broadcasters. Most of them come from the countries to which they broadcast, and together they have evolved into a remarkable cadre who could and should be invited by policymakers and diplomats to help Australia steer and deepen its relations with our neighbours.
Kafcaloudes rightly stresses the importance of that first prewar step, when Robert Menzies, “a man who believed he was British to the bootstraps, despite being born and bred in country Victoria,” decided “Australians needed to speak to the world with their own voice.”
How best to do this has frequently been disputed. In a 1962 ministerial briefing, the Department of External Affairs argued that Radio Australia’s broadcasts “should not be noticeably at variance with the broad objectives of Australian foreign policy” — an instruction that John Gorton, the relevant minister, declined to issue publicly.
Tensions have inevitably resulted from the desire of the service’s funder, the federal government, to see its own policies and perceptions prioritised. Resisting such pressure has required greater stamina and skill at Radio Australia than at the ABC’s domestic services, which can count more readily on influential defenders.
Kafcaloudes says it was Mark Scott, who headed the ABC a dozen years ago, who linked Radio Australia with American academic/diplomat Joseph Nye’s idea of “soft power.” Then and now, this was a seductive phrase for politicians. It also became a familiar part of the case for restoring, consolidating or increasing funding, while underlining the familiar, nagging challenge for the station’s “content providers” of choosing between projecting that kind of power on Canberra’s behalf and dealing with stories that might well be perceived as “negative” for the Australian government.
Of course, the conventional public-interest answer to that dilemma is that fearless journalism is itself the ultimate expression of soft power by an open, democratic polity. But not everyone sees it that way.
Public broadcasting ethos The public broadcasting ethos of the station’s internationally sourced staff has meanwhile stayed impressively intact. Kafcaloudes introduces one of them at the end of each chapter, letting them speak directly of how they came to arrive at Radio Australia and their experiences working there.
Running Radio Australia has been complicated for decades by its being bundled, unbundled and bundled again with television services that have sometimes been run by the ABC and sometimes by commercial stations. Technologies have of course become fluid in recent years, freeing content from former constraints. So too has the badging — the service is now “ABC Radio Australia,” which morphs online into “ABC Pacific.”
Radio Australia continues to broadcast in Mandarin, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Khmer, French, Burmese and Tok Pisin (the Melanesian pidgin language spoken widely in PNG and readily understood in Vanuatu and, slightly less so, in Solomon Islands), as well as in English.
Dedicated, high-quality journalism remains the core constant of an institution whose story, chronicled so well by Kafcaloudes, parallels in many ways Australia’s on-again, off-again, on-again engagement with our region.
The Indonesian military says a tribunal has sentenced an army major to life in prison for his involvement in the brutal murder of four Papuan civilians in the Mimika district.
Their mutilated bodies were found in August 2022.
Benar News reports that human rights activists and victims’ relatives welcomed the conviction of Major Helmanto Fransiskus Dakhi as progress in holding members of security forces accountable for abuses in West Papua.
“The defendant … was found guilty of premeditated murder,” Herman Taryaman, a spokesman for the Indonesian military command in Papua, told journalists.
The tribunal also dismissed Dakhi from the military.
Taryaman said four other soldiers charged in connection with the killings were being tried by a tribunal in the provincial capital of Jayapura.
A sixth military suspect died in December after falling ill, while police say four civilians were also facing trial in a civilian court.
Headless bodies Asia Pacific Report reported on 31 August 2021 that residents of Iwaka village in Mimika district had been shocked by the discovery of four sacks, each containing a headless and legless torso, in the village river.
Two other sacks were found separately, one containing four heads and the other eight legs. The sacks were weighted with stones.
A spokesman for the victims’ families, Aptoro Lokbere, said he was “satisfied” with the conviction and sentence.
Gustaf Kawer, an attorney for the victims’ families, said the life sentence for the major was a “brave” decision that should be emulated by military and civilian courts in similar cases.
Activists had said the violence degraded the dignity of indigenous Papuans amid allegations of ongoing rights abuses by government security forces in West Papua.
Dakhi is the third Indonesian Armed Forces member to be sentenced to life by a military court in a murder case since June.
