PM:Thank you ladies and gentlemen of the press. Can I begin by acknowledging the recent natural disaster which is - or tragic disaster which has just occurred in Tonga overnight, an inter-island ferry has sunk and there has been considerable loss of life.
And, as leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum, we have already extended to our colleague, the Prime Minister of Tonga, our deep condolences to the people of Tonga and of course our thoughts and our prayers are with the families of those who have been affected by this great tragedy.
Today in Cairns we have concluded the 40th Pacific Islands Forum; a 40th Pacific Islands Forum whose focus has been climate change and our response to the global economic recession.
On climate change, the leaders have issued a Pacific Leaders' call to action on climate change on the road to Copenhagen. On the response to the global economic crisis, we have issued a Cairns compact on strengthening development coordination in the Pacific.
Let me first go to climate change. On climate change, we - the leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum - have put out a call to action to other global leaders urgently seeking their support to deal with the threat of climate change.
For so many of my colleagues here on the platform before you, this is not just a matter of importance, it is not just a matter of urgency. For many of them, it is a matter of national survival.
The very viability of certain of the small island states is at stake on the question of how we deal or choose not to deal with climate change.
As I said to some of you yesterday here, it is a stark and sobering statistic that 50 per cent of the populations of the Pacific Island countries lie within 1.5 kilometres of their coastlines. Therefore the impact of coastal inundation is huge, potentially huge, if climate change is allowed to continue unabated.
With just 122 days to go between now and Copenhagen, we the leaders of the Pacific Island countries, and leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum, call on world leaders to increase their level of ambition and to seek an agreement that puts the world on a path to limit global average temperature increases to two degrees Celsius or less.
We call on all countries to agree to reduce global emissions by at least 50 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050. We call on all countries to agree that global emissions peak no later than 2020.
And we call also on developed economies to put in place domestic policies and legislation now to achieve emissions reductions targets.
The conversations we have had in these last few days have reinforced the absolute urgency of acting on climate change. We cannot simply afford to wait.
As we move towards Copenhagen in December, it is also critical that we continue to put together the necessary international support to get a first-class outcome in Copenhagen. That will be difficult to achieve. That requires a renewal of all of our political mandates.
But it becomes particularly important for the most vulnerable developing countries. And, again, I emphasise many of those most vulnerable developing countries, the small island countries stand here on this platform with me today.
On our response to the global economic recession and the global economic crisis, what we have done today is agree on a Cairns Compact on development coordination.
It is a sobering fact that across our region some 2.7 million people live in poverty. It is also a sobering fact that against the measure of the Millennium Development Goals, in many of the countries of the Pacific Islands Forum that a number of those Millennium Development Goals are not showing improvement but in fact showing regression. We must therefore act to counter this.
What we have done through this Cairns Compact on development coordination today is call on all donor countries to coordinate their efforts. There is a challenge for many of the small island countries here assembled today in dealing with a multiplicity of incoming donor representations, donor countries, donor organisations. It becomes a physical problem of coordination on the ground.
We therefore, through the Forum, must lift our efforts to new heights to effectively coordinate the inflow of development assistance from other countries.
The second aspect of the Cairns compact on development coordination is to call on donors and recipients to work together on the basis of agreed national plans of economic development to ensure that we are focusing on the key challenges for each nation. And in so many countries, independently, and so many countries already in partnership with Australia through our Pacific development plans, these national plans are being directed in towards the measures outlined in the Millennium Development Goals, and the timelines within which they need to be achieved.
A third matter that we touched on today was Fiji. The Pacific Islands Forum reaffirmed its decision to suspend Fiji's military regime from the councils of the Forum. Forum countries are deeply troubled by the continued deterioration in the situation in Fiji. Media freedom is being trampled upon. Church leaders are being arrested. The people of Fiji deserve better. They deserve a prompt and early return to democracy.
Therefore the Forum has resolved today, parallel to that of the Commonwealth of Nations meeting most recently in London, through the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, is to maintain a clear and absolute line when it comes to the unacceptability of the actions undertaken by the Fiji administration in most recent times.
Members of the Forum, however, wish and look forward to the day when Fiji returns properly to the democratic family of the Forum. That is the common aspiration of us all and we would look forward to any actions on the part of the Fiji administration which would cause us to have any confidence that that was occurring.
