Pacific Media Centre
By Mackenzie Smith
Student journalists returning from a mission to Fiji, where they have been reporting the effects of climate change, say it is hitting the region hard.
The Bearing Witness project is a collaboration between AUT’s Pacific Media Centre and the University of the South Pacific, with a focus on highlighting the impact climate change has on the Pacific.
Julie Cleaver, a Communication Studies Honours student journalist and Debate editor, and Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Kendall Hutt spent two weeks in Fiji last month as part of the mission.
Hutt said the Bearing Witness programme, which is in its second year, was a good learning experience for young journalists wanting to understand the Pacific region.
The pair said the effects of climate change on Fiji were happening now and were more than just rising sea levels.
“When you get talking to the people, it was immediate very quickly because they mentioned it was affecting their lives and the lives of their parents,” said Cleaver.
Hutt said there was a perception outside of the Pacific that climate change wasn’t having an impact but that in Fiji people were “ living with it every day”.
Paris agreement important
She said when she arrived in late April there were heavy rainstorms as well as nearby Cyclone Donna and Ella, which were all much later in the season than normal.
“In some parts of Fiji it’s too wet and it’s raining and in other parts you have people suffering with drought,” said Cleaver.
Hutt said seeing the change first hand made her realise how important the implementation of policy like the Paris Climate Agreement was for regions hit first by climate change like the Pacific.
“There was an acceptance that climate change won’t stop, it can’t stop but any actions you take in mitigating its ongoing effects is massive for the region,” said Hutt.
The Paris Agreement, signed in 2015 by almost 200 United Nations members, has the primary goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions enough to keep global temperatures below 2 degrees celsius by the end of the century.
During their trip, the two journalists followed the journey of people from the village of Tukuraki in the Fiji highlands of Ba, Viti Levu, who have been forced to relocate three times after landslides and cyclones destroyed their homes.
However, Hutt said the people of Tukuraki were resilient and “not just accepting of their fate”, but willing to adapt and fight climate change.
“People in the Pacific don’t see themselves as victims of climate change, they aren’t just letting it happen to them.”
The project is a collaboration between AUT’s Pacific Media Centre and Te Ara Motuhenga documentary collective, and USP’s Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PacE-SD) and Regional Journalism Programme. Below: A video about the project made by Cleaver and Hutt featuring PMC director Professor David Robie.
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Green MP Catherine Delahunty with West Papua’s Benny Wenda (centre) and Pacific Media Centre members at Auckland University of Technology. Image: PMC[/caption]
Green MP Catherine Delahunty – who has been a vocal supporter of West Papuan independence throughout her political career – told Asia Pacific Report the meeting at Parliament by the IPWP was “amazing”.
“We had a really amazing evening at Parliament with the Westminster Declaration. We had a number of MP’s – nine MP’s on the night – including others subsequently signing the declaration, which as you know calls for a referendum, supervised independently by the UN for West Papuans to talk about and identify their views on self-determination.
“That was a really powerful moment. Benny said it’s very important for him travelling the world that he can actually meet the politicians and that the politicians actually – from a number of parties in this case – and sign up to the declaration.”
West Papua was controversially incorporated into Indonesia through a so-called “Act of Free Choice” in 1969 – only 1,026 selected West Papuans out of a population of 800,000 voted to become a part of the country – under duress.
In 2016, politicians from across the globe signed the declaration, first launched in the United Kingdom by Labour leader and co-founder of the International Parliamentarians for West Papua (IPWP), Jeremy Corbyn.
11 MPs signed up
Eleven members of Parliament from across four political parties – Greens, Labour, National and the Māori Party – have signed the declaration.
Green MPs Catherine Delahunty, Barry Coates, Mojo Mathers, Jan Logie and Steffan Browning have signed, along with Labour MPs Louisa Wall, Carmel Sepuloni, Adrian Rurawhe and National MP Chester Burrows.
Co-leader of the Māori Party Marama Fox and Labour MP Aupito S’ua William Sio have also signed.
Delahunty is certain this number will grow, as the declaration is now circulating through caucus, she said.
“Not everyone could make the event, but there are people who are keen to sign up.”
However, National MP Chester Burrows was the only member of National to sign the declaration, reaffirming Delahunty’s belief a change of government is needed for the issues in West Papua to truly gain traction politically.
“It’s frustrating because dreadful things are happening everyday and we’re not getting the political leaders of this country to take it seriously in the government.”
This is because support of West Papua would not come from National, Delahunty said, although she is hopeful.
‘Real core of support’
“We have got a real core of support for that declaration from across the House. Of course we haven’t got the government’s political support, but that’s what we’re working on.”
