Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama has warned Australia that climate change is “no laughing matter” and poses an “enormous” threat to Fijians and Pacific Islanders.
n a speech during his counterpart Scott Morrison’s Pacific visit, Mr Bainimarama called on Australia to put the welfare of Pacific peoples before the interests of any single industry, seen as a reference to Australia’s support for its coal mining industry.
“Here in Fiji, climate change is no laughing matter,” ABC News reports he said.
“From where we are sitting, we cannot imagine how the interests of any single industry can be placed above the welfare of Pacific peoples, vulnerable people in the world over.”
ABC News reports it is the first time a political leader has publicly confronted Mr Morrison on the question of climate change during his Pacific tour.
In 2015, then-Immigration Minister Peter Dutton quipped about the fate of the Pacific Islands in the face of climate change, prompting laughter from then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
“Time doesn’t mean anything when you’re about to be, you know, have water lapping at your door,” Mr Dutton said.
Mr Morrison, then the Social Services Minister, pointed out to both men that a microphone was above them.
ABC News reports in his speech, Mr Bainimarama said Fiji and Australia should be “good neighbours” and highlighted the searing temperatures dominating Australian cities this week.
“Prime Minister, I urged your predecessor repeatedly to honour his commitment to clean energy future, the only future that guarantees the survival of your neighbours in the Pacific,” he said.
Mr Morrison’s predecessor as Prime Minister in the conservative Liberal-National government, Malcolm Turnbull, abandoned the emissions reduction target component of the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) in a bid to stave off a leadership challenge last year.
After he took the leadership Mr Morrison then completely abandoned the NEG.
A vocal proponent of climate change policy who led the UN’s Climate Change Conference in 2017, Mr Bainimarama said the issue “cannot be written off as a difference of opinion”.
“Consensus from the scientific community is clear, and existential threat posed to Pacific Island countries, a certainty.”
At the same time Mr Bainimarama also lavished praise on Mr Morrison for his so-called “Pacific step-up”, and said he had “transformed” the Australia-Fiji relationship by visiting Suva.
“While it was a short flight to Suva, your presence has already taken our relationship a very long way indeed,” he said.
Mr Morrison’s engagement with the Pacific set a “new precedent” and was “absolutely a step in the right direction”, he added.
“When our nation and our people have been left devastated in the aftermath of ever-worsening cyclones, Australia has always proven to be a friend we can count on,” Mr Bainimarama said.
No Australian prime minister has come to Fiji since 2006, and Mr Morrison’s trip is aimed at shoring up Australia’s influence in the nation, which has been courting Chinese investment.
Fiji and Australia agreed to a host of new initiatives and committed to a “Vuvale Partnership” (or “family partnership”) in a sign of warming ties.
Both countries have agreed to more regular ministerial meetings and Mr Morrison declared that Australia would make sure it did not neglect the region.
“One of the risks of close relationships is sometimes they can be taken for granted, and there are periods in our past where that has been the case,” he said.
