Speech

20 October, 2009

Pacific Update, ANU Crawford School, Sydney

Introduction

Thank you Professor Duncan for your kind introduction. It is my great pleasure to be here today.

The ANU Crawford School continues to make a great contribution to Australia's understanding of our region's issues.

I know I speak for all of us when I say our thoughts are with the families and peoples of Samoa and Tonga affected by the recent tsunami.

The loss of so many lives is devastating and, once again, tests the resilience of our region.

Australia immediately provided a $2 million package to help relief and recovery efforts in Samoa, focusing on providing medical personnel and supplies.

But we know, particularly from our own recent experience with the Victorian Bushfires, that the process of coming to terms with what has happened, and rebuilding the homes, hospitals and key economic infrastructure are a long-term undertaking.

Mindful of this, along with the initial assistance. the Australian Government has contributed $5 million to assist the Samoan Government to commence rebuilding, as has the New Zealand Government.

Ladies and gentlemen.

This is, perhaps, my last chance to talk about my role as Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs. As you may be aware, I will step down from this position next week and be leaving Parliament at the next election. I have been very proud to fill this role over the past two years.

The creation of the Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs was symbolic of our Government's determination to forge new partnerships with our Pacific neighbours.

Australia's new approach was cemented with the Prime Minister's Port Moresby Declaration, which underlined our desire for 'a new era of cooperation with the island nations of the Pacific' based on mutual respect and mutual responsibility.
I have thoroughly enjoyed framing the delivery of the Australian Government's policy priorities in the Pacific, and the many opportunities and challenges that this has entailed.

I believe we have made tremendous progress in the revitalisation of our relations with the Pacific over the past two years.

I am leaving with a strong sense of satisfaction about what has been achieved to date.

Our region has achieved some great successes over the past decade. Economic growth in many countries coupled with deregulation and an opening up of the region as a joined-up economy has seen some gains made in terms of raising health, education, and living standards overall. However, I also have a keen awareness of the considerable challenges that lie ahead, and it's these challenges that I want to focus on tonight.

But first I want to spend a few minutes talking about how far we've come.

Over the past two years we have worked hard to develop individual Partnership for Development agreements with our Pacific Island neighbours.

Eight such agreements have been concluded, with Samoa, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Tonga and Nauru.

These agreements commit us to increased development assistance over coming years, tailored towards these countries' individual development needs.

They embrace commitments from our partners in key areas - for instance, to improve governance, increase investment in economic infrastructure, alleviate poverty, and achieve better outcomes in health and education.

The agreements underpin the on-going relationships between our countries and our shared objectives for the future.

Pacific Islands Forum

One of the highlights in our new relationship with the nations of the Pacific was Australia's hosting, in Cairns in August, the 40th meeting of leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum countries.

It was a historic and highly successful meeting, occurring at a critical moment in history, amid the global financial crisis and in the lead up to crucial global climate change negotiations.

All Forum countries, with the exception of Fiji, were represented and leaders shared a vision and a clear sense of purpose about what they wanted to achieve.

There were significant outcomes from the Cairns Forum, including leaders agreement to launch negotiations on PACER Plus, a new regional trade and economic agreement.

Leaders also agreed the Cairns Compact on Development Coordination to improve the efficiency of development coordination, and issued a call to Action on climate change, spelling out to global leaders the seriousness of the climate change threat in the Pacific.

The Forum provided a unique opportunity for leaders of Forum nations to restate their priorities and aspirations to a range of crucial development partners, including the World Bank, IMF, the United Nations, Asian Development Bank and the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Australia is now determined to use our term as PIF chair to shine more light on the challenges the Pacific faces.

As part of this, PM Rudd has pledged to represent regional interests in international fora. He did so at last month's G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, and will also do so at next month's climate change negotiations in Copenhagen.

Our focus is also to do all we can to ensure that the agreements concluded at the Forum are translated to progress on the ground.

Challenges

This audience is very familiar with the many and varied challenges facing Pacific nations.

Difficulties range from environmental degradation, food and energy security, the impact of globalisation, threats to security, law and order, and democracy and, as we have seen, external economic shocks.

