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HORRORS OF OZ migration policy; CELLULAR jinx; GORE'S gaffe
Oz migration policy: Of all the horror stories one has heard about the Australian migration policy, this one takes the cake for being the most repugnant, or even offensive. The applicant holds two university degrees, an undergraduate and masters, had served as chief legal adviser in an island government and for more than half a decade led quite remarkably, it must be added, a regional inter-governmental agency in the Pacific.
Yet when the applicant submitted an application to settle in the Land Down Under, a migration officer assessed the applicant’s application as being 10 points short of the required mark. To add salt to the injury, the applicant, despite his impressive qualifications and experience as a regional technocrat in a highly specialised field, was ordered to undergo an English proficiency test!
It’s about time the islands demand the region’s big brother to either walk the talk or ship out!
PACER’s chief negotiator: Call it trying to rein in the horse after it has bolted. But it was a headache nevertheless when trade ministers met in the quaint sea-side town of Port Vila recently.
The issue? How to make the about to be advertised position of chief negotiator for PACER independent, in the true sense of the word. PACER, of course, refers to the trade pact that is supposed to promote closer trade relations between the islands and Australia and New Zealand. Secrecy and confidentiality being crucial to any negotiation, the worry for the trade ministers is the possible location of the new negotiator.
Planting him or her at the Suva headquarters of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat may not be a wise move. The feeling being that all their trade tactics and moves will be easily read by Kiwi and Aussie spies. The meeting by the way didn’t specify who those spies are!
So what say you, Tavola? Some in the region are beginning to ask the same question after his foreign ministry reportedly snubbed the regional university’s crash course on diplomacy under the tutelage of an equally qualified and highly talented senior diplomat of PNG.
Three positions offered to Fiji’s foreign affairs ministry were left unfilled as the ministry’s diplomats felt there were more pressing concerns to be attended to, instead of attending classes on the Doha Rounds, Cotonou, GATT, EPA, WTO and many others. The last whisper was that the Fiji ministry is organising its own in-house diplomacy training, and instead of using home-grown talent as tutors, Suva has instead looked to an Australian National University diplomacy expert to teach them the rope.
New technologies: Telcos in the region are already hard done by the changing new technologies in the telecommunications industry—where things like VoIP and Skype are forcing them to upgrade to new technologies or face a bleak future keeping a network that suppliers do not support anymore. Imagine the despair from one such telco that buys its billing system from a New Zealand company when it spent tons of money upgrading its system early this year only to be notified by the New Zealand company that this particular billing system will come to an end next March. It is understood a few other telcos in the Pacific use the same billing system.
Double standards: From the do what I say, not what I do department: Cook Islands businessman/parliamentarian Junior Maoate helped organise a petition. This, amongst other things, raised fears about the many Fijians working in the Cooks getting into business there and putting locals out of business.
Maoate and his mates on the tourism island of Aitutaki sought—and got—the Island Council’s support to restrict “outsiders” and “foreigners” trying to set up businesses in competition with them. Local newspaper, the Cook Islands Herald, pointed out that Maoate was actually a prominent employer of Fijians himself, bringing them to the Cooks to man fishing boats.
Aviation hitch: Could there be some heads rolling after the inaugural flight of the Solomon Airlines’ new plane last month? Invited guests were not thrilled with how they were being accommodated when its leased B737-300 plane made its inaugural flight to its new destination—Espiritu Santo, also known as Santo, in Vanuatu.
One senior airline board member was so disgusted when he returned to Honiara that he was reported to be calling for an investigation. The plane is on a six-month wet lease from a Spanish outfit which operates a charter service.
Whispers understands the plane is being leased for 4000 dollars an hour and will be flying at least 100 hours a month. As part of the deal, a Spanish crew is manning the plane for the next three months before they hand over to a local crew.
A list of who’s who in the Solomons made that inaugural flight, but with one obvious omission—the boss of the Solomon Islands Visitors Bureau. Whispers gathered he was not on the invited list. Whispers also understands the bureau chief has also been dumped from the airline’s board without an explanation. Over the years, the SIVB chief had a place on the airline’s board.
