The Hon Bob McMullan MP

Joint Press Conference

6 February 2008

with the Hon Duncan Kerr MP, Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs

BOB MCMULLAN: This is our first visit so we consider it an important sign that the new government is going to be more actively engaged and the nature of the conversations we're having indicate that we're really looking for partnerships with countries in the region.

We look to be actively engaged in helping governments in the region, and the region as a whole, to implement their development plans and we've had a long history of active and positive cooperation with the Government of Kiribati.

Australian governments of all political persuasions have had a very good relationship with this country and we are very confident that on the basis of the preliminary discussions we've had with the President and the Ministers, and the program that's ahead of us, and what we know of the arrangements that are already in place, that we can build on that.

So I'll just mention one or two things that are about the development assistance and then I'll get my colleague to say a few words and then we'll answer your questions.

One of the key things we're doing in development assistance at the moment is, of course, the Kiribati-Australia Nursing Initiative which has started and which we mutually share the view is going very well. I have assured the President that the new government is committed to continuing that program and that we look to build on it in the general strategy of increasing the skills and opportunities available to young people here in Kiribati.

And the other priority that we discussed with the President is climate change. Everybody knows that climate change is a big issue for every country in the world.

It's a big issue for Australia, a big issue for the most powerful countries in the world like the United States and China. But it's a particularly important issue for the smaller countries in the Pacific many of whom are the most vulnerable - who've made the smallest contribution to the problem but might pay the highest price.

And so we feel that as one of those developed countries, we have an obligation to assist and we announced in the lead up to the election that if we were elected we would introduce a $150 million program over two years to assist countries in our region to adapt to the challenge of climate change.

We already have a program working here with other donors to assist in adapting to climate change but we're keen to do more. We've started discussions with the Government today about it and we'll have more discussions during this visit. Our officials will work on the details later.

I'm very optimistic about this relationship but it's - my colleague, Mr Kerr, who could put it better in a big regional relationship because he's the Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Affairs and has a particular brief from the Prime Minister in that regard.

DUNCAN KERR: Thanks very much Bob. The Labor Government wanted to send a very clear message to the world and to our region in particular that in coming into office it saw one of its primary areas of focus and responsibility to rebuild our relationships with the Pacific.

Kiribati is not one of the countries we've had troubled relationships with but there have been tense relationships with a number of our Pacific neighbours.

And our brief, and mine in particular, is to work as far as is possible to gain cooperation, arrangements of partnership where agreement can be achieved. And where agreement isn't achieved when - there will always be incidences where governments disagree just as individuals and families disagree, that we conduct those disagreements with respect.

And I think that the starting point is to get out and visit and gain a real on the ground appreciation of the realities that you're dealing with because dealing with them from afar is very, very difficult.

We've asked the Government of Kiribati to identify its priorities because we can only build a priority partnership around the priorities and objectives that have been identified back to us. So we can try to dig into those, we can discuss those priorities but in the end those are decisions for national governments to make and then we make sure that we work as effectively as possible to make a success of areas where we do find common agreement.

Bob McMullan in discussions on [indistinct] education and a whole range of areas where his responsibilities which are wider, in a sense, than mine - mine are specifically focused on the Pacific - his reach on a global basis to developing assistance wherever it is.

But where we overlap, that is in this region and where so much of Australia's foreign policy focus now will be, we will work in immediate harmony with each other.

There are a couple of specifics that we raised for the consideration of the President and Cabinet. One was the tsunami monitoring MOU, that we've been arguing that the Government should sign because right across our region there are other countries which have had terrible experiences with tsunamis. And we want to build a network of early warning so that as far as possible if an event like that does happen, people get at least some time to move away from areas where the threat is emerging. And so we put that on the table for the Government's consideration.

We also mentioned that there are some things that may not need to be done by individual countries, that there are some things that may evolve as regional cooperation. And one of the areas of course is fisheries where Kiribati has a very large exclusive economic zone. It has one patrol boat and we have a program which has made available something like 22 patrol boats across the whole of the Pacific.

There may be some opportunities to find cooperative arrangements with other Pacific Island countries so there can be assistance in patrolling and exchanging responsibilities for areas of water that are closer to their shores.

