PINA

The 2023 Pacific Games Organising Committee (GOC) has announced that the Vanuatu Broadcasting & Television Corporation (VBTC) has acquired the television broadcast rights for SOL2023 for Vanuatu. Operating a free to air TV channel, and three radio stations, VBTC will be providing exclusive coverage of the games, as well as the live broadcast of the opening and closing ceremonies on...

“We must not shy away from demanding climate justice for all." This was the statement by the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice Siromi Turaga while opening a Regional Writeshop for Pacific Islands Submissions to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Advisory Proceedings in Nadi this morning. “We have a commitment to the 2050 strategy for the blue ocean continent, exploring its...

The International Seabed Authority's member nations on Friday agreed on a two-year roadmap for the adoption of deep sea mining regulations, despite conservationists' calls for a moratorium on mineral extraction they say would avert marine threats. The ISA, an intergovernmental body tasked with protecting the seabed, and its member states have spent the last decade trying to hash out a...

The start of industrial-scale seabed mining to extract car battery metals from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean has been delayed after the international agency charged with overseeing the work concluded late last week that it needed more time to finalise mining rules. The action by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which had set a July goal for finalising seabed...

In collaboration with the Pacific Community (SPC), the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (TCAP) has handed over to Government of Tuvalu a state-of-the-art online platform which, for the first time, allows the atoll nation to clearly identify, plan for, and reduce risks associated with sea level rise and more frequent intense storms driven by climate change. The free, publicly available platform...

Maria Fuata has been appointed the new Deputy Director-General Operations and Integration at Pacific Community (SPC). Maria is part of SPC’s Senior Executive Team leading the Operations and Management Directorate, OMD, comprising finance, human resources, IT, publications, property & facilities management, translation and interpretation, legal services, travel, library and administration. Maria is a seasoned senior finance and management executive who has...

By Nick McKenzie, Michael Bachelard and Amelia Ballinger Australia’s Home Affairs Department oversaw the payment of millions of taxpayer dollars to powerful Pacific Island politicians through a chain of suspect contracts as it sought to maintain controversial offshore asylum seeker processing centres. Financial data, internal emails and whistleblower testimony implicate Home Affairs’ lead contractors – Broadspectrum, Canstruct and Paladin – in...

French president Emmanuel Macron will travel to the south-west Pacific this week, in a “historic” visit designed to bolster his Indo-Pacific strategy and reaffirm France’s role in the region. The five-day visit begins on 24 July in the French archipelago of New Caledonia, followed by stops in Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. The Elysée, the French presidential palace, has said...

The Australian government is refusing to say how much it is paying to Papua New Guinea in a secret agreement to hold about 75 refugees and asylum seekers in Port Moresby. Parliamentary documents have revealed for the first time this week that the Morrison government signed a “confidential bilateral agreement” with PNG in December 2021, paying the PNG government to...

Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown, who is also the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Immigration (MFAI), along with Government and MFAI officials has met with Special Envoy (SE) of the Foreign Minister of Korea, Dong-Man Han and his delegation in Rarotonga last week. In a statement, MFAI said last week's talks follow discussions between Prime Minister Brown and the...