Pacific Beat

New Zealand is prepared to help Solomon Islands combat lawlessness, but it wants the goverment in Honiara to take serious action as well.

In Samoa, the Registrar of Lands has taken steps to head-off illegal sales of customary land.

In Vanuatu this week, six people were found guilty in the Magistrates Court of offences relating to illegal voting in the May 2nd general election.

Vanuatu's reknowned Wan Smol Bag Theatre Group is rapidly expanding its horizons.

The Solomon Islands government says with its acute financial crisis, there's no way it can afford to pay the compensation claims for harassment and injury.

New Zealand's Foreign Minister says he would have preferred the Solomon lslands police to have postponed an announcement on the possible cause of death in Honiara of a New Zealand diplomat.

Tonga is closing down it's international ship registration business.

They're scary, long, dark and their appetite for native fauna has put them on Micronesia's most-wanted list.

In the Solomon Islands, the government is now working on a major cost-saving exercise that would see a number of government functions done away with and 850 officers retrenched.

Tahiti is holding its very first Book Fair later this week.

A row over a cancelled live TV debate between government and opposition MPs in Samoa to mark World Press Freedom Day is merely a misunderstanding.

The Australian federal budget which was handed down last night had several implications for the Pacific - not least of which is the announcement of new Australian aid spending in the region.

The Budget also has implications for the so called "Pacific Solution" - the Australian funded processing of asyum seekers in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

A petition being circulated in Samoa, and within Samoan communities in Australia and New Zealand, could end up with most Samoans being given automatic New Zealand citizenship.

A nationwide strike by waterside workers in Papua New Guinea is threatening to paralyse all business activities in the country following the walkout this week of more Union members over a pay dispute.

Companies in small Pacific Island nations have told governments, regional organisations and shippers that they will go broke if the cost of shipping is not reduced, and that urgent action is necessary.

And while Australia grapples with budget figures, some of the economies in the region are coming to terms with their own statistics.

Solomon Islands MP Alfred Sasako is urging his government to draw up a bill covering the practice of compensation.

Vanuatu's Ombudsman is hoping the country's new Parliament will act on a series of recommendations made in a major report last year on ways to improve the enforcement of the strict Leadership Code contained in the Vanuatu Constitution.