We do have to look at some problems and regional climate change is one of those. No country is immune from the potential harms that can come from sea level rise if that comes to affect us. The Australian mainland and the state of Tasmania where I come from will be affected but many Pacific Island countries are low lying and so are likely to experience those effects more dramatically than most.

And here we would like of course the cooperation of the Government of Kiribati and all other Pacific Island states to make sure that the world community moves towards a binding and enforceable outcome from the post-Bali discussions.

And I know that the Government of Kiribati is very much firmly committed to that objective and has welcomed the change of position of the new Australian Government to sign the Kyoto Protocol and to work towards those binding commitments.

There are the health issues that have a regional dimension, revisiting, I think, tomorrow the TB initiative. With the increasing people movement, threats that used to be exclusive to one country are now often - blow over to others.

And much of the Pacific has thankfully thus far been spared, for example, major outbreaks of HIV-AIDS. Both Tonga and Samoa which we visited previously have been spared that but other countries in the Pacific like Papua New Guinea have very significant problems with HIV-AIDS and potentially may face a pandemic circumstance.

But with people travelling throughout the Pacific with tourism, with greater mobility, it is inevitable that there'd be people who arrive in Kiribati with infectious diseases. HIV-AIDS is one of those.

Working out strategies so that we can have robust health programs, preventative programs and, of course, the new threat that emerges with reduced resistance is highly drug-resistant tuberculosis.

So these things intersect. They can't be cut apart and they'll be issues that we'll be discussing with particular ministers.

And on the environmental front we discussed some of the challenges that Kiribati has with its domestic issues with environmental management as well as the ones of international concern like climate change.

So it's a big agenda here and not everything can be achieved and certainly not everything can be achieved quickly but if we can identify key priorities, work on those then hopefully the partnership will be seen by the people of Kiribati as having made a significant contribution to the wellbeing of themselves and their kids.

So that's why we're here and it is the start of a relationship between the two countries and of the Rudd Labor Government and the re-election of the Government of Kiribati which we hope to continue into the future and make a success of.

So any questions?

QUESTION: [Inaudible question]

DUNCAN KERR: We certainly can do everything we can to persuade the US Government to change its position. It's been very resistant to that change, to be honest. I don't need to tell you that. You know that really.

But of course the United States is having an election within a year of now and after we leave this media conference we'll be going I think at some stage to the High Commissioner's telefax or whatever it is that we have here and learning the outcomes of the Super Tuesday primaries in the United States.

Depending on who becomes the next president of the United States, there may well be a moment in time where that government will see fit to shift its position and join the international consensus and the United States community.

Very large numbers of Americans now that have come to realise that their government has taken a position which is not in the global community's interests.

And, of course Al Gore, a former US Vice President, in his film which - called An Inconvenient Truth which many of you may have seen, really presents a different voice of the American community in the world. So it is possible there'll be change. We of course have argued for the current administration to shift its position but I think I've got to be honest with you and say at the moment we have no indication that that shift will happen.

But there will, of course, be a new president of the United States in a year. So what we need to do is make sure the [indistinct] architecture is robust, make sure [indistinct] the United States and to encourage any moves in those directions that the community chooses to make in that country.

QUESTION: [Inaudible question]

DUNCAN KERR: I think it's fair to say that many people from throughout the Pacific have criticised the Australian Government as being heavy handed and condescending in relation to its management of some of its relationships with the Pacific Island countries.

I don't think that's true of Kiribati but perception is reality. And there are many, very excellent programs that the former government put in place. These being [indistinct] imperative to some of those programs to be able to stand on the successes that have already been put in place.

But there were tensions in our relationships with a number of our Pacific Island neighbours, most notably the Solomons, but equally Papua New Guinea and perhaps others and we want to clean the slate. We want to put those aside and, of course, the election of a new government in the Solomon Islands means that they're able to [indistinct] too and there will be a very successful meeting between Prime Minister Rudd and Prime Minister Sikua of the Solomon Island [audio segment finishes] meetings that Prime Minister Rudd had as a side meeting to Bali. There was a meeting with Sir Michael Somare, the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea.

