Australia

CANBERRA, Australia --- Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has endorsed gay marriage, changing his position on the issue.

CANBERRA, Australia (SMH) ---- A Japanese whaling fleet ship is again being warned out of Australian waters, aggravating a diplomatic dispute with Tokyo.

CANBERRA, Australia (THE NATIONAL TIMES) --- Australian former foreign minister Alexander Downer has rejected speculation he will seek to fill the vacancy created by South Australian opposition leader Isobel Redmond's resignation.

SUVA, Fiji (USP) -- A special function to mark the one-year partnership extension for the year 2013 between the University of the South Pacific and Australia was held on 30 January.

CANBERRA, Australia --- Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard says she wants to modernise Australia's relationship with Papua New Guinea during a visit to Port Moresby.

CANBERAA, Australia --- Australian Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop says Labor hasn't focused as much on Papua New Guinea as it should have.

CAIRNS, Australia --An alleged crime boss wanted in Papua New Guinea over the theft of AUD$30 million has used a 457 visa issued by the Australian government to avoid arrest and prosecution.

CANBERRA, Australia --- The federal government has transferred more Vietnamese asylum seekers to its detention centre on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island.

SYDNEY, Australia ---- The 2013 Defence White Paper, which defines the Australian government’s strategic military orientation, codifies its unconditional support for the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia. The document asserts that “the relationship between the United States and China will determine the outlook for our region”, over the coming decades, ...

CANBERRA, Australia --- Australia's Foreign Minister Bob Carr says Fiji is "diminished" by its refusal to accept Australia's new diplomatic envoy.

MELBOURNE, Australia --- Fiji's travel restrictions have led to a delay in the sitting of Tuvalu's Supreme Court.

MELBOURNE, Australia ----- While Australian and US officials are still given the South Pacific's floral welcomes, it's clear that China is now the region's most valued guest, writes Michael Brissenden.

CANBERRA, Australia --- The Australian budget makes cuts to spending in the Department of Foreign Affairs.

MELBOURNE, Australia ---- Aid organisations working in the Pacific have expressed disappointment with Australia's aid commitment in its budget.

CANBERRA, Australia --- Australia and the United States should cooperate with China in areas that support Pacific Island priorities rather than building any new security or diplomatic arrangements designed to compete with it, a new study from the Lowy Institute for International Policy said Thursday.

CANBERRA, Australia --Australia's Foreign Minister Bob Carr has used his special powers to cancel the 457 visa issued by the Gillard government to an alleged crime boss wanted in Papua New Guinea over the theft of $30 million.

TASMANIA, Australia (RADIO AUSTRALIA) --- A new study by Australia's peak scientific body the CSIRO shows that fish around the world are shrinking in size.

SYDNEY, Australia (AAP) - Australia will lose its political and strategic influence in Fiji if it doesn't restore good relations as soon as possible, the Pacific nation's former prime minister says.

CANBERRA, Australia--- Australian Greens Senator Sarah Hanson Young says the Australian government must not use Nauru’s political situation as an excuse for delaying the processing of asylum seekers there.

CANBERRA, Australia --- Fiji government is making some progress in its efforts to restore democracy, says Australian Foreign Minister Senator Bob Carr.

BRISBANE, Australia --- Tuna are vital to the ecology and economy of the Pacific, and maintaining their stocks at a sustainable level exercises the minds of thousands of scientists, bureaucrats, fishers, consumers and conservationists. But just how do you go about counting such a wide-ranging fish?

CANBERRA, Australia ---- Australia’s summer may have been the hottest on record but it's the long-term trends that matter, not figures for one season, the country's opposition environment spokesman has said.

CANBERRA, Australia ---- The Australian federal government’s top legal adviser has told Australian Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs she cannot visit Nauru and Manus Island to assess and act on complaints from asylum seekers about conditions on the islands.

SUVA, Fiji ----- The Fijian Government says it has not decided on the date of the arrival of Australia’s top diplomat to be based in Suva.

SYDNEY, Australia --- A leading Papua New Guinea judge says Australia could help PNG stop the sorcery-related torture and killing of women.

