Vanuatu is leaning on Aotearoa’s medicinal cannabis production expertise in an effort to prop up its own market.

While the Melanesian nation has topped the Happy Planet Index list twice, as the happiest place in the world, it remains one of the most climate vulnerable states in the world.

Its topsy-turvy political landscape in the recent past has kept its citizens on the edge with prime ministers coming and going non-stop in 2023.

Prime Minister Charlot Salwai, who was elected as prime minister for the second time in October last year after his predecessor was voted out in a no-confidence vote, was in New Zealand for an official visit this week.

He stopped at Puro’s state-of-the-art cannabis cultivation facility in Kēkerengū on Tuesday, as part of his itinerary.

It has taken a while to kick Vanuatu’s 2018 medicinal cannabis legislation into motion, but Salwai is optimistic to get things moving for the economy.

New Zealand has a well-established medical cannabis industry with 40 companies in business since it was legalised in 2020.

Salwai said marijuana grew “easily” across Vanuatu.

‘Grows everywhere’
“[It] grows everywhere in the villages, but we don’t want to grow the wrong one, because it’s against the legislations.”

He said he found the visit to the cannabis farm “interesting”.

“They know about the benefits of this particular kind of marijuana,” he said.

“We need to invite the people who know about it, and the purpose of growing this marijuana is what is interesting to see.

“We invite them to come to Vanuatu and do a small-scale test to see and compare the quality of what we are producing here in Vanuatu, because here [New Zealand] it is seasonal while in Vanuatu it grows the whole year.

“It is good to compare the quality.”

He said Vanuatu is interested in granting medicinal cannabis production licences to those who know “the purpose of growing”.

Vanuatu PM Charlot Saiwai talks New Caledonia. Video: RNZ

Seasonal worker pits and peaks
In June, Luxon said he wanted to double — from 19,000 up to about 38,000 — the number of seasonal workers from its RSE programme participating countries, which include Vanuatu, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Nauru.

There were approximately 47,800 Pacific Islanders that travelled to New Zealand or Australia for seasonal work in 2022-2023, under various labour mobility schemes, according to analysis by Australian academics Professor Paresh Narayan and Dr Bernard Njindan Iyke for 360info.

Vanuatu share of seasonal workers in New Zeeland was more than 5000 in 2022.

The Labour Commissioner Murielle Meltenoven warned at the time that the domestic labour market was concerned about “brain drain”.

Salwai has hinted at a possible internal review of Vanuatu’s seasonal worker programmes with Australia and New Zealand.

He wrapped up his tour of New Zealand with RSE workers, a focal point of discussions Luxon.

Responding to questions around whether his counterpart’s plans to double RSE numbers are realistic, he said: “We need to discuss it, not with New Zealand, but internally in Vanuatu.”

Small population
He said Vanuatu has a small population of only about 300,000 people, and doubling RSE workers to New Zealand would also affect the labour in his own country.

However, her acknowledged that the regional labour schemes were bringing in much needed remittance and assisting many families.

“[The RSE] provides access to their kids to go to school, have access to development, build new houses or doing business.

“What we [are] afraid of is what is happening even in the Pacific . . . even those who are well-educated are taking the same opportunity to look for jobs outside.”

New Zealand welcomes Vanuatu leader.     Video: RNZ

Deep sea mining
Meanwhile, Vanuatu has been a vocal advocate against deep sea mining, has legislation which allow licences to be granted for deep sea mining exploration.

Salawai said Vanuatu sits on the rim of fire and there are environmental risks under the water.

“As a country, we need to know what is under and inside our waters” as well as “opportunity on our airspace”.

“We can allow license to do [deep sea] explorations, but to operate, it is another issue,” he said, adding “we don’t get what we [are] supposed to get on our airspace”.

‘We lose all the beauties of our islands’
More than a year on from twin cyclone disaster Judy and Kevin, Vanuatu is building back but not necessarily better.

Salwai said people whose homes were destroyed have been in limbo for what feels like a lifetime.

He said something that cannot be replaced is the land.

He said waves generated by the cyclones and sea level rise have destroyed beaches across Vanuatu:

“I am afraid that we lose all the beauties of our islands, but our kids, our children for tomorrow, won’t see it.

