Thaw in relations on many fronts

Australia

reatcr ease with the diversity of opinion within the region.

Islanders and their culture are gradually beginning to play bigger role in Australia and in its thinking. On radio it is now Dssible to hear three new languages: Samoan, New Zealand laori and Cook Islands Maori. They are broadcast on SBS idio, a government-funded network set up to cater for ustralia’s ethnic communities. SBS Radio also has more than xibled its output in Tonga which is now heard for 45 minutes dee a week, and increased its Fijian broadcasts from half an >ur to three quarters of an hour once a week.

John Uri, from the Sydney-based Cook Islands Community ouncil, has been lobbying for airtime for four years. He says e Cook Islands Maori program will reduce isolation felt by □ok Islanders in Sydney’s widely dispersed suburbs, and act a catalyst for community events and cultural programs.

One of the problems for Cook Islanders living in large cities that once they have settled in, usually near a few people from eir own island, they find they are a long way from other Cook anders. Before the radio program began, the only way to get touch with people for community events was by word of Quth and dodgers; a dauntingly large task for a small group busy volunteers. Often it meant the role up was not enough pay costs for the hall.

Now, John Uri hopes all that will be different.

Faleaka Taumoepeau, one of the presenters of the Tongan ogram, says the radio is the best way of communicating with s community. In fact, she says, people are so keen to hear - news that if they are unable to listen when the program broadcast they often record it and listen later.

SBS Radio’s Sydney program manager, Sarwsan Madina, /s the introduction of language broadcasts can have an noi mous impact on a community. Not only are people tter informed about events within their own community, ; y £ et news from home, news about Australian politics, and ential government information in the form of community vice announcements.

Often the radio may be the only available source of news m home. For those who do not speak english, Australian m and information not only makes them feel part of their w , country but allows them to make use of government vices and to exercise their full rights as Australian citizens.

But the programs are more than just a service to the nmunity. Over time, SBS builds up a rare collection of pular and traditional music from the countries whose guage it broadcasts. The broadcasters themselves receive

FEBRUARY was a month when Australia md the Island nations each took a few more, mall steps forward which will lead to the trong and equal relationships that the islands have been seeking with their larger leighbour since Independence.

In Australia, Pacific culture and language mrst onto the airwaves with a big expansion >f island language radio broadcasts in Sydney, Melbourne, and some regional entres.

In the Islands, the visit by Australia’s 'oreign Affairs Minister, Senator Gareth Ivans, marked his continuing commitment j the region. The fact that he bothered to et of]' the beaten track in New Caledonia, lat he made the effort to visit cyclone avaged Western Samoa (even if only for a ;w hours) are testament to his personal ilerest. His meetings with long-time critics i Fiji and New Caledonia are evidence of a

valuable training at the prestigious Film, Television and Radio School which could eventually lead them on to careers in mainstream media.

As the number of Island programs in crease, SBS is likely to take more Pacific news; news which could flow on to the wider

community through new english language

news broadcasts.

Australians interested in the Pacific Islands are beginning to be better served by their media. After Cyclone Val swept through Samoa they heard first-hand ac counts of the human dimension of the devastation from a spokesperson for the Australian government aid agency, AIDAB, who had been sent there for just that.

Television footage of the cyclone’s after math prompted Gareth Evans to go to Samoa to deliver a second package of relief money in person. Senator Evans said he had

been “very distressed by images conveyed by the media”, adding “it was a cruel twist of fate after barely recovering from Cyclone Ofa to be hit for a second time”.

But the real business of Senator Evans’s visit was in New Caledonia and Fiji, where he met two of Australia’s harshest critics. In New Caledonia, the critic came in the form of anti independence leader Jacques La Fleur, who has for many years been angered by what he sees as Australia’s over-enthusiastic support for the Kanak cause.

Despite that, Evans’s meeting with him was warm and constructive and the Senator emerged stressing the view that greater autonomy from France may emerge as a consensus solution to the divisive question of the territory’s status.

In Fiji, Senator Evans’s critic came in the form ofcoup leader and retired Armed Forces Chief, Major-General Sitiveni Rabuka. Evans’s meeting with Rabuka was the first by any Australian minister. It sealed the thaw in relations with Fiji which began with the visit of Deputy Prime Minister Josevata Kamikamica to Australia mid-way through last year, and marked a change in rhetoric from both men.

Senator Evans said the “most interesting aspect” of the encounter was that Rabuka “indicated a preparedness to see the present constitution evolve over time in a way that would be less offensive to the international community”.

The most significant for Australia may have been Rabuka’s statement that “we have to make it (the relationship between Australia and Fiji) work”.

Evans, too, while not backing away from his criticism of the constitution, was talking in much more conciliatory terms, saying it was now time to “move on” from the unhappy events of the 1987 coups and acknowledging that “Australians have to deal with the world as we find it”.

But Evans’s visit to Fiji did not produce only good news. The banning of Australian newspaper journalist, Mary-Louise O’Callaghan, highlighted the fact that access to Fiji by the overseas media, even for something as simple as a Ministerial visit, is still a problem. Rabuka’s promise to get rid of bans on journalists after the elections is welcome and hopefully will be borne out in action. It will also be one of the indicators which the international community will look to in assessing just how far Fiji has moved in the return to normalcy.

As Senator Evans put it: while Australia (or the international community) docs not challenge Fiji’s “sovereign right to deny entry to any foreigner”; an over-defensive or restrictive attitude could do more to damage Fiji’s reputation than an occasional unflattering media report. □

Jemima

Garrett