AUST: $500-thousand to improve fishing surveillance
Updated
Australia's Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, has promised half a million dollars to improve regional monitoring control and surveillance of Pacific tuna fisheries. More that half the world's tuna are now caught in the Pacific and tuna is a vital economic resource to many island countries.
Presenter: Jemima Garrett
Speakers: Alexander Downer, Australia's Foreign Minister
DOWNER: Well, the big challenge really is ultimately not just improve the capacity of the Forum Fisheries Agency which is based in Solomon Islands and it does need some assistance, with additional capacity, but also to make sure that the systems of governance for fishing through the Pacific Island countries, through each of those countries is very substantially improved and we need to make quite significant new investments over time in helping those countries improve their legal structures, for example, their regulations, their institutions and they need of course more help in countering corruption as well. So there's quite a lot of work to be done.
GARRETT: How important is it that the Pacific Islands get their fishery surveillance to a level at which it will be a real deterrent to fish pirates?
DOWNER: Well, it's really important, because first of all the total value of tuna to the Pacific Island countries is about a Billion dollars annually, so it's a very important industry. But scientists have been telling us that tuna stocks have to be, or tuna catches have to be reduced by about 25 per cent for Big Eye and ten per cent for Yellow Fin. And bearing that in mind, there has to be real strides made forward in addressing the problems of illegal unreported and unregulated fishing. So if we don't do that, well then of course the vitally important fish stocks are going to be overfished and that will have an enormous impact both economically and socially on the Pacific.
GARRETT: Well, one of the big problems island nations have is that they don't have enough money to put fuel in their well equipped patrol boats, which are their main weapon against the fish pirates. Will this money help solve that problem?
DOWNER: Well, I wouldn't say they don't have money for the fuel. I mean they don't have as much as they perhaps would like. We certainly need to continue to work on the, it's not just the surveillance, but the enforcement capacities of the region. Of course a lot of the surveillance is done from the air and there are other techniques that can be considered as well, such as satellite surveillance and then enforcement by patrol boats. I think that's much more a question of how they structure budgets and we're obviously working on helping them do that. It's more a broader question of capacity of how the whole system of surveillance, enforcement, regulation is structured and the economics of that and so that's what we're going to help them with.
GARRETT: On other issues arising from the Forum, the Solomon Islands Prime Minister says that despite Solomon's commitment to consult the Forum about changes to RAMSI, he's still going ahead with his review of the RAMSI Facilitation Act. What's your reaction to that?
DOWNER: Well, I mean that's a matter for him really. I mean the Solomon Islands Government and parliament can review anything they like in the Solomons. There's nothing much that we can offer in terms of whether to have a review or not. But what I would say is this that if that act were to be substantially changed so that, not just Australians, but members of the Pacific Island Forums contributors to RAMSI were unable to maintain their immunities, well then they would leave. So to destroy the immunity is to in the end simply destroy RAMSI.
Now I think that is a message that Prime Minister Sogavare needs to understand, in particular, his Attorney-General, Mr Moti, who probably wants to destroy RAMSI needs to understand that if the Solomon Islands does destroy RAMSI, well one of the ways they could do it would be to withdraw those immunities. That would be catastrophic. That's not just Australia's view by the way. That is the view of the Pacific Island Forum generally.
GARRETT: So will you be laying the blame partly at Mr Moti's door?
DOWNER: Well, Mr Moti who is a fugitive from the law in Australia is somebody who it's well known is endeavouring to try to destroy RAMSI. I think we all know that.
GARRETT: Now Fiji's interim prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, says that he might change Fiji's Constitution before any elections take place. How would that sit with the commitments that he gave the Forum?
DOWNER: Well, we discussed that with him during the leaders meeting last week and made it clear to him that we wanted a good understanding of what the legal processes would be. Now he said that any changes to the Constitution would be consistent with the existing Constitution and with the rule of law in Fiji. So in so far as the Constitution can be changed legally under present law, then that is a matter for Fiji. In so far as it's not changed legally, that's a different question. But Commodore Bainimarama made it clear to all of us at the Forum meeting that any changes that would be made would be made legally consistent in the manner that's consistent with the existing Constitution.
GARRETT: His plan is to have a referendum. Would that have legal force?
DOWNER: Eh, well I haven't got a copy of the Constitution with me. I'm not sure of the answer to that question. I can just say that it was a point I made and Helen Clark made very strongly to Commodore Bainimarama. Look we expect the rule of law to upheld. I think it was Helen Clark asked Commodore Bainimarama whether the Constitution or no one of the other leaders I think it was asked Commodore Bainimarama whether the Constitution has been suspended and he said no, it hasn't been suspended. The Constitution is still in force, and therefore any changes to the Constitution will have to be made consistent with the existing Constitution and consistent with the rule of law and I'm not sure exactly how changes to the Fiji Constitution are made, but I'm only making the point that if they are made, they need to be made in a legal way.
