Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama accused Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison of insulting leaders of Pacific island nations during a regional summit earlier this week, and said that Chinese officials were far more tactful and better mannered.
Bainimarama’s comments come after the Pacific Islands Forum failed to agree on tough new climate change commitments at the insistence of the pro-coal Australian government, upsetting leaders of island nations at risk from rising sea levels.
Morrison tried to force his country’s policies onto the other nations, and insulted them by saying how much money Australia has given to the region, Bainimarama said.
“The prime minister was very insulting, very condescending, not good for the relationship,” Bainimarama told the Guardian Australia late on Friday, a day after the summit of 18 Pacific nations in Tuvalu.
Australia and the US have historically enjoyed virtually unchecked influence in the Pacific, but their sway in the region has been challenged in the past few years by China.
Bainimarama said that there was “no competition” between Australia and China, but when asked whether some Pacific leaders might now seek better ties with Beijing, he said: “Nothing can be worse.”
“The Chinese don’t insult us,” Bainimarama said. “They don’t go down and tell the world that we’ve given this much money to the Pacific islands. They don’t do that. They’re good people, definitely better than Morrison.”
He also called comments by Australian Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, published on Friday by the Guardian, very insulting.
McCormack had said that Pacific island nations affected by climate changes would continue to survive, because “many of their workers come here to pick our fruit.”
Mark Butler, the climate change spokesman for Australia’s opposition Labor Party, said that Morrison has damaged the long-standing relationship with Pacific countries and McCormack’s comment “just adds insult to injury.”
Morrison’s office would not comment on Bainimarama’s accusations, but yesterday Morrison said that Australia is committed to the region.
“We’re there for the difficult conversations, we’re there for every type of conversation with our Pacific family, just like any family that comes around the table,” he told reporters after addressing a South Australian Liberals conference.
“We will always be there and regardless of whatever issues we have to work through at the time,” Morrison said.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS