Pacific

Face it, we lost Fiji

by Whaleoil June 28, 2010

I blogged on the week­end about the mas­sive shift in influ­ence in South Pacific pol­i­tics with the announce­ment that Fiji would join the Non-Aligned Move­ment and the grow­ing influ­ence of China in Fiji. We need look no fur­ther than the Fiji Government’s own web­site to see just how out of the play New Zealand has become. […]

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That was real successful — Not!

by Whaleoil June 26, 2010

New Zealand’s for­eign pol­icy com­mit­ments have barely changed since the gov­ern­ment changed in 2008. In par­tic­u­lar our for­eign pol­icy goals with regards to Fiji have hard­ened rather than changed. It is then with lit­tle sur­prise that we now find that Fiji has joined the non-aligned move­ment. The NAM was largely the brain­child of India’s first […]

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Count on us China tells Fiji

by Whaleoil June 23, 2010

I think Mur­ray McCully needs to stop wor­ry­ing about the “Whales” and start con­cen­trat­ing on Fiji and how to gain favour with Fiji again. As I have repeat­edly said about our par­lous rela­tion­ship with Fiji, the cur­rent stance, inher­ited from the Clark regime hasn’t worked, isn’t work­ing, unless of course our for­eign pol­icy goals include […]

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Failing on Fiji

by Whaleoil June 22, 2010

While the NZ Gov­ern­ment has been pan­der­ing to offi­cials and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of one of the most non-democratic coun­tries in the world another lit­tle coun­try that isn’t demo­c­ra­tic but is much closer to NZ than China will ever be sets about ignor­ing our fool­ish for­eign pol­icy stance and is mak­ing new friends. Lead­ers of the Pacific […]

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Why can’t we work with Fiji?

by Whaleoil June 9, 2010

It has been a while since I blogged about Fiji. Some brain-farts from our For­eign Min­is­ter and the his Aus­tralian coun­ter­part cer­tainly war­rant some com­ment. Aus­tralian For­eign Min­is­ter Stephen Smith and NZ For­eign Min­is­ter Mur­ray McCully’s com­ments after the Forum’s Min­is­te­r­ial Con­tact Group meet­ing “broke up” in Auck­land recently, (Mon­day May 31st), haven’t helped in […]

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Very Curious Behaviour

by Whaleoil April 22, 2010

The other day I sug­gested that the ex-Police Com­mis­sioner of Vic­to­ria, under fire for her behav­iour dur­ing Black Sat­ur­day, had organ­ised the hit on Carl Williams. My under­world sources have been squawk­ing loud and long about it. There has been much mud­dy­ing of the waters with even a sug­ges­tion that Chop­per Read had organ­ised it due […]

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Fiji and Censorship

by Whaleoil April 18, 2010

There has been a great deal of angst over Com­modore Bainimarama’s draft Media Indus­try Devel­op­ment Decree 2010 which fea­tures harsh penal­ties for jour­nal­ists and news organ­i­sa­tions which breach vaguely worded con­tent reg­u­la­tions. Being a free­dom of speech kinds a guy I can see too why this isn’t a good thing, how­ever Fiji isn’t New Zealand […]

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Repeater fined for Shonky Repeating

by Whaleoil March 22, 2010

from Croz Walsh’s blog Bar­bara Dreaver and TVNZ found guilty of unbal­anced report­ing. Bar­bara Dreaver, who sent a num­ber of mis­lead­ing reports on Fiji until she was denied entry, has been found want­ing for one of her reports on Samoa, and TVNZ that screened and added to her story sug­gest­ing Samoa was awash with drugs […]

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Closing the gap between N.Z. and Oz

by Whaleoil March 17, 2010

UNIONS will seek a pay rise of $27 a week for the nation’s low-paid work­ers. ACTU sec­re­tary Jeff Lawrence said the min­i­mum wage claim included a “catch up” com­po­nent fol­low­ing the pay freeze imposed on 1.4 mil­lion low-paid employ­ees last year, Mr Lawrence said work­ers had been dis­pro­por­tion­ately asked to bear the bur­den of an economic […]

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Quick file a Treaty Claim

by Whaleoil January 21, 2010

I imag­ine the Maori lib­eral elite will see the pos­si­bil­ity no mater how remote of extract­ing some cash from some­where for some made up trans­gres­sion against Maori with the lat­est claim from Avatar Direc­tor James Cameron. The lan­guage of Avatar‘s Na’vi alien race is par­tially based on Maori, direc­tor James Cameron says. Cameron and language […]

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Good Idea from the Commodore

by Whaleoil January 19, 2010

The left­ist press con­stantly den­i­grate the Frank Bain­i­marama. I have long coun­seled that a bet­ter way than the stick approach that New Zealand and Aus­tralia exhibit in the Pacific would be to open dia­logue and offer real assis­tance in get­ting Fiji to a true demo­c­ra­tic sit­u­a­tion. I also mean that the pre­vi­ous con­sti­tu­tion should be […]

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