On the firing line? Could a regional airline boss be seeing out his last days? Whispers has been reliably told that some people in power in the country’s government want the airline CEO removed. In fact, the move, understood to be led by a very senior minister, was discussed in cabinet, but timely intervention by the airline’s board saved the day for the airline chief.
RAMSI rules: Remember the book Animal Farm by George Orwell, where all pigs are equal but some are more equal than others? Well, that’s how the Fijian troops serving with RAMSI felt after their request to stay out a bit longer during Fiji’s independence celebrations in Honiara last October was declined.
Like disciplined and well-drilled officers, they turned up at their camp at 9pm as required, but only to find some Australian officers going out of camp for a night out in town. As part of the regulations, officers serving with RAMSI are all supposed to be in camp by 9pm.
Police connections: By the way, Whispers has been reliably told that Solomons’ police chief Shane Castle’s better half is also working in the police force in Honiara as an advisor. Interesting to see who she is advising there! The local deputy police chief perhaps?
Damning report? So where is the F$16,000 report by Colonel Ian Thorpe on the Fiji Military Forces’ regimental funds? Whispers has been told that there is only one copy of the report floating around and that the home affairs minister at the time had to shelve the report because as Whispers was told “it was damning to the chiefs”. Interesting to see which chiefs are being implicated in the report. It would also be interesting to learn who has the copy of the report.
Whinge rubbished: Someone at the regional organisation in that wooded part of the hill in Suva will be killing himself or herself for writing that whining letter to the big boss, only to receive no response as a mere courtesy. Well to be fair, the boss just couldn’t respond because the whinger didn’t leave a return address, let alone a name.
All these whining about the small boss sending a friend on long term leave, unheard of in the history of the regional body, and the promotion of a certain island nation Mafia, in that if you are from that nation, you can work on for more than six years.
But if you happen to be from another nation, you simply serve your time and off you go home. These and other allegations raised by the whinger have by the way been rubbished as nonsense and frivolous by the small boss.
But one regional commentator had a word of advise for the small boss: “Don’t rubbish the letter, take the criticisms onboard, otherwise it might come back to haunt you.”
A military promotion? Is Frank Bainimarama getting a promotion soon? Whispers has been told that Bainimarama had written to the home affairs ministry on the eve of the Pacific Armies Management seminar in Nadi last October requesting a promotion to Rear Admiral, which is equivalent to Major-General. But this was declined by the ministry, Whispers understands. Only two in Fiji have that rank—former prime minister Sitiveni Rabuka and home affairs state minister George Konrote. But don’t you need to have a fleet of more than two boats to deserve that rank?
Diplomatic harassment: A largely unreported twist to the Julian Moti saga has been the verbal harassment of Solomon Islands diplomats in Canberra. Ever since the news of the expulsion of Alexander Downer’s top man in Honiara hit the headlines, the skeletal staff at the small chancery had to put up with anonymous phone calls where they’ve been called everything under the sun, a few of them very racist in nature. Alas, Patterson Oti’s boys had to take all these in their stride as the Australian Federal Police were least interested in their plight.
Cellular jinx? A telecom watcher says Digicel’s entry into the Pacific has been curiously ominous. Though its launch in Samoa has gone smoothly so far, whichever markets it is eyeing after that flagship launch in the Pacific islands region is in some sort of trouble.
It got a trial licence in the Solomons but perception of the country’s stability has fallen. Ditto for PNG with its ongoing spat with Australia. In Fiji, its plans are hanging fire because of a number of complex factors—some of course political.
And its rumoured plans for taking over the King’s mobile network in Tonga are obviously in limbo, things being what they are in the kingdom. Outside the region, the company is also believed to be making a foray into the fiercely competitive United States mobile market.
Gore’s gaffe: Former United States Vice-president Al Gore’s much-acclaimed,US$236 million grossing documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ has come in for criticism from a New Zealand-based scientific group.
The film that poignantly makes a case for reducing greenhouse gases to stop and if possible reverse global warming says in one place that Pacific islanders have been evacuated to New Zealand because their islands are drowning!
Now that’s an inconvenient untruth for Al Gore. May be the US really needs Kiwi eyes to study the islands.
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