Celebrating culture, music, arts, life

Samisoni Pareti
Before the year ends, the relatively silent P in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s television service for the Asia-Pacific region should pick up a lot more noise.

That is the promise of ABC International director Murray Green who in late July and early August led a promotional ABC team through six islands countries.

“Our intention is to increase our engagement with the Pacific because we believe the strength of the Pacific comes from more dialogue and interaction, and recognising our diverse and rich cultures,” Green told journalists at a press conference in Suva.

“By October or November this year, we will launch a weekly magazine show on the Pacific which we are calling Pacific Pulse.

“It will look at the region’s pop culture, music, arts, fashion and people who are making a difference in Pacific society.”

Pacific Pulse will be aired on ABC’s international service, Australian Network, beamed via satellite to 40 countries across Asia and the Pacific.

ABC estimates that this service is viewed in 20 million homes and in more than 200,000 hotel rooms.

It will be in many ways run along the same line as its successful and widely listened Pacific Beat programme currently heard on the ABC’s international radio service, Radio Australia.

On their recent Pacific sweep, Green was accompanied by the hosts of Pacific Pulse; Tanya Nugent and Clement Paligaru.

Both share the Pacific as their place of birth with Nugent growing up in Port Moresby whilst it was Suva for Paligaru.

Nugent currently hosts the TV educational show Nexus on Australian Network and Paligaru is co-host of Radio Australia’s magazine show In the Loop.

“When I left EMTV in Papua New Guinea to work in Australia, it was never my intention to stay away as long as I did,” said Nugent.

“At the back of my mind, I had always harboured the wish of wanting to do something about the Pacific.

“Now with Pacific Pulse, I will be a little step closer towards that goal.”

For Paligaru, the recent trip through the Pacific that ended with the Pacific Arts Festival in American Samoa last month was another trip down memory lane.

Pacific Pulse to him is another journey from the one he started as a little elementary student at Stella Maris on Suva’s waterfront.

“Clement took us to his school the other day and showed us the huge raintree he had planted in the school yard,” said Green.

“That tree to me sums up in a symbolic way our intention to re-engage with a region that we all care about.”
Added Paligaru: “This trip has been a huge one for me.

“It has been goose bumps all the way.

“I also know that Pacific Pulse brings with it a lot more responsibility in that we will now carry everyone’s stories with us.”

So what kind of stories do viewers expect to see on Pacific Pulse?

In Papua New Guinea, Nugent was interested in land reforms in her mother’s province of Morobe whilst she looked up bilum meri in Goroka.

“The bilum is an iconic symbol of Papua New Guinea,” Nugent wrote on their Pacific tour blog, adding; “The latest and most dynamic of my “bilum friends” is Florence Jaukae, known around her home town in Goroka in the Eastern Highlands as bilum meri, bilum lady.

“Florence is the creator of the bilum dress—a dress that’s shaped using this unique weave.”

Watching Solomon Islands’ national beach soccer team, the Bilikikis practising for the Beach Soccer World Cup in France got Paligaru all worked up during their stop in Honiara.

Their next stop in Port Vila offered him the opportunity to look up a long lost family member.

“He was walking across the road with that confident swagger, characteristic of the men in my mum’s family,” Paligaru wrote on his travel blog.

“And there was that gritty charm that you could just see hiding behind his restrained smile.”

The Fiji stop created a story of its own when the military-led regime objected initially to the ABC team’s visit.

The misunderstanding was quickly resolved and the team was allowed in when Green telephoned the deputy secretary in the department of information and military official spokesperson Major Neumi Leweni.

For veteran and well respected Pacific correspondent for ABC, Sean Dorney, Pacific Pulse will be another welcomed forum to showcase stories about the Pacific.

“I see my role as providing the Pacific perspectives to the kind of stories we broadcast on television,” said Dorney.

“Not only in the people-type stories, but also in the so-called serious stories and it won’t be all doom and gloom.

“For example on this tour, I have covered two of the world’s smallest stock exchanges located in Port Moresby and in Suva.”