Speech at the Pacific Islands Forum Summit

Mr Chair

Distinguished Heads of Government of the Pacific, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you sincerely for affording me the opportunity to participate once more in this Summit. I said at the last Summit in Niue that these were crash courses of learning for me. This continues to be the case: perhaps now at a higher level.

Such occasions are deeply appreciated and highly valued. They are an opportunity to listen; to understand better the priority concerns of this region so that our own contributions can be better focussed and supportive; and, to share with you a sense of the Commonwealth’s direction from a perspective that is informed by this region, but also embraces those who live beyond it.

Mr Chair, less than one month ago I participated similarly in the Caribbean region’s annual summit of Heads of Government. It is striking that the preoccupations of that region’s small island state community are so closely mirrored in the discussions that have already taken place here today.

There is the pressing need, for instance, to find durable solutions to the serial global crises – added on to the existential environmental one – that are having such an impact on the societies and economies that were already vulnerable: food, fuel, finance, to which can currently be added yet another health contagion that spreads as far and as fast as today’s fleets of aircraft will allow.

These same concerns and impacts are being felt precisely everywhere else, and thought is being given elsewhere, too, to solutions focussed on many shared responses. These include collective negotiating and purchasing power in such areas as energy security; the promotion of the private sector; the broadening of economies beyond traditional reliance on limited commodity trade and limited services such as tourism; the unsustainable adverse growing ratios between debt and GDP; improved coordination of aid flows away from fragmentation; exacerbation of the challenge of harnessing the potential of the increasing proportion of youth in our societies; declining remittances from migrated skills; or preventing budgetary impact on the pivotal social sectors of health and education. This was also the ground gone repeatedly over by the Lowy Institute conference on global developments and the Pacific in Brisbane on the eve of this summit.

The upsides and downsides of ‘globalisation’ need to be tempered by the spirit of enlightened internationalism and ‘globalism’ – a sense of common responsibility underpinned by shared values, and a recognition that today’s global challenges require responses in which all have an equal stake. True inclusiveness is the core of the Commonwealth spirit; it is also the call of the times.

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting – the CHOGM in Trinidad and Tobago in November will be an opportunity to agree on shared approaches, to strengthen partnerships aimed at building resilience and diminishing vulnerability, and to develop practical collective responses. I look forward to learning in the coming days how that meeting can add value for members of the Pacific Islands Forum.

Mr Chair, at the heart of this CHOGM will be a theme that considers partnership, sustainability, and equity. The Commonwealth has always derived internal strength and external impact from its global web of partnerships and networks. This CHOGM will be introduced to an innovative concept that is being developed with that strength and impact in mind, and which will be built on the technologies of our time. We currently call this tool the Commonwealth Partnership Platform Portal or P3. It will create numerous internet windows through which to find information, best practices, resources, and interaction with those who share the same interests and priorities and an interest in partnering. It will be a huge, non-duplicating new web-based tool for innovative governance and partnerships. Hopefully the Pacific region will find it a welcome vehicle for creating alliances.

Climate change is a dominating preoccupation that is felt locally and globally. This CHOGM will occur on the very eve of the Copenhagen Summit. It will be an opportunity for the voice of the Pacific, on this fateful issue, to be given greater volume and echo by being added to the voices of likeminded states – big and small – from across the globe. We cannot and must not duplicate or second guess those difficult global negotiations, but the Commonwealth has always had the potential to influence the outcomes of global deliberations in ways that are beneficial to the entire international community.

Our areas of concern are clear within the extensive environmental agenda: ready access to technology, finance and expertise for the small states, and a structure of international environmental governance which enables this.

Mr Chair, young people and women remain two core groups for us – they are our natural and under-represented majorities in the Commonwealth just as they are in the Pacific. Our Youth Programme is now more than three decades old, and continues to work in practical ways to provide business skills and credit for young entrepreneurs, to draw young people into the democratic process and culture, and to highlight the development needs of this population segment.

Our priority is to find ways to perpetuate that Youth Programme but also to see it grow and be far more effective: if young people – in whose hands we entrust our future – are to receive the recognition required and to have their needs better addressed, then we all have a good deal more to do to include young people in every possible aspect of public policy and development, and lift their self-belief, opportunities, and skills. “Mainstreaming” – whether of youth or gender – is a somewhat tired term, but its meaning is urgent and clear and the need has certainly not tired with time.