SYDNEY, Australia ---- There's a common view around, even in Australia where after all these years people really should know better, that mining is merely about digging stuff up and shipping it to eager buyers.

MELBOURNE, Australia --- A global campaign is underway to persuade former British colonies to scrap any remaining laws making homosexuality illegal.

CANBERRA, Australia ----The Australian Greens say Australia should join the United Nations and New Zealand in taking a stronger stand on the beating and torture of prisoners in Fiji.

BEIJING, China ---- Prime Minister Julia Gillard has personally driven negotiations to secure an unprecedented agreement with China to hold an annual round of formal leaders discussions.

CANBERRA, Australia ----- An Australian immigration inquiry has found that 18 criminals from Tonga have fraudulently obtained Australian visas.

BRISBANE, Australia, ---- A man who led a playboy lifestyle while claiming to be a Tahitian prince was jailed Tuesday for 14 years for stealing AUD$16 million (nearly €13 million) from an Australian health department.

SYDNEY, Australia ---- An interesting comment has appeared from the BBC concerning this week’s failed leadership challenge against Australian Prime Minister Gillard.

CANBERRA, Australia --- Richard Marles says his role as Australia's Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs has been the 'great honour' of his professional life, after resigning from the Australian Government's front bench on Thursday.

MELBOURNE, Australia ---- Twenty people have been arrested and $8.2 million worth of drugs seized in a crackdown on drugs being imported via the international mail system.

SYDNEY, Australia --- The Asian Development Bank says economic growth in the Pacific slowed in 2012 and is expected to slow further in 2013.

MELBOURNE, Australia --- The authorisation has been granted by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) with one condition, related to flights between Australia and New Zealand.

MELBOURNE, Australia ---- Indonesia's experience with moving from dictatorship towards democracy might have useful lessons for Fiji.

SUVA, Fiji ---- The Acting Australian High Commissioner to Fiji, Glenn Miles told a gathering of Australia Award scholars that people to people connection is very important.

SYDNEY, Australia ---- Everyone sitting on an aircraft carrying a passenger infected with measles is at risk of contracting the disease - not just those sitting closest to the carrier, new research shows.

CANBERRA, Australia ---- The Australian Federal Government has flown a group of Vietnamese asylum seekers to Manus Island, declaring the move will act as a warning to others arriving by boat.

SYDNEY, Australia ---- Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Thursday demanded that Fiji's military leader Voreqe Bainimarama keep his pledge to hold free and fair elections next year.

MELBOURNE, Australia --- An Australian expatriate has pleaded guilty to trying to illegally export components used in the manufacture of ammunition into Papua New Guinea.

CANBERRA, Australia --- Australian Government advisor and refugee expert Paris Aristotle says the Manus Island processing centre should be shut down if the recommended safeguards cannot be put in place.

MELBOURNE, Australia --- Big four bank ANZ has this morning pledged to lend AUD$1 billion to new businesses over the next year.

CANBERRA, Australia --- A West Papuan man convicted of killing his de facto wife while on a protection visa has been given another chance to stay in Australia.

WELLINGTON, NZ---More asylum seekers disillusioned with Australia will target New Zealand, experts say, after refugees which landed there claimed they were bound for our shores.

CANBERRA, Australia ---Australia should embrace the Pacific Island nations in a regional economic structure based loosely on the European Union, says former Defence chief Peter Cosgrove.

CANBERRA, Australia --- The Advisory Board of the Australian Government's ten year initiative to improve the conditions of women across the Pacific has held its first meeting in Canberra.

CANBERRA, Australia ---Australia's immigration department says its asylum seeker processing centre on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island is cramped, lacks proper amenities and needs an urgent upgrade.

MELBOURNE, Australia ---- Australian gay couples are planning to cross the Tasman to wed after New Zealand's parliament voted to legalise same-sex marriage.

SHEPPARTON, Australia --- A group of 14 suspected illegal farm workers has been detained after a raid near Shepparton in Victoria.

DARWIN, Australia ---- The United States Ambassador to Australia has greeted the second rotation of Marines that flew into Darwin last night for a six-month deployment.

CANBERRA, Australia --- A doctor who worked at the Manus Island detention centre has said the experience made him ''ashamed to be an Australian''.