“Maybe, we will see it in the picture, but not in reality.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Vanuatu Prime Minister Charlot Salwai — who is also Chairman of the Melanesian Spearhead Group — has reaffirmed MSG’s support of the pro-independence umbrella group Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) stance opposing the French government’s constitutional bill “unfreezing” the New Caledonia Electoral Roll.

It is also opposed to the proposed changes to the citizens’ electorate and the changes to the distribution of seats in Congress, reports the Vanuatu Daily Post.

In a statement yesterday, he expressed “sadness” over the “unfortunate happenings that have befallen New Caledonia over the last few days”, referring to the riots sparked by protests over the French law changes.

Salwai expressed support for the FLNKS call for calm, and shared the FLNKS’s condemnation of the violence.

The MSG Chair said in the statement that the indiscriminate destruction of property would affect New Caledonia’s economy in a “very big way” and that would have a “debilitating cascading effect on the welfare and lives of all New Caledonians, including the Kanaks”.

Consistent with the support recorded during the MSG Senior Officials Meeting and the MSG Foreign Ministers Meeting in March this year, Salwai reaffirmed that the French government “must withdraw or annul the Constitutional Bill that has precipitated these regrettable events in New Caledonia”.

“These events could have been avoided if the French government had listened and not proceeded to press forward with the Constitutional Bill aimed at unfreezing the electoral roll, modifying the citizen’s electorate, and changing the distribution of seats in Congress,” the statement said.

“There is [a] need for the French government to return to the spirit of the Noumea Accord in its dealings relating to New Caledonia,” Salwai said.

The MSG Chair added that there was an urgent need now for France to agree to the proposal by the FLNKS to establish a dialogue and mediation mission to discuss a way forward so that normalcy could be restored quickly and an enduring peace could prevail in New Caledonia.

The statement was signed by Salwai and Vanuatu’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister Matai Seremaiah.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In Vanuatu, one key party in the government says it will boycott tomorrow’s planned session of Parliament.

That session is due to consider several constitutional amendments and the leader of the Reunification of Movements for Change party, former Prime Minister Charlot Salwai, said there had been no consultation with civil society.

He said it was the people’s constitution and they had the right to have their say before approval by Parliament.

The planned changes include:

• extending the parliamentary term from four to five years,
• allowing cabinet to have 17 members — up from the current 13,
• involving mayors in the selection process for the head of state, and
• amendments that will allow a broader definition of who qualifies for citizenship.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

A public broadcasting advocacy group has condemned Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s plan to commercialise Pacific broadcasting as not being able to provide quality public interest journalism to the country’s neighbours.

Supporters of Australian Broadcasting in Asia and the Pacific, a group linked to ABC Friends, has asked Morrison to rethink his plans.

“If Mr Morrison wants to restore a fresh initiative like the Australia Network he is dependent on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation which has the experience and professionalism to create strong partnerships with Pacific nations,” the supporters statement said.

READ MORE: Morrison to unveil broad suite of measures to boost Australia’s influence in the Pacific

“The voice of Australia through Radio Australia, and more recently via a wider range of ABC media platforms, has long been valued by people in the Pacific and many ABC broadcasters have become popular in the region.”

Australian foreign policy would not be enhanced by the “commercial news judgements of Fox or Sky News”, which did not provide independent analysis of complex issues.

-Partners-

Professional broadcasting in the Pacific depended on “two-way respectful communication” that enhanced understanding of diverse perspectives in the region, the advocacy group said.

Clear expectations
In recent months Pacific leaders had made clear their expectations of Australian/Pacific public broadcasting:

• Vanuatu Prime Minister Charlot Salwal has called for rebuilding public interest broadcasting;
• In a speech to the Lowy Institute, Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi had called for the Pacific voice to be heard in Australia; and
• Other Pacific leaders had echoed this call, as well as Secretary-General of the South Pacific Forum.

“Significantly, if Australia were to accept this approach to Pacific broadcasting it would become the only nation to rely on the commercial sector to deliver its ‘soft power’ diplomacy.

“Just imagine Canada or Britain giving such a significant national task to commercial interests!” said the statement.

