Transcript
MALAKAI KOLOAMATANGI: But like any other meeting if the agenda items are not as important maybe people will not want to go.
DON WISEMAN: Yes will I guess you can understand Australia being reluctant, even though they sent their climate change ambassador around the Pacific a very short time ago, but very reluctant to go and talk about climate change because they are going to get it in the neck in over their planned new huge coal mine in Queensland, but as well as climate change and coming up to this Cop 23 meeting that Fiji is co-hosting, there is also all the tension in North Korea or over Nth Korea which is a direct threat to a lot of these countries, and I would have thought this would have been a chance to have cemented the organisation after 3 or 4 years of it wandering around a little bit headless.
MK: You are right. The climate change talks - they are very very important for obvious reasons and there is a great deal of interest in the Pacific, among Pacific leaders at least, about how they might advance and progress the discourse and get the metropolitan countries to come to the party more, so one would have though this was an important juncture, as Fiji gets to play host on the international stage. And the Nth Korean problem seems to be growing in importance and it's actually literally on our backdoor - the threat to Guam and so on and so forth, it is very very serious and one would have thought that that too would attract people to come. And I can understand that New Zealand has a general election coming up and issues at home. So there is probably a good excuse for the Prime Minister [not going] and Foreign Minister [arriving Thursday].
DW: 12 years ago Helen Clark had the Papua New Guinea government delay the summit there so it didn't interfere with the election.
MK: Yeah. As I say I think it is understandable if you have an election or another important issue or event nationally that you would miss the Forum, but there is something else here that I sense and that is maybe the power vacuum that has been particularly by Australia and New Zealand and of course by Fiji which is not attending - has left a vacuum which has been filled quite successfully I think by the Prime Minister of Samoa as the leader in the Pacific. If you look at Samoa hosting the Forum this year, if you look at the Games that were supposed to be held in Tonga now Samoa's got it, the Polynesian Leaders' Group is coming together and more and more people are joining because of the work that Tu'ilaepa's done. And of course he is also the chair of the Pacific ACP group. So the list goes on. I think it has given him the opportunity to take the lead as it were from the Pacific.
DW: There has been this about whether the organisation is still relevant because there are these sub-regional groupings that seem to have a lot more homogeneity about them, the Melanesian group, the Polynesian group and there is a Micronesian group as well, particularly as you say with this Polynesian group it is now appearing to have some teeth, so is there a role for the Pacific Islands Forum still?
MK: Well I think we have asked this question often in the past, particularly when there was this challenge, maybe from the PIDF and MSG and so on to the Forum. But people used to say no, no the Forum is still the premier regional organisation in the Pacific. I think there is a real threat to the relevance of the Forum as the premier regional organisation in the Pacific. I think it has to be careful also about its own work in the Pacific, that it's not seen to be a failure in any way, that it actually remains relevant to the needs and interests of the Pacific. Otherwise the MSG or the Polynesian Leaders Group or the Micronesian group will take over from the Pacific Islands Forum. They are not saying it but I think they are probably feeling the threat to their existence.
DW: Tu'ilaepa in his opening speech to the Forum this week said one of the things that has to happen is that the decisions that are made are in fact implemented, and the implication there is, and we have seen it, is that the Forum doesn't actually get around to implementing what it decides.
MK: Well that is very true. And a way to work in the Pacific is you often sign up to these agreements and these plans, but you don't actually implement the plans yourselves, nationally. So you pay lip service to the treaties and agreements and so on but that's it, then you forget about. So it is not only on the Forum's part I think but also on the Forum leaders themselves to ensure that they actually abide by the conventions and the treaties that they sign up to, otherwise they become meaningless and problematic.