Anger as MSG recruits Indonesians Meanwhile, the Melanesian Spearhead Group’s secretariat in Vanuatu has confirmed it has recruited two Indonesians.
The statement from the group came during a protest against the move in front of the secretariat by the Vanuatu Free West Papua Association.
The group’s director-general, Leonard Louma, said the agency was aiming to strengthen its capacity and this would include the recruitment of two Indonesian nationals, filling the roles of the private sector development officer and the manager of arts, culture and youth programme.
Louma said the secretariat had been directed to “re-prioritise” its activities and was now positioning itself to meet the demands and expectations of the leaders.
The Free West Papua Association said hiring the Indonesians made a mockery of the support Vanuatu had given West Papua for many years.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The first time Sitiveni Rabuka was elected into office was more than 30 years ago. Today marks a little over a month since he became Fiji’s Prime Minister for a second time. He catches up with Tagata Pasifika’s John Pulu to discuss his return to office, Fiji’s covid-19 recovery and the investigation of Fiji’s former attorney-general Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.
It’s been a busy start for the newly elected leader of Fiji, Sitiveni Rabuka.
And while he’s only held the role for a little over a month, walking into the Prime Minister’s office felt familiar for the leader of the People’s Alliance (PA) party.
“The office dynamics are still the same,” he says.
“It was just like going back to an old car or an old bicycle that you have driven before or ridden before.
“The people are new…[there’s] possible generational difficulties and views but I have not encountered any since the month I came into the office.”
However, his journey into office was not an easy one. After the initial tally of votes at last years’ December election, neither Rabuka nor his predecessor Voreqe Bainimarama had gained a comfortable majority to take Parliament.
Sodelpa (Social Democratic Liberal Party) became the kingmakers, voting to form a coalition with the PA, and they were joined by the National Federation Party (NFP).
Bainimarama out of office
For the first time since 2014, Bainimarama was out of office. Rabuka says they have not spoken since the election.
“There has been no communication since the outcome,” he says.
“It was something I tried to encourage when I was in the opposition and opposition leader, for across-the-floor discussions on matters that affect the nation.
“We grew up in the same profession…we are friends,” Rabuka insists.
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka talking to Tagata Pasifika . . . returning to office as PM is like “going back to an old car . . . you have driven before”. Image: TP Plus screenshot APR
However, there’s plenty else to keep Rabuka busy at this time.
The coalition trinity means more cooks in the kitchen, but Rabuka is confident that they can work together to lead Fiji.
“I worked with the National Federation Party in 1999. Sodelpa was the party I helped to register,” he recalls.
‘Differences in past’
“There might have been differences in the past but we are still family and it’s only natural for us to come together and work together again.”
They’ve already enacted a number of changes including lifting a ban on a number of Fijians who were exiled by the previous government.
“It’s interesting that many of those returning thought they were on a blacklist,” Rabuka muses.
“When we asked Immigration, Immigration [said] ‘there is no such thing as a blacklist, or anyone being prohibited from coming back’.
“They all came back and they were very happy. But it also reflected the freedom in the atmosphere.”
And speaking of freedom, investigations into former attorney-general Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum have reportedly been suspended.
Under investigation
According to FBC News, Sayed-Khaiyum was under investigation for allegedly inciting communal antagonism.
Rabuka says Sayed-Khaiyum is a person of interest, but isn’t yet subjected to any prosecution processes at this time.
“But if it develops from there, there might be restrictions on his movement – particularly out of Fiji.”
Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air. Republished from Tagata Pasifika with permission.
Counterspin Media visits Peka Peka . . . "the seen and the unseen". Image: Political Bytes
COMMENTARY:By Ian Powell
On 14 December 2022 German police arrested 25 people over what was called the “Reichsburger plot”. Two days later The Observer published an article by Philip Oltermann posing the question of whether this was a far-right “…sinister plan to overthrow the German state or just a rag-tag revolution?”
Although a long way away from our shores, this bizarre event has implications for New Zealand which should not be ignored. It got me to thinking about the attempted coups by electorally defeated presidents in the United States and Brazil.
This then led on to considering the occupation of Parliament grounds in early 2022 and a recent sighting in a tiny community about seven km away from my home on the Kāpiti Coast.