Finally, in terms of my own role as chairman, can I thank very much my colleagues here assembled. In particular I single out Toke Talagi, the Premier of Niue, who has acted as an excellent chairman of the Pacific Islands Forum these last 12 months. He has become a great colleague and, representing as he does, a country of 1200 or so people, he has shouldered an enormous burden on behalf of the Pacific Islands Forum this last 12 months and I congratulate him for his efforts.
Could I also thank each and every one of my other colleagues here and those who have not been able to join us for this press conference, for their excellent contribution to deliberations today.
When the Pacific Forum meets - Pacific Islands Forum meets, it is not a normal meeting. We choose to do so in a relaxed and Pacific way. It means there is lots of conversation, it means there is lots discussion, it means there's lots of agreement. There's no shouting, there's no raising of voices. We work our way through the challenges and that has been effectively done here today with my colleagues. And I would thank each and every one of them for the excellent contributions that they have made.
Could I also mention one particular initiative, or two, that we've also discussed coming out of our deliberations on our dinner on the first evening. One relates to the challenge, not just of climate change more generally, but on renewable energy in particular, and how the Pacific Islands economies in the future deal with the challenges of climate change, the cost of fossil fuels, and the need for renewable energy.
What we have done, as Australia, is indicate that we will work in partnership with our friends in New Zealand on a new renewable energy initiative through the agency of the Pacific Islands Forum secretariat, which Australia will contribute some $25 million to.
In the first instance, a region-wide audit of existing renewable energy possibilities for each of the Forum countries, given the enormous costs which they currently bear for the importation of fossil fuels. And, secondly, what might be necessary and possible subsequent to that to enhance their use of solar, enhance their use of wind, enhance their use of wave, enhance their use of other forms of renewable energy.
What is heartening is listening to the reports of many of my colleagues is the extent to which they have already undertaken actions in this direction, including in a presentation this afternoon the Premier of Niue, within his country.
One further initiative goes to the absolute importance of the social fabric of the countries of the Pacific Islands Forum as well. We discussed at length - some considerable length - the role of sport in our communities; the role of football, the role of rugby union, rugby league, of soccer, of netball, and of cricket, in building and maintaining the social fabric across this vast community of nations, this vast community of societies across Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia.
And again, as Australia, we'll be increasing our own investment by $10 million to a total of $26 million, to a new Sports Compact with the island countries of the Pacific. Our objective is this: to invest at the grassroots, at community level sport right across the island countries. A really good opportunity to link sports participation on the part of young people - young men in particular but not exclusively young men - and to link that increasingly with education and training opportunities.
And, again, we had great presentations today from many of my colleagues about how this is working on the ground in a number of their countries. And I would draw particular attention to the contribution this afternoon by the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands.
In conclusion, can I say that this has been a good Forum. Our focus has been twofold: to deliver a strong call to action worldwide on climate change from the countries which stand to be most affected by climate change, the small island countries of the Pacific; and, secondly, on behalf of the small and in some cases vulnerable economies, to issue our compact for greater coordination of development assistance across the Pacific so that these countries may more robustly confront the challenges of the global economic recession and the task of sustainable economic growth ahead.
I will conclude my remarks there, unless you wish to add, Premier?
PREMIER OF NUIE: No, thank you.
PM: Then I and others are happy to take your questions. And if they are exceptionally difficult or complex I will turn to the senior statesman of the region, the Grand Chief, Sir Michael Somare, who will answer all hard questions that you might have.
JOURNALIST: Has there been any progress made (inaudible) free trade agreement. And if not, is that because of Fiji's (inaudible)?
PM: Not at all. In fact, our resolution today was to proceed with what is called, commonly PACER Plus. And we intend as governments, to head precisely in that direction and we've discussed specific official's level mechanisms to continue to keep the administration in Fiji informed of developments in - of those ministerial level negotiations which will occur between all other governments.
We believe that in terms of the future, not only are freer trading arrangements the best way to go for the future but also a greater and greater role for the private economy in each of our various member states. (inaudible)
JOURNALIST: At the - in the lead up to the forum there was a suggestion came out of the (inaudible) meeting that negotiations won't start straight up at the forum, have you confirmed when all negotiations might begin on this (inaudible).
