Pacific Islands Forum All Over but for the ...Whispers

Well, it's all over bar the shouting, not what was much of that. It was was more of a whisper or an echo that needed a hearing aid.

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The 49th Pacific Island Forum, with its theme "Building a strong Pacific: Our Islands, Our People, Our Will" is over and the leaders from its 18 member nations, four associate members, with others from China, Taiwan and a number of non-government organisations in attendance, have flown home to their respective countries.

In total, they will have flown over 113,000 km, the equivalent of more than four times round the earth at the Equator, and the cost will be in ten or hundreds of a million dollars. If we  get our money's worth,  the public will never know if our media coverage over the past three days of the meeting are any indication.

The Forum was simply swamped by other news: a bus blocking two homes in Auckland,  prison guards assaulting an inmate, sexual violence, a student photographing a drunk woman naked, a Kiwi caught up in the Japan earthquake, house prices falling, Richard Mo'unga's inclusion in the All Blacks, and much more of similar consequence. The Forum had 35 mentions -- if our Pacific services are included. which could be seen as not too bad except for a big except.

Of the 35 mentions, 32 dealt with issues outside the meeting. 15 covered media restrictions, including our Barbara Dreaver's temporary detention, 10 were about the refugees in the Australia-paid for detention centre that helps Nauru make ends meet. (It's only resource, phosphate, stripped bare years ago to help Australian and New Zealand farmers. See posting pn 65). Five more were on the cost of our PM's attendance,  and two on a scuffle between China and Taiwan over attendance,

In other words only three press releases actually dealt with the meeting agenda.  That's something like reporting on a Bledisloe Cup game by writing about the price of beer, chips and tickets.

The three agenda items that did receive some coverage were on:

• climate change (this about a NZ-Japan agreement outside the meeting) and this on the Boe Declaration (expanding n security themes to include environment, cybercrime and transnational crime.which stated climate change was the largest single threat to the region),  
• maritime boundaries and protection of fisheries, and 
• the common values shared between members.

I'll write about these in later posts. Some of the 290,000 Pacific Islanders in NZ may be interested.
ACW.
@crozw.blogspot.com
See also this review of the Forum meeting in the Australian The Strategist