At the heart of these challenges is the need to improve the quality of life for Pacific islands, and to protect and safeguard their environment.

We need to keep at the forefront of our mind that 2.7 million people in the Pacific are living in poverty and do not have the income to satisfy basic human needs.

About 700,000 children in the region do not finish primary school. Out of every 1000 children born, approximately 40 die before the age of five.

Compared with a maternal death rate of just 4 in every 100,000 here in Australia, the rate in PNG is some 733 maternal deaths per 100 000 live births.

It is clear that we need to get back on track to try to meet the Millennium Development Goals in our region, recognising that these are potentially life-saving changes for so many.

The recently released Pacific Economic Survey, 2009: Engaging with the World, shows that while some countries have made significant progress towards meeting their Millennium Development Goals, others have fallen behind.

The current global financial crisis has exacerbated the difficulties.

Small economies are more vulnerable to economic shocks, whether they be higher food and energy costs, or rapidly declining commodity prices.

The Pacific Economic Survey notes that this recession has hurt trade, tourism and remittances in Pacific nations and this will have risks for economic growth, and, therefore, the ability to do more on the MDG challenges.

The theme of the Cairns Forum was building economic resilience.

While the global economic crisis has undoubtedly hurt, it is clear that in a number of countries, particularly smaller islands states with little access to resources outside of their own human resources, are now worse off than a decade ago.

The Pacific Economic Survey notes that creative policies in labour, trade and energy management will enable the region to build greater economic resilience.

And at the Cairns Forum, leaders resolved to tackle the issue of strengthening economic resilience by taking concrete steps in priority areas.

One clear example of this was the leaders resolve to maximise returns from fisheries, while protecting these resources and ensuring their long-term sustainability.

Such approaches are fundamental to the well-being and stability of the Pacific region, and to the economic resilience of the region, while also good business.

The Pacific is home to the world's largest remaining sustainable tuna population - more than half the global tuna catch, with a value of US$4.88 billion, per annum.

The overfishing of key tuna stocks, largely by distant nations, is threatening the sustainability of the region's fish stocks, and poses a significant challenge to global and regional food security and the ability to the PICs to develop domestic fishing industries.

It is vital that this resource is preserved and effectively managed for the benefit of the region.

Forum Leaders agreed in Cairns to drive development of stronger mechanisms to protect regional fisheries, including through new agreements on fisheries enforcement.

To pursue this, Australia intends to host a meeting early next year of Pacific Island Forum Ministers responsible for both fisheries and law enforcement and justice.

Building economic resilience will also come through engaging with the world, particularly in the crucial area of trade and investment.

At the Cairns Forum leaders took the historic step of agreeing to commence negotiations on a new regional trade and economic agreement, called PACER-Plus.

Agreement on PACER Plus offers tremendous opportunities for building a prosperous, stable and sustainable Pacific.

Forum countries have, for decades, pursued greater economic integration as a means of creating jobs, raising their standards of living, and contributing to sustainable economic growth.

Forum Trade Ministers' will meet in Brisbane this week to consider the next steps in the process, including determining the scope and timelines for the negotiations.

The PACER Plus negotiations will have a strong development focus. In fact, Australia's primary motivation for negotiating PACER Plus is to help provide a platform for sustainable economic growth in the Pacific. PACER Plus represents the next step in helping create jobs, enhance private sector growth, raise standards of living, and boost long-term economic growth in the region.

Economic history shows that countries perform better when they engage with the world, not turn away from it.

As well as building economic resilience, progress towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals will also come through improved governance.

The Pacific Economic Survey cites evidence that a 10 per cent increase in government effectiveness in each of the 14 Pacific island countries in 2008 alone would have resulted in around 1870 fewer children dying before their fifth birthday.

Priority is being given to strengthening accountability and integrity institutions, tackling corruption and improving record keeping and data collection, but also to development coordination.

We need to ensure that every dollar in development funding for the Pacific is used in the most effective and efficient way, and in the way that will make the best possible progress towards the MDG goals.

This was the reason Forum Leaders forged a new development compact - the Cairns Compact on Strengthening Development Coordination in the Pacific.