Delahunty said the rest of Benny Wenda’s visit to New Zealand was also “very lively”.
“In dire weather conditions, about 30 people marched to the Indonesian embassy. For the first time the embassy – the Indonesian officials – actually came out.
“They came out to tell us we were wrong about our views and to hand out propaganda to the university students about how everything is great in West Papua and that West Papuans are leading their own country.
“I challenged them back pretty hard … that was quite a lively experience.”
Speaking with Asia Pacific Report earlier this month, Benny Wenda said the purpose of his visit to New Zealand was to hopefully gain the country’s commitment to West Papua independence:
“West Papua’s hope is Australia and New Zealand. This is a regional issue, this will never go away from your eyes and this is something you need to look at today. Review your foreign policy and look at West Papua.”
During his visit, Wenda also met with Ngāti Whatua, unions, aid agencies, and students while in Wellington,
Hager tells students a key investigative journalism ingredient is source protection. Image: Kendall Hutt/PMC[/caption]
Hager also said drawing information together “is one of the vital components of investigative journalism”.
“It’s trying to crack the facts.”
More importantly, Hager stressed, investigative journalism is about protecting sources.
‘Am I hiding my sources?’
“When I’m writing, I’m always asking myself: ‘Am I hiding my sources well enough?’ Half my brain is in source-protection mode.”
This was true of Hit & Run, Hager said.
“From the very first meetings, I had to make sure that there were no connections between us, so for when the inevitable witchhunt came, nobody would be able to find a connection. No metadata.
“There is no story which is worth ruining someone’s life for.”
Speaking with Asia Pacific Report after the talk, Hager said this was highly important in New Zealand, where a culture of persecuting whistleblowers exists.
“New Zealand is very unkind to whistleblowers. Apart from an occasional, very brave, determined person, hopefully near the end of their career who speaks up, I usually would never recommend someone to be a whistleblower in the sense of being open.
‘We’re going to skin them alive’
“I think it’s much safer for people to leak. We’re a small society where the ‘old boys’ network’ can punish people too much.”
Hager said this was disappointing, given New Zealand’s “long and honourable history” in which people from every sector of society quietly talk to journalists and politicians.
But the ‘old boys’ network’ will not be a deterrent, Hager affirmed.
“As long as we’ve got a country where people want information, there will be people leaking information, that’s guaranteed. We’ll keep going.”
However, he added the military’s actions after the release of Hit & Run prove it has every intention to “punish whistleblowers”.
“They’re having an inquiry right now and the inquiry’s called: ‘Which bastards spoke to them, and we’re going to skin them alive.”
Hager said Hit & Run was the “real story” behind New Zealand’s military role in Afghanistan, in which the SAS had been involved in a “misguided, disastrous raid”.
[caption id="attachment_20107" align="alignnone" width="680"]
Co-authors investigative journalist Nicky Hager (left) and war correspondent Jon Stephenson at the recent Hit & Run book launch in Wellington. Image: ODT[/caption]
‘Unscrupulously covered up’
“It struck me that if we could take one incident from a war, out of all the incidents, and write it really carefully and fully, then somebody who bothered to read that would actually – hopefully – get what a war is like: Real people, in a real situation, where people are fighting on sides and trying to kill each other. Who are these people?”
He also told Asia Pacific Report his thoughts on the military’s decision to hold no inquiry on the claims made in Hit & Run, the origins of which have been “unscrupulously covered up”.
“The military’s reaction to Hit & Run is nothing more than a continuation of a cover-up. This is what a cover-up looks like. They are dodging and weaving. Their arguments are weak, but there’s an underlying determination not to be scrutinised.
“In a normal government world, if someone had been accused of serious things, which they thought weren’t true, they’d want there to be an inquiry, they’d want someone to look at the facts and say, ‘those scurrilous authors were wrong and our reputations have been impugned’. But they don’t want that because we’re right. So what we’re seeing is them desperately trying to avoid being caught out.”
More importantly, the claims made in Hit & Run, Hager said, reveal a problem at the heart of the New Zealand military — secrecy.
“We’re seeing the inevitable results of an organisation which is too secretive. That believes it can keep all of its activities secret. This comes out in all sorts of dodgy, and petty, behaviour inside the Defence Force, because they’ve got used to never being properly scrutinised.
“We’re seeing a systemic problem in a secretive organisation which shouldn’t be so secret.”
On a more positive note, however, Hager closed his talk with a final piece of advice for the aspiring journalists in the room:
“We should be absolutely trustworthy.”