MELBOURNE, Australia ---- Australian biosecurity officials say they are closely monitoring a new bird flu outbreak in China, but remain alert and not alarmed.

MELBOURNE, Australia --- A strong magnitude 6.4 earthquake has hit Papua New Guinea on Wednesday, but no tsunami warning has been issued and there have been no immediate reports of damage.

SYDNEY, Australia -- Greenpeace activists have reportedly boarded a coal ship leaving Australia as part of a protest demanding an end to the expansion of coal exports that threaten the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.

BRISBANE, Australia --- An Australian navy commander and his male partner sexually abused four boys on a tiny Pacific Ocean island nation 16 years ago, a court has been told.

SYDNEY, Australia --- An Australian lawyer acting for 10 asylum seekers charged with rioting at the Nauru detention centre has challenged the legality of their detention in the Pacific nation centre.

BRISBANE, Australia --- The last possessions of a fake Tahitian prince jailed for stealing more than $16 million from Queensland Health have gone under the hammer.

MELBOURNE, Australia --- A maritime conservation group is calling on all Pacific countries to ban shark fishing, several days after New Caledonia announced it's outlawing the practice.

MELBOURNE, Australia --- A federal Labor backbencher has broken ranks and called for Australia to boycott the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Sri Lanka later this year.

SYDNEY, Australia --- In September 2012 a 36 year old man from the nation of Kiribati applied for refugee status with the government of New Zealand to avoid being deported after his visa expired. He claimed that he feared for his children’s futures in Kiribati, which is slowly being engulfed ...

MELBOURNE, Australia ---- The Rio-Tinto mine that sparked the civil war on Papua New Guinea's island of Bougainville is economically viable and could be re-opened in as little as 6 years.

SYDNEY, Australian --- Pre-European history could be taught at some Pacific universities for the first time ever if plans devised by local history academics come to pass.

CANBERRA, Australia --- The Australian Government has announced it will provide $US100,000 for the emergency supply of desalination units in Marshall Islands as the country struggles with an ongoing severe drought.

SYDNEY, Australia ---- The Cook Islands Tourism Roadshow showcased a growing destination that is committed to developing opportunities for its “most important market” - Australia.

When the coordinator of Maketi Ples, the annual show of Pacific islands arts and crafts in Sydney, invites me to accompany about a dozen Pacific islands artists to visit the Australian Museum, I’m delighted. Because she tells me the museum has one of the biggest collections of Pacific artifacts—some of ...

A recent doctoral thesis titled “Overseeing and Overlooking: Australian engagement with the Pacific islands 1988-2007” has come in for some media coverage around the wider region. Its author Jonathan Shultz has been critical of the manner in which successive Australian governments have handled the country’s relationship with the region, citing ...

Following the 2007 Australian federal election, the new government moved rapidly to re-invigorate Australia’s engagement with the Pacific islands.

After a few years when Papua New Guinea and its neighbour and former coloniser Australia seemed to have drifted apart, recently the relationship has intensified immensely.

Nauru, an island nation spanning 21 square kilometres located on the equator and in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is a desolate place to a foreigner.

Is it strange how history repeats itself? It’s not the first time Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers have been expelled from Port Vila.

Australia will break its pledge when it hands out aid monies from 2013 to Pacific islands countries, despite acknowledging a greater need in poor countries of the region.

The Australia-PNG Business Council (APNGBC) held its 28th Business Forum on the theme “Today’s Opportunity: Tomorrow’s Prosperity” in Brisbane from May 13-15.

Banana trees in the garden, leafy greens for lunch, Lisa Hilli’s childhood was like many others in the Pacific. Only she grew up in the Queensland capital Brisbane, hundreds of kilometres from her ancestral home in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea.

The Australian Government introduced the Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme (PSWPS) in 2008 to allow Pacific Islanders to work in Australia as fruit and vegetable-pickers for periods of up to six months.

Specialist Australian police officers deployed in the South Pacific attract most complaints of misconduct than those in other regions, claims a new report.

I bought a banana in Canberra last weekend. The one single banana cost me two Australian dollars. For the same money, I bought two dozen sweet bananas in Honiara (the Solomon Islands) a month ago.