It is vital that we ensure that donors are working effectively to coordinate aid inflows to avoid overstretching small island countries.

The second aspect of the Cairns Compact on Development Coordination is to call on donors and recipients to work together on the basis of agreed national plans of economic development to ensure that we are focusing on the specific challenges for each nation.

The new Compact is based on principles including:

• the need for broad-based, private sector-led growth;
• the essential role of improved governance and service delivery; and
• the role that greater investment in infrastructure plays in underpinning economic development.

In my travels around the region it is very clear that there remains an imbalance between the public and private sector. As I and many of my colleagues have stated on numerous occasions - no country has ever improved the standard of living for its citizens without a vibrant and growing private sector. Not only is the private sector an important source of tax revenue for government, it is also the main driver of sustainable employment in an economy, and an important supplier of talent and skills into both the public and civil society sectors.

Private sector development and growth in the Pacific will help to build greater demand for quality education and health as well as improved governance. For the private sector to flourish in the Pacific with the tyranny of distance, and challenging topographies that exist, transaction costs and the general costs of doing business must be reduced.

Land reform remains one of the most contentious and vexed issues for the Pacific, particularly given the history of colonisation and decolonisation. It is however also a key public policy challenge that the Pacific as a region must face in coming years. Land reform will be a pre-cursor to greater private sector development and economic growth opportunities.

Australia contributed to the regional discussion on this issue through AusAID's Making Land Work publications that Bob McMullan and I launched in Vanuatu last year.

I understand from recent discussions with the UPNG that land reform and the challenges of managing the balance between customary tenure rights and development will be the topic of the next Waigani Seminar. I encourage our leaders and other interlocutors to engage further in this important public policy discussion.

In terms of other challenges, climate change ranks among the biggest and highest priorities for the Pacific region.

Pacific island countries have contributed little to the causes of climate change, but are among the most vulnerable to its effects.

In the Pacific, climate change threatens not only livelihoods and living standards, but the very viability of some communities.

Without effective global action, climate change will cause damage to coastal systems, settlements and infrastructure; undermine economic progress; exacerbate existing water and food security challenges; increase threats to human health; and degrade regional biodiversity.

The Call to Action on Climate Change, issued by Forum Leaders in Cairns, urges a global response to climate change.

It sends a clear message to world leaders of the need for higher levels of ambition and renewed mandates in order to secure a successful agreement in Copenhagen - one that sets the world on a path to limit the increase in global average temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius or less.

Australia has released a new policy document Engaging our Pacific Neighbours on Climate Change, Australia's approach.

This policy will guide Australia's engagement with the Pacific on climate change to 2015, drawing together our efforts on mitigation and adaptation and collaborating with our Pacific partners nationally, regionally and internationally.

Australia has listened to Pacific Island countries and part of our approach will be for Australia to be a conduit for Pacific voices in international fora on climate change.

We will also support practical adaptation activities to increase resilience and reduce vulnerability.

We want to assist our region and its governments to build their institutional arrangements and skills on climate change development policy.

Alongside the launch of the Pacific climate change policy, Australia announced the allocation of a further $50 million from our International Climate Change Adaptation Initiative to meet high priority, practical adaptation programs in Pacific island countries.

Energy security is another important challenge facing Pacific nations, and some countries are already moving in this area.

Tonga's renewable energy legislation, for example, will give the country more options for long-term energy solutions.

Samoa's innovative oil purchasing strategy gives it the cheapest oil in the Pacific.

Australia will use our time as Forum chair to learn from these initiatives and will convene a meeting with key Forum agencies and development partners to look at ways to improve access to clean and affordable energy in the region.

We will also discuss how best to deliver Australia's commitment to provide $25 million over four years for clean energy initiatives in the region.

One area where I have been particularly engaged on, as Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs, is on raising awareness of the need to combat gender-based violence in the Pacific.

Violence against women is a violation of human rights; it seriously undermines women's health and welfare, and the welfare of their communities. It is also an economic and opportunity cost to the region.

It restricts women's participation in political, social and economic life, and puts additional pressures on social services, policing and other legal systems.

It is a constraint on development that is pervasive across the Pacific.