The true indicator of the health of a community is determined by the health of its women and the role that they play in its governance, and, within the larger metaphorical sense, the health of the girl child. The Commonwealth has led efforts to bring the considerations of women to the heart of public policy.

We are looking to participate in the Pacific region’s youth and sport development gathering in New Zealand next year. We are also supporting a regional colloquium in Papua New Guinea in several months’ time on gender, culture and the law. Such are examples of our continued practical commitment to these groups that hold the key to our future.

Allow me to draw leaders’ kind attention in very short order to five other contributions of the Commonwealth to the Pacific which I hope might interest them.

The first is the establishment of a small states office for diplomatic representation in Geneva, just as we have provided for just under a dozen small states in New York. I have written to all leaders about this. We have established that it is feasible. It is likely to cost a tenant country in the order of US$10,000 per annum each to have this physical diplomatic presence if we can, at the same time, persuade a handful of traditional donors to contribute around US$80,000 per annum. The need now is to receive clear expressions of commitment and specific requirements to enable us to move forward on negotiating floor space and so on.

The second is the natural disaster insurance scheme about which I wrote to leaders last year, and which is being offered by the Commonwealth Disaster Management Agency - CDMA - in association with HSBC. This is an innovative approach, under which a government would receive automatic insurance pay-outs in response to agreed disaster parameters – such as a certain strength of cyclone or earthquake – rather than on the basis of an assessment of damage sustained. CDMA has been following up on my initial correspondence, and I encourage a personal interest in studying this proposal where the Commonwealth is demonstrating an innovative and pioneering role once more.

The third is your moves in this region to strengthen economic and trade linkages and resilience. I am pleased to highlight our work on a pre-feasibility study for a Pacific Single Market and Economy, which is being undertaken in collaboration with the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat at the request of Pacific ACP Trade Ministers; on a second phase in partnership with the European Commission of our popular and highly successful ‘Hubs and Spokes’ programme that provides developing states with trade negotiation capacity-building; and on our emerging assistance to the Chief Trade Adviser’s Office in order to support the PACER-Plus negotiations.

Fourthly, I am happy to advise that the Commonwealth Pacific Governance Facility – our cornerstone contribution to the Pacific Plan – is now scaling up into action. We expect a programme Director to be appointed in the next few months; we are finalising the co-location of the programme with our Youth Programme centre in Honiara, which I am visiting from here; and we already have one modest component project that has been launched, concerning land information management in Samoa and Tonga.

The clear focus of this programme is on strengthening governance in the Pacific, and I can assure you that every step we take will continue to be taken in full consultation and liaison; indeed, the four focus areas of this programme have been developed on this basis. I am especially committed to ensuring that the quality of our contribution, based on our global expertise and experience, is fully coordinated with other governance-strengthening activity in the Pacific. We have no independent axe to grind; we never had; and we won’t be starting now at a time when the imperative of improved coordination in an era of relative donor austerity is more evidently necessary than ever before.

In recognition of the centrality of infrastructure to growth, the last is a compilation we are making of positive public-private sector partnerships examples globally in this area, which will hopefully be seen as a useful continually updated resource of our members.

Finally, Mr Chair, may I return to another theme that has always run like a golden thread through all the presentations made by Commonwealth Secretaries-General to this apex gathering over very many years. That theme is the one of principles and values.

You will be aware that the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group met only last week to consider the situation in Fiji Islands. Those deliberations were informed by the wisdom and insight of the Foreign Ministers of New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, as well as a submission on your collective behalf from the Honourable Premier Talagi as Forum Chair. I am appreciative of these contributions, as the convenor of CMAG.

The Commonwealth’s way has always been to be alive to its responsibility in its defence and promotion of its core values, especially fundamental human rights, but also to extend the hand of collaboration and direct engagement when trying to reverse derogations. Fiji is currently suspended from the councils of the Commonwealth; it might have been fully suspended from as long ago as December last year. But the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group has several times now sought to extend the deadline in order to encourage the restoration of constitutional democracy. The trigger date for full suspension has now been set at 1 September, in just under one month’s time.

Whether the full suspension occurs or not, it will remain my intent, on behalf of all Commonwealth members, to find ways to remain engaged, to promote dialogue with the current government there, and to promote dialogue between all the parties in Fiji who collectively hold the solution for the future and without all of whom a solution cannot be sustainable.

Mr Chair, I thank you and fellow leaders for your indulgence. I wish you well with this summit, and in the execution of the decisions flowing from it. The Commonwealth remains a constant and trusted partner that stands ready to assist the region and its individual members as you call on us to do so.