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Fiji unsafe for Aussie cops; 7 vie for FFA top job; Kiwis spy on islands; Fiji police chief impresses...
Fiji unsafe for cops: The South Pacific's top cops, among them cops from New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong and, oh, er, yes, Australia, were to pow-wow at a luxury resort hotel in Fiji from May 22 to 26. Now they will meet in Melbourne, the organised crime and murder capital of Australia. Officially, the reason for the move is that the Australians wanted to stay in Australia for security reasons to do with terrorism and ongoing investigations and trials. Nadi is four hours from Sydney by daily jet. This is the age of mobile phones and roaming services to keep Australians in instant contact with home, even from inside a foreign jail. A source close to a source insists the real reason for the shift is that the Australians were nervous about their security and army games in Fiji.
FFA's top job: Who's vying for the top fisheries job? Well, seven applications have been received for the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency's (FFA) top job when applications closed on January 25. Of the seven, three are from Melanesia, one from Polynesia, two from Micronesia and one from Australia. There's been a quiet push from within FFA in Honiara for the Australian candidate to takeover from Tuvalu's Feleti Teo, whose term expires in November. By the way, all applications have been endorsed by their various governments and Teo's successful replacement should take up duties by November 26, 2006. Apart from other perks, the job attracts a salary of between US$63,000-US$95,000 per year.
Kiwis spy on islands: As they natter on their telephone, fixed line or mobile, despatch and receive their emails or engage in other means of electronic intercourse, Pacific Islanders, even prime ministers, crooks and army chiefs should always remember that they are being spied on by New Zealand.
A book published some years ago exposed New Zealand's ability to eavesdrop on its Pacific Islands mates with an elaborate electronic spy network, run as secretly as possible at a location we've forgotten.
The outfit is part of a spy network for spying on their mates, as well as their enemies, run by the Yanks, Australians and Poms. What it picks up is why New Zealand claims to know the Pacific best.
More details about it leaked out from New Zealand's spy service's 1985-86 report found amongst the papers of the late former New Zealand Prime Minister, David Lange.
The report revealed that the Kiwis spy on UN diplomatic communications and various friendly countries, including Japan and PICs. This aroused claims that New Zealand's spies put American and British interests ahead of New Zealand's.
The Kiwi spy chief, Warren Tucker, subsequently spluttered that in 29 years with the spy business he was unaware of any circumstances in which American and British interests had been put first. But the spy game being what it is, would he be sure of knowing if they were?
So, PICs, remember: Next time you phone, email or text a message to someone you wouldn't want a wife to know about, remember-a sneaky Kiwi could be sharing the content.
Peters' low-key affair: New Zealand's foreign minister Winston Peters' visit to Fiji was low-key. In fact, we're told he wanted it that the way. Even in New Zealand, his Pacific visit was kept under wraps until just a few days beforehand with very few details about his visit released. Only two media organisations accompanied the minister, the Herald and the Auckland-based Hindi station Radio Tarana. A Kiwi scribe who accompanied the foreign minister said he did not want a big media entourage because they'd be asking a lot of tough questions like the “cost of his accommodation and how many beers he'd been consuming”.
Colonial relic: A relic of their colonial past retained by some of the Pacific relics of Britain's past is the Brit's honours system. In Tuvalu, the Solomons and Papua New Guinea, the pollies still load themselves up with British honours, topped off by a knighthood.
Fiji did so until Mr Rabuka turned it into a semi-republic in 1987. That very bitterly disappointed numerous people who were hankering to be a 'Sir' for services rendered over or under the table. As in Britain, many a shiny bauble was dished out for rubber stamping by Buckingham Palace as a plain old bribe. One chap recently related that he'd been offered one by a Pacific dominion government for over the table services rendered. He declined because he was disgusted by the number of honours that had simply been bought. In Fiji, the year began with a giant hoot when Government House failed to receive from the local honours committee a list of recommendations for the New Year's honours list.
Whether the committee just forgot to do one or lost it, or decided that no one was worthy of joining the Order of Fiji, is not clear. But then nowadays in Fiji, what is?
