The Hon Bob McMullan MP

Media transcript

5 February 2008

Interview with Bob McMullan, parliamentary secretary for international development assistance to discuss the commencement of a promised $150 million in government funding to assist south pacific nations adapt to climate change.

Interviewees: Bob McMullan, parliamentary secretary for international development assistance

ALEX SLOAN: And in Tonga at the moment is the Parliamentary Secretary for Development Assistance, Bob McMullan, also, of course, Member for Fraser. Bob McMullan has announced the start of a promised $150 million to help South Pacific countries adapt to climate change and Bob McMullan joins me now from Tonga.

A very good morning to you.

BOB McMULLAN: Hi, Alex.

ALEX SLOAN: This program was one committed during the election campaign. What's it designed to do?

BOB McMULLAN: Well, what this - the basic fact is that the little developing countries like those in the Pacific make the smallest contribution in the world to climate change but they run the risk of paying the highest price. So developed countries, not just Australia but all the developed countries who've contributed to the problem have got an obligation and an interest in helping them to respond to climate change and the specific thing I was looking at was actually in Samoa before I left to come here to Tonga, was a program where for a very small amount of money, hundreds of thousands not millions, we've actually got a series of villages around the coast in Samoa working on rescuing the coral reef that has been damaged and, as such, it's improving the fishing and the whole lifestyle of people in the region and also helping to ensure that they can cope with building things like sea walls so if the sea level rises the villages are still protected.

ALEX SLOAN: Are you actually hearing stories of the damage climate change has done already, Bob McMullan?

BOB McMULLAN: I have heard them before. There are some islands, for example, off the coast of Papua New Guinea who have been very directly affected and people are being relocated. There is certainly a concern here that sea surges are going to get worse here in Tonga, which is very low lying country and the data is - and there's some data that their Finance Minister was telling me yesterday about the rise in sea level here and the long term concerns for the future of the capital, Nuku'alofa which is right on the coast and very low lying and whether when we redevelop or further develop the city, whether we have to look at relocating some or all of it. So there are some big challenges facing countries in this region and it's in our long term interest to be sure they can efficiently cope with it.

ALEX SLOAN: Yes, but with the two million that you're there allocating at the moment, what will it actually do?

BOB McMULLAN: That particular program is doing things like that one I outlined in Samoa. It's helping very local, immediate responses at the village level, building sea walls, restoring coral reefs, training people in, for example, they just go out each day and clean off the crown of thorns starfish which we all know about and the damage it does to the Great Barrier Reef, well, they are making sure that it doesn't get a foothold in the reefs around their villages and people, the villagers, are donating their time and we are providing a small amount of money.

ALEX SLOAN: What's Australia's responsibility as a major country in the region?

BOB McMULLAN: We have broadly, in fact, more broadly than climate change, we have a long term interest in and a responsibility to contribute to the peace and stability of this region. If things go wrong here it's Australia that has the obligation to help to clean it up and it's our interest to avoid it but also we have a humanitarian responsibility to contribute to the capacity of these countries to achieve what I call the millennium development goals, the goals about the elimination of global poverty, and there's serious poverty in this region. Because they look like tropical paradises nobody notices that many of the people are extremely poor and living on less than a dollar a day. So we've been focusing on strategies to lift the living standards of the poorest people in these countries and that's actually what I've been talking about to the Labour Minister in Tonga here today.

ALEX SLOAN: Why has Tuvalu been left off the list?

BOB McMULLAN: It was actually only a transport problem. The plane we were travelling on couldn't land there so we're having to go there on another occasion. There's no political decision it was simply logistics. We had an aeroplane that wasn't capable of landing in the circumstances and taking off from the airport.

ALEX SLOAN: But is it included in this package?

BOB McMULLAN: Yes, it is.

ALEX SLOAN: Okay. All right, I certainly had that question. So $150 million was promised during the election campaign but how much do you see this - how much more money is going to be needed?

BOB McMULLAN: Fortunately now that we've signed up to the Kyoto Protocol there are some other funds that operate under the Kyoto - the United Nations through the Kyoto Protocol and through the World Bank, that give us the capacity to leverage our $150 million into a lot more because while $150 million is a lot of money, it won't solve all the problems, particularly if you look more broadly than the Pacific and look at some of the other countries in our region. So we have - it's a lot of money needed to be done here but the whole international community has obligations, not just us, but we - in the Pacific, they expect us to take the lead.

And there are also some things we can do about alternative energy sources for these places. They're very dependent on diesel. It's neither good economics nor good environmentalism to continue to generate all your electricity from diesel power so we are looking at some alternative energy issues as well.

End

2008