PM: The answer to that question is a very robust ‘soon'. They will get underway fairly rapidly. And we have resolved the mechanisms in terms, as I said, of how to maintain coordination at a low official level with the Fiji administration.
We do not believe that should be an impediment to proceeding. We will proceed, but ministerial level negotiations will occur only between those countries which are represented here.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: It is a clear-cut reflection of the views of my colleagues, Pacific Island leaders, that, we, the developed economies, need to act and I know my colleague in New Zealand is facing these challenges as well.
We are facing these challenges in Australia and that is the importance of ensuring that the targets we nominate for ourselves as the developed economies are capable of being implemented through legislation and regulation and the various forms of cap and trade systems that have been embraced around the world.
So for Australia, as you know, we have with eight days to go to the vote in the Senate, our legislation ready and raring to go. One problem lies in the road and I think you know where that problem is.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, that international symbol of survival and fire fighter's compassion from the bushfires. Sam the koala has died today, can I ask do you have any (inaudible)?
PM: Yeah I just heard this before I came in and very interesting, when I travelled to London for the G20 summit in early April, the symbol of hope for so many people around the world was the great picture of that wonderful koala being fed water by one of our fire fighters. And I think that gave people of the world a great sense that this country Australia, could come through those fires as we have.
And Sam the koala was part of the symbolism of that and it's tragic that Sam the koala is no longer with us. Yes.
JOURNALIST:Could I direct a question to Prime Minister of Vanuatu?
PM: You may and if it's too difficult I'll (inaudible)
JOURNALIST: Mr Natapei, I am just wondering about the (inaudible)
PRIME MINISTER OF VANUATU:Yes we had the opportunity to explain Fiji's situation and we, in fact, in the communiqué have got a paragraph of dealing with the possibility of dialogue coming up at some later stage and ensuring that we are able to continue to talk to other sectors of the communities in Fiji.
PM: I think, as the Prime Minister has just indicated, I think in the last paragraph of the section of the communiqué dealing with Fiji we maintain the preparedness on the part of the forum to engage with Fiji. That's consistent with previous forum communiqués.
We've also indicated our preparedness to continue to execute that engagement both through the ministerial contact group and through the particular working group which exists beneath that and that's reflected clearly in the communiqué.
As I said in my remarks before, we look forward to the day when Fiji returns to the family of democracy within our region. Regrettably, Commodore Bainimarama does not seem to have that attitude.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister Natapei, did you raise the issue of West Papua (inaudible)?
PRIME MINISTER OF VANUATU: No, that issue was not raised (inaudible) of this latest summit.
JOURANLIST: (inaudible)
PRIME MINISTER OF VANUATU: We will do that and also we will be working with the leaders of the churches to try and establish contact with the churches in Fiji.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: Well, the security of Australian military installations is properly the province of Australia's first of all, defence establishments and if there is any breach of that or alleged breach of that then it properly lies in the province of Australia's law enforcement authorities.
I am not in the business of directing them on how they should or should not behave that's an independent matter for the security authorities on the base. Then for law enforcement authorities which are part of our normal justice system.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: Well, as Prime Minister of the country I take the security of our military installations very seriously. And therefore these are not things to be trifled with. And therefore independent processes will proceed in terms of any violation which has occurred but that's entirely the province of others.
When we're dealing with the broader threat of terrorism, and the robustness of our defences against terrorism, as I indicated, I think, in my statements to you yesterday or the day before, we must remain vigilant as a nation, the threat of terrorism remains alive and well and as I indicated also in my statement to you that we, through the national security committee the cabinet, have commissioned a full and comprehensive review of every aspect of the current protective security arrangements surrounding our Defence facilities.
JOURNALIST: Mr Rudd, (inaudible) leader spoke to Australia and the United Nations to investigate the Chinese crackdown on Uighurs. Will Australia be part of that investigation and will Stephen Smith (inaudible)?
PM: The first matter is I haven't seen that statement and I will study it in full. On the second matter and that's a question best directed to the Foreign Minister. Based on what I've seen most recently I understand not but check with the Foreign Minister, I've been preoccupied here.
And thirdly I thought your question went to, also went to the question of what actions United Nations should take.