Shipping blessing? The Vanuatu shipping fleet in November was blessed (maybe temporarily) by the arrival of two ships, the Southern Star and Northern Star, presented by China. They supposedly are meant to be run on supposedly unprofitable outer island routes. One of the first jobs for the Southern Star was to carry supplies to Ambae island after a volcanic eruption there. It broke down before it could do the job; the breakdown was described as being “minor. At the end of January, the government still hadn't decided how to actually use the ships. On Christmas Day, however, the Northern Star was seen being used illegally as a party yacht by a “politically connected family”. It carried nearly twice the number of people allowed by its licence and didn't carry a qualified captain or engineer.
Hughes impresses: A note from a Port Moresby resident: “I hear from usually reliable sources that some areas of the RFMF are so impressed with what Andrew Hughes has achieved in the Fiji Police that they would like an Australian to command the RFMF. I hear Hughes has stopped kava drinking at police stations and introduced a Wednesday keep-fit programme in the police. Just imagine that in the PNG Constabulary. It would mean no buai (betel nut) in the stations and in cars, and many of the fat constables would end up at the funeral home.
“There's scope for similar reforms in the PNG Constabulary in my view. It's hard to imagine PNG Police Force without the dirty, filthy mess of betel nut chewing evident in stations, police cars and outside the stations and on their uniforms.”
Scam investments: Notices in which Papua New Guinea's central bank begs Papua New Guineans not to entrust their savings to the proprietors of the scam “investment” and savings schemes that abound in the country are on prominent display in Port Moresby and elsewhere. The bank names about a dozen scam outfits as being scam outfits. Two named are Money Rain (doesn't a name like that ring a warning bell) and the most notorious of all, U-Vistract, whose crook proprietor has done the rounds in the Solomons and Fiji and is now busy milking naïve Bougainvilleans. A Port Moresby accountant reckons that Money Rain and U-Vistract have defrauded people for a total of around 500 million Kina. Really? About US$185 million? Yes. Man, that can't be true. Well, that's an accountant's estimate. Also the money was extracted from not just little people, but from all sorts of money outfits managed by people who should have known better.
Cheaper by the dozen: Pitoitua Maeli is an American Samoan bloke with a lot of time to spare. He's had his jail sentence for bashing up a taxi driver extended to 40 years without parole for killing a fellow convict and attacking another.
Murder comes cheaper in Fiji where 'life' usually means about 12 or so years, although in February, a judge set a 15-year jail term for a husband convicted of rather nastily killing his wife. Overthrowing a government in circumstances in which about 20 people were killed, hundreds injured, thousands lost their jobs and economic loss runs into hundreds of millions comes even cheaper as the piddling sentences handed out to coup plotters demonstrate and very cheaply indeed if a sympathetic government can make an excuse for springing one from jail after a few weeks or months.
Love, hate in PNG: A court has ordered a cabinet minister and his alleged girlfriend to appear before it in response to a compensation claim by the woman's husband. The husband wants US$300 from the minister-only US$300--as compensation for allegedly dallying with his wife and an order to restrain the pair from seeing each other. The plaintiff said he got on fine with his wife until, alas, she got a job with the minister.
El cheapo Virgin Blue: Virgin Blue is trumpeting that it's again been voted by the readers of some travel magazines as the world's best el cheapo airline out of more than 100 el cheapo rivals. Any opinions about Pacific Blue and Polynesian Blue?
Cops armed? Some of American Samoa's residents are flinching from a demand by their police chief that his prowling cops should be armed, ready to shoot on sight.
They reckon it would be just a matter of time before some hapless innocent people would be gunned down by some trigger-happy constable. Fiji's police have just taken delivery of 25 pistols, to be used only in moments of extraordinary emergencies that are designed to hurt rather than kill. Still, a bullet in the brain is a bullet in the brain.
When next in Port Moresby take a peep inside a police patrol car and be staggered by the amount of high powered weaponry lying heaped on the floor. It's often enough to fight a small war with.
Nightclubs or brothels: In Papua New Guinea, a parliamentary inquiry into the entertainment industry has been informed that there were 53 sites “where sex takes place”. Whether throughout PNG or just Port Moresby is not known to us.
As reported by the PNG Post Courier, the inquiry's purpose is to decide “the extent of nightclub entertainment in the context of existing laws and whether or not PNG was prepared to accept nightclub entertainment.” Does that mean deciding whether “nightclubs” should be run as brothels?
Uni of the Sick Pacific: Ouch! Counting up the woes of rather a lot of the Pacific's islet states, a commentator wondered whether the University of the South Pacific should be renamed the University of the Sick Pacific.
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