ABC Friends national president Margaret Reynolds urged Prime Minister Morrison to reconsider this public policy shift and take advice from the Department of Foreign Affairs which was more familiar with the needs of Pacific nations and managing diplomatic relations.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

It’s been widely reported that Prime Minister Charlot Salwai wants a new submarine cable for Vanuatu.

It’s at the top of his wish list as he visits Canberra this week. And Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop stopped only a hair shy of agreeing to fund it before they’d even sat down together.

The visit can be credited largely to some very tactful engagement by the Vanuatu contingent of Australia’s diplomatic corps. While it has to be said that the idea coalesced long before the whole China furore erupted, there’s little debate why it suddenly got so much traction with Australia’s PMO.

In the time-honoured spirit of what’s good for that goose there and that other goose over there is good for this goose over here, it transpires that one of the most likely outcomes of the visit, glad-handing and ceremony aside, will be a second fibre-optic cable for the country.

That’s a great deal. It’s essential for Vanuatu, because it assures redundancy, should anything happen to our first cable.

It’s good for businesses, especially financial operations, who can now shop around for bulk bandwidth prices. This opens a lot of doors for offshore companies, among others.

It may or may not be a good deal for Interchange Ltd, however. That’s the company that owns the original cable, running from Suva in Fiji to Port Vila.

Way-station
They’ve already announced their intention to build a spur up to Honiara to join with Solomon Islands’ new cable. This would effectively turn our internet point of presence into an international way-station, topologically speaking, rather than the end of the line.

The Vanuatu Daily Post published concerns expressed by CEO Simon Fletcher that he was being frozen out of the planning stages of the planned Coral Sea Cable joining PNG and Solomon Islands to Australia.

So an obvious question arises: If Australia accedes to Charlot Salwai’s request for assistance with a second cable, will it belong to Interchange or not?

That’s not a simple question. Nor is there a simple answer.

On the one hand, there’s a pretty strong argument to be made that steamrolling over privately-owned infrastructure using public funds is not what we generally mean when we talk about development.

On the other hand, competition is demonstrably good—and arguably necessary—in the telecoms sector. The introduction of a second telephone company in 2008 revolutionised communications in Vanuatu, adding an estimated 1 percent to our GDP growth in the mid-term.

Since the ICL cable arrived in 2013, internet use in Vanuatu has exploded. Bandwidth usage has increased by more than two orders of magnitude in just a few years. These have been achieved even though the lowest-cost broadband connection packages cost nearly 10 percent of the minimum monthly wage. Imagine the impact lower prices would have.

Region-leader
The Australian government has already invested millions of dollars in Vanuatu’s Universal Access Policy, which has made it a region-leader in broadband internet accessibility. To add a second more competitive cable as the cherry on top would be one heck of a final flourish.

The government of Vanuatu has got to feel conflicted here. It is a 12.5 percent shareholder in Interchange Ltd, and has gone to bat—and gone too far, according to the courts—in protecting shareholder interests in the company. After the independent telecoms regulator, or TRR, imposed price controls on Interchange and others, the Prime Minister wrote a scathing letter, accusing her (against evidence to the contrary) of rendering the telecoms sector “paralysed, handicapped and stagnant”.

Salwai’s attempt to suspend and presumably to sack her was rebuffed by the Supreme Court amid findings of conspiracy and collusion.

Since then, he’s resorted to legislative measures. In the latest Parliament, legislation was amended to make the TRR answerable to a politically appointed oversight panel. The amendment was introduced without any stakeholder consultation or public awareness. The Daily Post only received a copy of the bill after it was passed.

Australia is always quick to proclaim that its development aid is completely untied. In this case, however, a few strings attached wouldn’t go wrong.

Both the World Bank and the government of Australia have invested significant resources in helping develop Vanuatu’s telecoms sector, and the results have been a shining success. Vanuatu recently won international recognition at the UN as a leader in using ICT for development. Much of that progress was made possible by Australian taxpayers.

One of the largest interventions has been to help with the creation of an independent regulator to prevent a repeat of the depredations that happened in the bad old monopoly days before we had two telcos.