In the midst of writing this all up, came the unexpected resignation of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern last week. Then union leader Robert Reid popped up with a pertinent observation. But first, Germany.
German coup-plotters Along with25 other German co-conspirators, one Maximilian Eder was arrested. They were accused of planning to overthrow the state by violent means and install a shadow government headed by a minor German aristocrat.
Few of these coup plotters were well-known public figures. But they included some with a military background, doctors, judges, gourmet chefs and opera singers, a Lower Saxony civil servant at the criminal police office, and “…several of the ragtag bunch of wannabe revolutionaries seemed to have been radicalised in the comfortably well-off, respectable centre of society.”
Maximilian Eder, a leading German far-right coup plotter. . . . genuine commander of one of Germany’s armoured infantry battalions between 1998 and 2000. Image: Political Bytes
Eder was a genuine commander of one of Germany’s armoured infantry battalions between 1998 and 2000. He had served in Kosovo and Afghanistan and was a founding member of Germany’s special forces command.
What further rattled Germany’s cage was the inclusion of a former member of the federal parliament from the far-right AfD party. She had knowledge of security arrangements and special access privileges to the complex of parliamentary buildings in the heart of Berlin.
Eccentrics or serious threat? The plotters’ potential targets included seven members of Germany’s Parliament, including the Foreign Minister, conservative opposition, and two leaders of the governing Social Democrat party.
German police found weapons in 50 of the 150 properties linked to the co-conspirators (there may have been other weapons stashed away elsewhere). This was an insufficient arsenal to overthrow the government of a country with a population of 83 million. However, it was enough to carry out a targeted terror attack killing and maiming many.
The question remains unanswered as to whether these conspirators really did seriously threaten German democracy as it presently exists or were they “…just a bunch of eccentrics with a hyperactive imagination…”
Coup conspirators plotted to take over Germany’s Parliament, the Reichstag. Image: Political Bytes
One of the difficulties in making this call is that previously the growth of the German far-right had been under-estimated. The relatively recent electoral success of the AfD party was unexpected. Oltermann concluded his interesting article by citing a German terrorism expert who noted that while he didn’t believe the coup-plotters would have overthrown the government, the question that remained was how much damage they would have caused in trying to.
Washington DC and Brasilia While we await a fuller analysis of the extent to which these coup-plotters were a threat to German democracy, we know enough to make some conclusions, especially in an international context.
The German coup-plotters may have included eccentrics. But their defining characteristic was that they were from that part of the extreme far-right of politics which was prepared to use violence to achieve their objectives.
There are similarities with two actual attempted coups seeking to overturn election results and putting back into power two far-right presidents who were defeated at the polls. These occurred in the respective capitals of the United States (Washington) in January 2001 and Brazil (Brasilia) two years later.
These attempts to put Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro back in power were both far-right led and involved short violent destructive occupations of their parliaments. The major difference was significant high-level military involvement in the attempted Brazilian coup.
Far-right levering off anti-vaccination protests In February-March 2022 there was an anti-vaccination occupation of New Zealand’s Parliament Grounds. Last February I published a Political Bytes blog on the far-right agenda in this occupation.
My essential point was that the susceptibility, to say the least, of many of these protesters was fertile territory for far-right leaders to exploit, influence and shape its more violent direction. This was well-highlighted in the excellent Fire & Fury podcast documentary published by Stuff.
Fire & Fury: Who’s driving a violent, misinformed New Zealand – and why? Video: Stuff
The documentary has come under some peculiar criticism from those who believe it should have given similar or greater blame for the actions of Parliament’s Speaker in trying to dissuade the occupiers from continuing the protest.
However, aside from overstating his impact, this criticism misses the whole point of the documentary. Its focus was on what was behind the occupation and related protests, including the significant far-right influence and support.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of these protests was the far-right Counterspin Media online outlet. It reported the occupation virtually non-stop, quickly becoming the main source of news for the occupiers and their supporters.
Run by local far-right leaders, Counterspin Media relies on a far-right media outlet in the United States for support (Trump confidant Steve Bannon is in its central leadership). From a very small base its viewing numbers have rocketed upwards.
