Pacific Island churches in New Zealand say members of some congregations have gone into debt because of pressure to donate to churches. The parishioners have fallen victim to loan sharks who promise easy borrowing but extremely high interest rates. The Reverend Tavake Tupou, who heads an independent Tongan Methodist congregation in Auckland, told Radio Australia’s Read more
The Pacific Disaster Centre is calling for nuclear monitoring to be set up across the Pacific after Japanese authorities revealed contamination could be more widespread than first thought. Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency predicts that radioactive caesium from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant will travel four thousand kilometres through the Pacific Ocean within one year and Read more
Tevita Mara gets 2 days in New Zealand “to tell his story”. However John Key says that New Zealand is “taking quite a cautious view.” While Australia has removed Mara permanently from its travel ban list, Key said, “We have no intention of doing that at this stage.” “It will be an opportunity for New Zealand Ministry Read more
In Apia, Samoa, children are used to win sympathy by some street vendors. Parents are using their children as a bait to win people’s sympathy, says Security’s Officer, Aloi Perosi. “That’s why many of them are out here at a very late hour,” he says. “It’s not about selling goods. It’s about people feeling sorry for them and then giving them Read more
In PNG there has been a call for an equal partnership in education between the government and the Churches. Churches continue to play a major role in educating its six million people. Yet churches are not considered as equal partners by the government when it comes to making decisions on the national education system. The Read more
The Hungry Tide, a documentary showing at the Sydney Film Festival last week, focuses on those islanders suffering on the front line of climate change. The Film maker Tom Zubrycki’s protagonist is Maria Tiimon, a shy, middle-aged Kiribati woman who now lives in Sydney. As the Pacific outreach officer for a Catholic advocacy group the Edmund Rice Centre, Read more
The Catholic Bishops Conference of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands have renewed a call for parliament to “cease the inefficient system of allocating development funds to MPs to distribute”. “This system is a direct cause of election-related violence,” the bishops said. “It is open to much abuse and the potential for corruption, especially by diverting these funds Read more
‘Today, unfortunately, it seems that every possible barrier is put in the way of asylum seekers and refugees who come to Australia seeking protection from persecution,” she said. ”They also seek the fulfillment of their fundamental human rights and ultimately a better quality of life in a free and democratic society.” said Judith Troeth in her valedictory Read more
The interim Fijian Government says it expects Australia to respond positively to a request to extradite Ratu Tevita Mara. It may be disappointed because the Australian and New Zealand Governments appear see Mara as a credible figure around which to base a serious challenge to Commodore Bainimarama Mara began his campaign in Australia by invoking the mana of his father, Read more
The Alliance of Churches in the Land of Papua, PGGP, has called on the government to revise the work contract concluded with the mining company, Freeport. ‘The presence of this foreign company in the district of Mimika has not resulted in any improvements in the conditions of the local people,’ said Wiem Maury, secretary of Read more