I simply reiterate what I have said in the past and will continue to say in the future that, including in a lecture I gave and public comments I've delivered in China itself, and that is that there are human rights abuses in China and the international community must continue to acknowledge that fact as well as the fact that there have been improvements in other aspects of China's human rights situation as well.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: That's you, Rowan.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: I think the underpinning logic of the second agreement that we had today which was that concerning our compact on the strengthening of development assistance coordination in the Pacific, reflects the combined frustrations of so many of the government's represented here with me, on what a spaghetti bowl it currently represents.
If you are, as one of my colleagues said, without naming him, sitting there with your officials to discover that at any given time half of them are off-shore, running around with various programmes being offered by dozens of competing and occasionally conflicting development assistance programmes, you've got a challenge on your hands.
Therefore, you can either just wait for that to get worse and worse, or you can specifically seek to improve it. And what we've sought to do, without reference to any particular country, and with as much reference to ourselves as to anyone else, is to improve the level of coordination, before it's actually, shall I say, presented to the Governments of the Pacific.
We would hope that in the future, China of course, would work with us, as would other countries across the donor assistance community - that includes the European Union and others. Because the common task of development is agreed to by all member states of the United Nations, which are those contained within the Millennium Development Goals.
Now there was someone over here.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: Well first of all I don't know the particular statement to which you refer, so I will look at that in due season won't I, Mr Lester? Thank you. And so Mr Lester has engaged in conspicuous front row eye-rolling at this stage which he should do more subtly, when he disagrees with what I'm saying.
And the truth of it, Mr Lester is that I haven't seen the report that's just been referred to. I doubt that you have either. Am I correct? Thank you. And so it is a cautionary tale to say that you have not read the report which has just been referred to you and that's the case, as far as what you have just said.
Secondly, in terms of transparency which is the heart of your question, we need to have complete transparency about what we're doing as far as development assistance programmes are going.
Ours are declared through our budgets process and a whole series of ancillary documents in terms of what's available to our Forum countries. I know the same is true of my colleague from New Zealand and we work exceptionally closely together in the common challenges across the Pacific. More broadly, transparency should be the principle which applies to all, and all countries engaged in the common task of development within this region.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: Sorry, can you say that again?
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: You know something, I've been very in-this all day and I don't know anything about the Greenpeace protest in Mackay. And that's the truth.
JOURNALIST: Mr Rudd, just your reaction on today's unemployment figures and also the Opposition's called for you to slow down the (inaudible)
PM: Today's unemployment figures should give us all pause for concern about the state of unemployment in Australia. If you look at the numbers, it shows an increase in, it shows a fall in full-time employment and it shows, obviously, a larger increase in part-time employment.
Can I say though, that if you look at these figures over time and what's happening with full-time employment and part-time employment, that should give us cause for concern.
This region, in Far North Queensland for example, we have very high levels of unemployment. It is one of the 20 or so priority areas of unemployment across the country, where you see huge impacts being felt. So as I've said before and I mean it absolutely, we're not out of the woods yet when it comes to global economic recession.
Can I also say for those who are now talking about national and international stimulus strategies, if you were to try and trace back where we began to see some modest turning of the corner when it comes to global economic sentiment and the performance of the global economy, we go back to the actions taken by governments at the London Summit of the G20 in March/April, where governments collectively committed to $5 trillion worth of injection into the global economy, in order to make a difference.
Out of a $63 trillion global economy, that's a large investment. And those investments by those governments were spread over some time. If you want to know what helps to underpin confidence on the part of markets, it's looking at that common resolve of governments not just to announce that, but also to deploy it and to continue to implement it.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: Well in my answer to an earlier question which asked for a specific date, I just said soon, because I don't wish to mislead you about a date, like a date and a month. But in our discussions today there was no raising of any reservation about when these negotiations should get underway.
The one technical matter we had to resolve was the contingent line of, shall I say, low level official contact with Fiji during the process of these negotiations. We resolved that. Impediments in terms of the unfolding of those negotiations have been removed. PACER Plus will get underway and that is our common resolve.
Can I conclude ladies and gentlemen, by thanking you for your attendance at the 40th Pacific Island Forum and to conclude also, where I began, by thanking heartily my friends and colleagues from across the region and thanking also, on behalf of them, the great city of Cairns and the people of Cairns for making all of us feel so welcome in this great city - for what I believe has been a successful forum on climate change and the future of the regional economy. I thank you.
(Ends)