The occupation also accelerated the use of two new terms to designate some people within the far-right – “sovereign citizens” and “sheriffs”. The former believe they are not bound by laws unless they personally consent to them. They carry out violence although this is largely verbal.
The latter, sheriffs, believe they can take the law into their own hands, including apprehending, violence and even execution. In other words, those holding either designation are vigilantes.
Now to Peka Peka This leads on to the peacefully seaside locality Peka Peka on the Kāpiti Coast of the lower North Island with a population of around 700. As it happens, it is seven km from where I live. I frequently cycle through it and walk dogs on its beautiful beach.
Its name is derived from a native New Zealand bat, the Pekapeka, which represents the interwoven nature of the spirit world and the world of the living — the seen and the unseen.
But following the end of the occupation of Parliament Grounds a small group of occupiers moved on to the land of a supportive local farmer. While numbers have diminished there are still there.
While driving past earlier this month I noticed a conspicuous vehicle parked outside on the road as photographs I took show. The vehicle belongs to Counterspin Media.
The issue at hand was the far-right’s support for the parents of a critically ill baby who tried to deny him access to a life-saving blood transfusion because overwhelmingly donors are vaccinated. They and Counterspin Media have also denied the right of their baby to privacy by breaching a court order for name suppression. [The matter was resolved by the court overruling the parents which enabled a successful transfusion that saved the baby’s life.]
The “sheriff” is in Peka Peka. Image: Political Bytes
What was particularly relevant to this blog, however, was the fact that the far-right Counterspin Media was present visiting the small group who among them are believed to include sovereign citizens and a sheriff or two.
It is a very long bow to suggest that the occupation of Parliament Grounds was responsible for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s dramatic resignation last week. Nevertheless its ferocity (including intimidation and threats of execution) and duration rattled her government’s cage and confidence.
Outgoing NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern . . . many commentators are attributing her resignation to the volume and viciousness of the personal attacks on her, much of which was misogynous. Image: Getty Images/The Conversation
Many are attributing Arden’s resignation to the volume and viciousness of the personal attacks on her, much of which was misogynous. They are right to make this conclusion but it is much deeper than this. To begin with, had her government been more successful in policy development and implementation or been doing better in the polls, she was less likely to have resigned.
Former Prime Minister Helen Clark (1999-2008) also came under vicious misogynous attacks but, as she has acknowledged, the attacks on Ardern far exceed those on her. What is the difference? First, social media’s influence in Clark’s time was much less than Ardern’s.
Second, the far-right was politically much less influential than now. We now have far-right governments in countries such as Italy, Poland, Hungary and India. There are strong far-right movements threatening countries like France and Spain. Both the United States and Brazil have had single term far-right presidents.
Germany had a follow-up from the December coup-plotters this week with five more far-right activists arrested for a second alleged coup plot, including kidnapping the health minister, to overthrow the government which The Guardian reported on January 23.
In New Zealand, the far-right’s levering off the anti-vaccination protests has led to an environment of threats through a sense of deluded entitlement, as Stuff reported on January 20, of a magnitude far greater than Clark and her government ever experienced.
Union leader Robert Reid was as close to getting it right as one can get in a Facebook post on January 20. He observed that, on the one hand, unlike the United States and Brazil, New Zealand was able to keep right-wing and fascist mobs from storming their parliaments.
However, on the other hand, in New Zealand they “…scored their first victory of bringing down the political leader of the country. Not a good feeling.”
I agree with Reid but would make the qualification that these far-right influenced and led “mobs” significantly contributed to bringing down a political leader.
Sociopaths and psychopaths Soon after commencing working for the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists over three decades ago, I asked a leading psychiatrist, Dr Allen Fraser, what was the difference between sociopaths and psychopaths (Dr Fraser was the union’s first elected vice-president and second president).
His response, which I have never forgotten, was to repeat what he advised medical students and doctors-in-training: Sociopaths believe in castles in the sky; psychopaths live in castles in the sky
In other words, while Helen Clark was threatened by sociopaths, Jacinda Ardern was threatened by psychopaths. The transition from the former to the latter was the increasing influence of the far-right.
Robert Reid is right; it is not a good feeling. He is a master of the understatement.
Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.