The Pacific Forum Regional Security Committee discussed this issue at its July meeting.

And at the Cairns Forum meeting, Leaders addressed the issue for the first time, committing to eradicate sexual and gender-based violence in the region, and to ensure that all individuals have equal protection of the law and equal access to justice.

To do this they will raise awareness of the seriousness of the issue and pursue increased Pacific engagement in relevant global initiatives aimed at preventing and eliminating violence against women.

This is of course not just an issue for the Pacific, our Prime Minister has committed to reducing violence against women in Australia, as well as contributing to international efforts to end violence against women.

In the Pacific the Australian Government is supporting activities that contribute to the goal of dealing with the tragedy of gender- based violence.

In August, the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for the Status of Women launched the report "Stop Violence: Responding to violence against women in Melanesia and East Timor".

The report sets out the Australian Government's priorities and actions in responding to violence against women in Melanesia and East Timor.

For example, in Papua New Guinea, the Australian Law and Justice Partnership is working to strengthen the courts to better assist victims of violence access justice.

Through AusAID, we are supporting the Fiji Women's Crisis Centre and the Vanuatu Women's Centre to meet the needs of survivors of violence and to advocate for women's rights in their countries.

Reducing violence is crucial for the full participation of women in their communities and for the achievement of the full range of Millennium Development Goals.

Australia will use opportunities throughout our term as Forum Chair to discuss the issue with partner governments and other key agencies such as UNIFEM Pacific and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.

Leaders in Cairns also agreed to focus on conflict prevention and peace-building, strengthening cooperation to address terrorism and transnational crime, and consolidating regional stability.

It is true to say that peace, stability and security are fundamental pre-cursors and pillars to economic growth and development alongside strong and effective governance.

RAMSI - the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands has been an outstanding example of effective regionalism in the security context.

The mission arrived in the Solomon Islands in July 2003, following an invitation by the Solomon Islands Parliament to help restore law and order after five years of armed crisis.

Since RAMSI's deployment, much has been achieved, particularly in the areas of law and justice, economic governance and machinery of government.

RAMSI's success and strength lies in its regional character - Pacific island countries working together to assist a close neighbour and friend, and the contributions of Pacific island countries are highly valued.

Despite the success of this mission, we need to remember that the conditions that led to the RAMSI deployment must not be allowed to erupt again.

This is the why Australia must continue to assist the Pacific and do all we can to drive better outcomes and long-term prosperity in our region.

It is why we remain so deeply concerned about the situation in Fiji - a significant challenge facing the Pacific region.

Sadly, little has changed since I spoke to you in August, on Fiji, in the context of the Fiji Parliamentary Update.

Last month, the Commonwealth suspended Fiji after the regime of Commodore Bainimarama failed to commit to genuine political dialogue leading quickly to democratic elections.

The people of Fiji continue to suffer significant hardship as a direct-result of the Bainimarama-led coup. If anything, life is getting harder.

To try to alleviate the humanitarian impacts of the coup and the global recession, Australia has increased its development assistance to Fiji, with bilateral assistance estimated at $35million for 2009-2010.

We, along with our Forum partners, and the international community, stand ready to support a genuine, inclusive, time-bound, and independent process to foster a political dialogue within Fiji toward the return to democracy.

As I said in August, Australia has deep links with Fiji, forged over more than a century. We care what happens to the people of Fiji.

We want them to again be in a position where they can choose their own future, free of fear and intimidation.

For this reason Australia continues to call on the regime to take concrete steps to return Fiji to democracy and the rule of law.

Ladies and gentlemen.

We have a moral imperative to help our Pacific neighbours address the challenges that I have outlined and to try and bring about better outcomes for our region.

Australia is using our term as Pacific Islands Forum chair to take a leading role in making progress on key challenges for the region - both through engagement within the region and internationally.

Our agenda is broad, our commitment strong, and our ambition great.

We have had some successes. But we know there's much more work to do.

I thank you for your interest and involvement in Pacific issues, and for your support throughout my time as Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs.

While my involvement will be less frontline, from now on, I will be closely following our progress.

Thank you.

Media inquiries: Mr Kerr's office - 02 6277 4991