KIWI FOREIGN MINISTER PETERS CRITICISES “USELESS” PACIFIC MEN
The New Zealand Herald, June 20, 2008 - Foreign Minister Winston Peters cast diplomacy aside yesterday as he questioned why there were so many "useless" men in power positions in the Pacific and not enough women.
Maori men also came in for a sideswipe when he suggested too many of them spent their time "parading around the maraes as peacocks doing no work".
Mr Peters made his comments at the foreign affairs and defence select committee at Parliament. He rejected suggestions that it could be perceived in the Pacific as arrogance.
"I don't seek to preach or hector them or lecture them. All we seek to do is ask some pretty simple questions like how come all these useless males are running the show."
Mr Peters said the lack of representation of women was a great worry.
"It seriously worries me. It needs to be said in the most blunt way to the leaders of all those countries: 'Where are your women?' We'd like to know. But if we don't ask the questions how are we going to know.
"It is not ethnically or culturally insensitive to ask a fundamental question like that."
But independent MP Taito Phillip Field, who said New Zealand had to be careful about the perception of arrogance, thought such a message was better coming from a fellow Polynesian.
Mr Peters, the New Zealand First leader, has one woman MP, Barbara Stewart, in his own caucus of seven.
When he became Foreign Minister in 2005 he said the Pacific would be a priority for him.
Labour MP Jill Pettis raised the issue of women's representation at the committee. She said that until more women were represented in Parliament, some of the sexual health and reproductive issues would not get on to the agendas of Pacific Parliaments.
Mr Peters said both Samoa and the Cook Islands had better records than others in electing women representatives.
"The paradox here is that anyone who knows the Pacific knows, from Maori through to Rapanui and all the way north, is that women do all the work."
They also carried most of the "angst and agony" of their community.
He said he had made no bones about giving his view on the matter.
"If you want commitment and drive and ambition to work in a greater collegial or community sense, then you must place your faith in the women of this part of the world far more than the men who - present company excepted - tend to spend most of their time parading around the maraes as peacocks doing no work whatsoever."
The 38 female MPs in the New Zealand Parliament represent 31.4 per cent of all MPs.
The Green Party has the highest representation of women at 66 per cent. Act and United Future have only two MPs apiece, a male and a female, so technically half their caucuses are women.
Labour women make up 34.6 per cent of its caucus; National has 27 per cent; the Maori Party has 25 per cent; New Zealand First's is 14 per cent; and Jim Anderton, as the sole MP in the Progressive Party, has zero women.
PACIFIC NATIONS BAN TUNA BOATS TO PROTECT STOCK
Los Angeles Times, June 19, 2008 - Los Angeles Times, June 19, 2008 - Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and six other Pacific nations banned tuna boats from an area of ocean almost the size of Alaska to save the fish from a repeat of the collapse of Atlantic cod fisheries in the 1980s.
The island nations prohibited fishing boats from two areas of the Pacific Commons, stretches of international waters surrounded by coastal waters belonging to the countries. The ban went into effect yesterday to prevent destruction of bigeye and yellowfin tuna stocks and sustain an industry worth $3 billion a year in the Pacific.
Governments and fishing companies aren't doing enough to prevent the decline of tuna stocks as they put the demands of the fishing industry and consumers above the sustainability of marine life, conservationists say.
"The balance of power between the fishing fleets and tuna has shifted too far in favor of the fleets," Callum Roberts, a marine conservation biologist at the University of York in England, said in a telephone interview. "We are still catching too many fish."
Lower catches may tighten supplies in Japan, the main market for the region's fish and the world's largest for sashimi-grade tuna, where prices are rising due to depleted supply, rising fuel costs and competition from the U.S., European Union and China.
The wholesale price of bigeye tuna in Tokyo rose to 930 yen in April from 774 yen three years earlier, while the price of yellowfin rose to 700 yen from 538 in the same period, according to the latest statistics from Japan's agriculture ministry.
Rising Fuel CostsRising fuel costs may force about 30 percent of the world's long-line tuna boats to suspend operations, Kyodo News reported last month, citing the Organization for the Promotion of Responsible Tuna Fisheries, a Japanese fishing industry body.
About half the global tuna catch is from the Pacific, mostly from around the islands of the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.
Bigeye tuna and yellowfin tuna, used for sushi and sashimi, can weigh as much as 200 kilograms and reach 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) in length. Based on April wholesale prices in Tokyo, a single adult fish can fetch as much as 186,000 yen ($1,725).
Failing Measures
The states imposed the fishing ban after the Western & Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, which governs the region's stocks of migratory fish including tuna, failed to strengthen conservation measures at its annual meeting in December.
To enforce the ban, tuna vessels wanting licenses to fish in the countries' exclusive economic zones, also rich in tuna stocks, will have to agree not to enter the protected areas.
The group also made observers mandatory on vessels operating in their territories and banned the use of fish aggregating devices, or buoys used to attract tuna and blamed for over- fishing of juvenile fish, for three months a year.
Using marine reserves to sustain stocks of migratory fish is still disputed in the scientific community. Some tuna have been proven to travel as far as 45,000 miles in 16 months, according to Tagging of Pacific Predators, making them difficult to protect.
Conservation areas along migratory routes and near sea mounts, where tuna spawn and feed, will help replenish stocks, Ussif Rashid Sumaila, Director of the University of British Columbia's Fisheries Economics Research Unit, said by telephone.
Greenpeace International, which wants marine reserves to cover 40 percent of the world's high seas, said the resolution needs to be backed by all members of the Western & Central Pacific Fisheries Commission as the island states alone can't afford to pay for monitoring.
JAPAN FUNDS AUKI JETTY
Radio Australia, June 20, 2008 - The Japanese government is funding an $US8 million jetty project for Solomon Islands' most populated province.
Akira Iwanade, from Japan's Embassy has signed a diplomatic exchange of notes to fund the construction of a jetty and market in Auki, the capital of Malaita Province.
Although Malaita is Solomon Islands most densely populated province, it has lagged behind in development since independence 30-years ago.
Mr Iwanade says his government is backing the project because it will promote development for the Malaita's rural population.
"The market and jetty in Auki which will expand the opportunities of rural people of Malaita Province to earn cash income in Auki and improve the flow of and exchange of goods with Honiara and other provinces," he said.
