Statements by ex-Westpac CEO Gail Kelly at a CARE fundraising event in Melbourne have caused a minor firestorm here in Vanuatu. On July 28^th, Ms Kelly provided a litany of examples of sexual abuse, violence and subjugation of women in Vanuatu, which she characterised as “staggering,” according to the Guardian Australia.

The response in Vanuatu was outrage.

Men and (to a much lesser degree) women alike castigated Ms Kelly, claiming that she was uninformed, that she had no insight into traditional values and was grossly misrepresenting the situation.

It is true that when such issues are put under the microscope, they look appalling, especially when crime, prejudice and systematic bias are piled up side by side with one another.

That’s because they are appalling. Read more “Gail Kelly is right”

The space where kastom and the law overlap has seldom been a peaceful one. From the earliest colonial days, land, law and kastom were gunpowder.

Historian Howard Van Trease writes of the plight of Ni Vanuatu in the years immediately following the 1906 Condominium. He recounts how Edward Jacomb, a British civil servant, ultimately advised Ni Vanuatu to resist attempts to alienate their land with force, as the Joint Court was powerless to help them.

When a plantation operator was murdered on Epi in 1911, the event “evoked an outcry for the administration to instigate much harsher measures to reduce the threat against Europeans….”

Fast forward 100 years, and the problems of today bear a striking resemblance. The rule of law still doesn’t reach all the way out to the islands. The concept of land ownership and entitlement is still cloudy, and misunderstandings still lead to disagreements.

Disagreements still sometimes lead to violence.

The most striking example of this, of course, has been playing out on Tanna near Bethel village. There is much yet to be understood about the issue, and because some aspects of the dispute are already before the courts, we need to tread carefully.

Likewise, the widely held sense of outrage and search for kastom resolution needs to be treated with sensitivity.

But some things are already clear. Read more “DRAWING THE LINE”

I first began to worry about the future of journalism in Vanuatu back in 2011, when Marc Neil-Jones was attacked in his office at the Daily Post by a minister of state and others.

At the time, I quoted him: “’I’ve been deported, jailed and beaten up before. This isn’t the worst I’ve seen.’

“‘I am getting a bit old for this, though,’ he added wryly.”

Marc will be retiring at the end of this year, and I will be taking his place.

The largest part of my job will be preserving and protecting the legacy of the institution that Marc has built in the face of significant adversity.

Inside the newsroom at the Daily Post are reporters who have worked their beat since before independence. They are storied, wise and, surprisingly, not a bit jaded by their decades of service.

When I was being interviewed for the position of media director, I said that I felt that we had moved on from 2011. I felt that using the threat of violence to intimidate the media was no longer in the cards.

It was gratifying, therefore, to meet with the prime minister and several senior ministers of state to discuss the state of the media on Monday. Read more “Neither Fear nor Favour”

Written for the Vanuatu Daily Post

There are days when it looks like this country is committing slow, deliberate suicide.

As an ex-smoker, I have a vivid sense of how that feels. You know it’s going to end in tears. At best, you’ll be struck down years before your time, clutching your chest and knowing it wasn’t worth it. But more likely, it ends in indignity as you cough your lungs out, slowly losing the battle to breathe, while others look on at you with a mixture of pity and loathing.

Yet still, you light up and smoke. The incremental pain of staying hooked is nothing to the agony of quitting. Until that fateful day when you realise that if you want to live, you have to set some limits.

This country has a habit, and painful as it might be, it needs to quit. We cannot—not must not, not should not—we cannot continue using bureaucratic and political appointments as rewards.

I’m not saying we need to stop because it’s wrong. It is, but this is not a bully pulpit. In fact, morality be damned. The problem is that this path is guaranteed to end in tears for everyone. Read more “The reason for rules”

Written for the Vanuatu Daily Post

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It’s true in politics as well as physics

“Toktok no tumas. Aksen nomo.” These words, originally attributed to the famous—or infamous, depending on who you talk to—politician Harry Iauko, capture in simple and direct terms the nation’s growing impatience. People are rightly asking when are we ever going to see the benefits we’ve been promised for so long?

It should come as no surprise then, that in word and deed, the current government is intent on moving forward, and moving fast.

The more cynically minded among us could remark that the 2016 general election is just around the corner. But, after all, that’s what politics are all about. This is quite literally a popularity contest, and voters are right to ask, “What have you done for me lately?”

So nobody should be surprised when the minister of Public Works redirects earth-moving equipment from their current sites in Ambae and Maewo and has them sent to his home island in Pentecost.

Nobody who’s travelled the roads in Pentecost can deny that they are in desperate shape. Traffic comes to a complete halt after a heavy rainfall because of the lack of infrastructure.

But that’s not to say the roads in Ambae or Maewo are any better. And here’s where action and reaction become difficult to manage. Read more “Action and Reaction”

Originally published on the Pacific Policy blog

There’s nothing complicated about the MSG’s decision on whether to include West Papua as a member, but that doesn’t make it easy

No matter how we slice and dice the issue of West Papuan independence, it always comes down to this: Do the indigenous peoples of a distinct and discrete land mass have the democratic right to self-determination or not?

The answer, according to international law and standards, is an unequivocal yes.

Even a cursory examination of history reveals that Indonesia has systematically ignored and subverted the desires of the people who share the island of Papua with their cultural and ethnic brethren and sistren in Papua New Guinea. They have oppressed these people using military force, and their policies in the region have from the beginning been designed to silence the voice of the indigenous people there.

Indonesian president Joko Widodo’s protestations notwithstanding, there is no free press in the Papuan provinces. Police and military continue to claim in the face of incontrovertible evidence that there is no cause for unrest. And still they claim that even advocating for independence is a crime. Attending a peaceful demonstration is considered grounds for arrest and incarceration. Political activity can get you tortured or killed. Virtually all of the independence leaders living in exile have faced systematic persecution extending across borders. After he escaped prison and fled for his life, Benny Wenda faced years of forced immobility because of a flagrantly erroneous Interpol ‘red notice’, which falsely accused Mr Wenda of arson and murder.

Just last month, Mr Wenda was denied entry into the United States following an interview with US Homeland Security personnel. No reason was provided at the time. Presumably, the terrorist watch-list, or a similar international mechanism, is being used to curtail his visibility on the world stage.

It needs to be said that Jokowi, and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono before him, would do more if they could. But the plain truth is that civilian rule of law does not extend to the Papuan provinces. Read more “A hard choice, but a simple one”