So it's easy for a new government to be critical of its predecessors. We made our criticisms while we were the Opposition. But now we're in government, I think what we need to do is to move past that, say look, we are seeking to make a new start. We're not going to go on and dwell on what we see to be as sometimes mistakes over the period in the past. We've made those criticisms but we do want to emphasise that we've got long term sustainable healthy relationships with our Pacific Islander neighbours and not just at a level of bilateral relationships between the countries but also at a regional level.

So I'd rather not dwell on the past, but rather recognise that there have been tensions and difficulties in some of the relationships and in some circumstances, which we want to move past.

QUESTION: [Inaudible question]

DUNCAN KERR: [Indistinct].. to try and understand how the coastal program population [indistinct] in Kiribati so that's the sort of thing we can build on and do more of. We saw in Samoa a program about restoring some coral reefs that had been destroyed and that meant that there were fishing and other resources came back.

There are - so there's a capacity to seek to protect communities against inundation, capacity to help communities adapt to the change that's going to come about. And, of course, to try and assist people to develop in a way that government is more sensitive to the use of resources, alternative energy projects.

But the Government of Kiribati has gone a pretty long agenda of things they'd like us to do about climate change and we'll move into discussions with - not just with the Government of Kiribati, all of them but we are here and we're going to enter discussions with all of them about how we can build on what's there. It's not as if nothing's happened. What's happening is, in my view, the only [audio segment ends].

TIMEON IOANE (TV KIRIBATI): Now that you've seen how small is Kiribati will Australia be willing to take in the people of Kiribati when the sea level does sink their islands?

BOB MCMULLAN I knew the statistics about how low lying this country was and its relationship to the sea... but it is not the same as seeing it... to see it made the threats very real! And you're absolutely right. But the whole strategy is designed to prevent people from becoming refugees from climate change, that is our purpose and all the people I talk to they don't want to leave their homes, they wanted to stay... our strategy is to prevent that and that is our priority.

ROOTI TERUBEA (RMAT) : If you've already known that Kiribati had announce its Phoenix Islands Protected Area for once in history... Kiribati has beaten Australia, it's [sic] Great Barrier Reef?

BOB MCMULLAN:We read about that while heading to Samoa and Tonga and we were excited... I think it is terrific! First of all it is good for the world because it is about protection of more natural resources... but I think in there somewhere there is a prospect of tourism potential for this country and the region. We congratulate the government today on that initiative. And we will allow you to beat the Great Barrier Reef just for this once!

[Laughter]

DUNCAN KERR: We don't have any problems with you saying ours is bigger than yours.

[Laughter]

But can I say that you mentioned - somebody mentioned how small Kiribati is. If you look at actually the exclusive economic zone, I think Kiribati has more waters than Australia and is able to add a very large protected area [audio segment ends] waters that they can exploit.

So you know, that is a great resource. This - if you look at the delineated areas that are actually Kiribati's exclusive economic zones, it's one of the largest in the world. So on one level, it's a very small central island. But then it has diversified islands very - far extending across the Pacific. I don't know the distance accurately between the islands, but it's thousands of kilometres so it gives you both an opportunity and a challenge.

Very grateful that part of the opportunity has been taken by this very large marine reserve because the world is shrinking and places where species are being protected and the future of biodiversity ensured are becoming less. So it's a very farsighted initiative.

QUESTION: [Inaudible question]

DUNCAN KERR: We always encourage countries of our region to support the Australian position on whaling. I mean, we started out saying that, where we have agreement, let's work in a way which is cooperative and in partnership. Where we disagree, let's disagree with respect. So let me disagree with respect.

The Australian Government's position on whaling is strong. We believe it to be principled. We do not believe that what the Japanese are doing is scientific whaling. We don't believe it is necessary and we would like to encourage all governments of our region to support a moratorium continuing on whaling.

So it may be an issue that we have to address with Kiribati. But all I can say is we would hope that the same level of concern about the environment extends to the protection of these very large and largest of all marine species, which are not just Australian, but many people around the world regard as something that need to be protected from further harvesting.

2008