PIRNIIMSTEE
TRANSCRIPT OF NEWS CONFERENCE, TARAWA AIRPORT, KIRIBATI, 9
JULY 1989
E 0 E PROOF ONLY
JOURNALIST; Prime Minister, can you tell us, what's your
interest driftnet fishing and what can the Forum do
about it?
PM: I think it really is a disaster for the region.
Essentially what it is doing is taking a yield which is more
than sustainable. In other words, if they keep taking a
yield like this they'll eventually, and eventually not being
a very long time, they'll wipe out the basic resource. For
these, for so many of these small island states, this is
virtually their only resource. Now the second part of your
question, what can the Forum do about it? Well, I certainly
intend to try and make it a major issue here and we will, I
hope, adopt a resolution here which will be effective in
regard to the activities of the Forum island states
themselves, but I hope it will be a start then to trying to
get universal action to ban this form~ of fishing which is,
as I say, dangerous in terms of economics but also in
environmental terms because it doesn't only take out fish.
JOURNALIST: specific prescription of what that
resolution might be like?
PM: Well, no. I just don't land here and tell you
before I talk to the people that I want to be talking with
what's in the resolution. I've got some ideas about what it
shoul4l contain, but I will be discussing this with the Forum
leaders immediately tonight at the dinner.
JOURNALIST: How much pressure can the Forum bring on
countries like Japan and Taiwan?
PM: Well, what is certain is that the Forum as a whole can
do more than the individual countries can do, but I've had
the opportunity of raising this matter in the last few weeks
with the large powers that I've been talking with France
and Britain and Germany and the United States and I got
very positive reactions from them to this issue. So I think
that from the Forum here we'll be able to start
an international push to get sense to prevail because there
can be no sense in unregulated activities which have the
nets 50 kilometres or more long just being dragged through
the ocean taking everything in their paths and, as I say,
wiping out in a relatively short time the basic resource of
these countries as well as taking up into these nets birds,
whales, all sorts of things as well a-s wiping out the
fundamental resource. That is something that is not
acceptable, I believe.
JOURNALIST: Are nations which sell their fishing rights,
like Kiribati, on side?
P14: Well, we have had a recent meeting of Forum Fisheries
Agency and my I've been reading in the plane coming out
here, there is a fairly universal concern about this. There
ought to be.
JOURNALIST: What are you going to discuss with Mr Lange at
your talks?
PH: Well again, I think I'll do the discussion with him
there rather than here if you don't mind.
JOURNALIST: Are you going to argue, try and convince him
again not to institute the nuclear ships ban?
PM: he doesn't need to see me at breakfast tomorrow to
know what I feel about that. I've told him ad nauseam. I
don't think he'll be wasting time by me going over that. He
knows what my position is on that.
JOURNALIST: He said here today that he will be talking to
you about the New Zealand Anzac ship purchase. What are you
going to say to him?
PM: What I've been saying before, that he ought to buy four
of them.
JOURNALIST: Mr Hawke, constitutional progress has still
been slow in Fiji. Do you think there will be some
discussion here or will it be glossed over at the Forum?
PM: I don't think it will be a matter specifically on the
Forum,. there might be some corridor discussion about it.
JOURNALIST: What are the other important issues at this
Forum?
PH: Well, I think there's the general economic issues,
trade issues and environmental issues in general. You'll
remember at the last Forum I made the offer which was
accepted with a considerable degree of pleasure that we
, would finance the creation of monitoring stations in the
3.
region here to look at what's happening to ocean levels and
so on and I'll have something more specific and useful to
say to them about that.
JOURNALIST: Have we now reached the point where we should
have a more permanent home for the Forum, that small
countries like Kiribati have been over-tested in hosting
PM: Come on, you've just arrived. I'm-sure by the time you
finish here you'll be wanting to hold the next one here.
ends