Fair and free competition
So it might not be inappropriate to remind the Prime Minister of the benefits of fair and free competition—and of the dangers of regulatory capture. Corporate influence and lobbying operations in the US telecoms sector have turned it from a world leader to a technological backwater for residential internet, allowing Europe and Asia to leapfrog them in terms of affordable and effective high tech.

And every Australian has the measure of the NBN.

China knows the value of e-commerce perhaps better than any other nation. And you can bet your bottom dollar that if Australia won’t come to play, China will—albeit with very different emphasis and values. It was fears over Chinese influence that drove Australia’s initial telecoms investment back in the oughties.

It shouldn’t be the defining concern, though. Telecommunications is something that requires large pots of money, but that’s not all that’s required. We need to be able to live with the results. And two questions pop to the top of everyone’s mind here when the subject of another cable comes up:

1) If public money is competing with private investment, what is the potential for market distortion?

2) But if public money is used to bolster Interchange’s de facto monopoly in Vanuatu, is this the kind of market balance we want?

If Australia wants to shout us a cable, they’ll likely have no choice but to attach a few strings. Choosing which strings to attach will be an unenviable task.

The Pacific Media Centre republishes Vanuatu Daily Post stories with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Vanuatu Prime Minister Charlot Salwai, the Minister responsible for Telecommunications, has informed Parliament that a cyber crime bill currently being developed will address the increasing issues and concerns regarding social media, especially Facebook.

He made the statement during the Ordinary Parliament sitting when responding to concerns raised by Malekula Member of Parliament, Sato Kilman regarding allegations made against him on the popular social media site.

MP Kilman referred to a post allegedly made by a fake ID that was circulated on Facebook, carrying allegations that the former Vanuatu Prime Minister had at least six bank accounts in Hong Kong with a total amount of 8 million euros.

“There are allegations that the Minister for Foreign Affairs is responsible for the post,” MP Kilman alleged.

“Does the government have resources to check such allegations before posting in public and tarnishing someone’s reputation?

“Can the police investigate if such allegations are true or not?

“You can apologise later but by then the damage has been done, a person’s credibility has been ruined. That happens to me but am sure it can happen to any of us.”

-Partners-

Emerging issues
MP Kilman then asked the Prime Minister if the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) can use its resources to track down whoever is responsible for such posts.

In response, Prime Minister Salwai said the government was aware of emerging issues regarding Facebook.

“The government is working on a Cyber Crime Act, which will likely be ready by the next Parliament session to address this issue because Facebook has gone beyond [control],” said Prime Minister Salwai.

He said Facebook was not only a national but an international issue.

“It was the first agenda discussed during the Commonwealth Leaders meeting in London because people are using it to create a lot of social problems and attack people without substantiating information,” said Prime Minister Salwai.

He added that the issue was common in the Pacific and also in Vanuatu, people were using Facebook for political gain, attacking and making false statements or allegations about others.

“I think it is about time we should address this issue and as the Minister responsible for Telecommunications I want to announce to the House that the Cyber Crime Bill will come before this Parliament so we can control the use of social media.

“It has come to an extent where people feel free to say anything about others.”

Fake ID
On the other hand, PM Salwai said social media, especially Facebook, was a good communication tool but people were using it in the wrong way.

In a supplementary comment to the Prime Minister’s response, Foreign Affairs Minister Ralph Regenvanu confirmed seeing the post which he alleged was posted by a fake ID and not him as claimed.

Minister Regenvanu also confirmed allegations made by an adviser of a MP that he was the person behind the fake ID was false.

Minister Regenvanu said that out of all members of the House, being a regular Facebook user he had been the subject of many false allegations.

“That is what we should expect as MPs, we become figures of public scrutiny, you will find a lot of false allegations against me in Facebook,” he said.

“For example, they alleged I signed an agreement for the Chinese to build a military base here.

“I agree with the Prime Minister that we should have more control but we have to have some line so we don’t have too much control on media because freedom of expression is a constitutional right.

“We also have media freedom so we have to draw a fine line between unsubstantiated stories and balanced stories.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have that in Facebook so we have to look into that.”

The Pacific Media Centre republishes Vanuatu Daily Post stories with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz