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May 1, 2024 | 
samoaobserver.ws | James Boorman |Joe Fulwood |Enid Westerlund |Terence Wood
At the weekend, the Australian government announced the first country quotas for its new Pacific Engagement Visa. We already knew that there would be 3,000 PEV visas annually, access to which will be made available by ballot, but until the weekend we didn’t know how they would be allocated across the Pacific. PNG citizens get the biggest allocation, 1,350 or almost half.
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Apr 27, 2024 | 
samoaobserver.ws | James Boorman |Joe Fulwood |Enid Westerlund |Richard Curtain
Talofa Samoa and welcome back to your health column! It’s almost May now. The high of the New Year and the resolutions you made has faded and the past few months have slipped away from you. You were supposed to be at your fittest by now but so many of your plans have had to change. There have been so many interruptions this year; it can feel overwhelming when you think about where you would like to be in your fitness journey.
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Apr 23, 2024 | 
samoaobserver.ws | James Boorman |Joe Fulwood |Enid Westerlund |Mika Kelekolio
The second time I met Sergeant Alice Arigo of the Tari Family and Sexual Violence Unit (FSVU), who is known in the community as Alice, she was taking down the statement of a woman who had been brutally beaten, holding her pen in one hand while cradling the woman’s infant baby in the other. It was late March 2024, a few days before Good Friday. The woman making the statement sat on the floor, preferring that to the couch behind her that stored a broken and flattened chair underneath.
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Apr 21, 2024 | 
samoaobserver.ws | James Boorman |Joe Fulwood |Enid Westerlund |Jessica Collins
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi is expected in Papua New Guinea this weekend to sign an agreement clearing the way for PNG’s agricultural exports to enter the Chinese market. This step has already caught international attention, particularly with the lowering of biosecurity hurdles, and follows the preferential access China offered to PNG for its seafood products in 2020.
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Apr 13, 2024 | 
samoaobserver.ws | James Boorman |Joe Fulwood |Enid Westerlund |Charlotte Bedford
During the last session of Parliament, some members called for the Ministry of Education to enforce compulsory education legislation. The reason? Far too many young people are spending their day peddling goods around Apia and other centres like Vaitele instead of being at school.
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Apr 12, 2024 | 
samoaobserver.ws | James Boorman |Joe Fulwood |Enid Westerlund |Tom Swan
Australia is surprisingly low-key about the recent launch of its new subclass 192 Pacific Engagement Visa lottery that aims to welcome 3,000 new permanent migrants annually from the Pacific and Timor-Leste. Following immense fanfare two years ago, its missed commencement date in July last year, and the long hiatus awaiting its enactment, the soft launch of the visa scheme last month was unexpected.
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Apr 5, 2024 | 
samoaobserver.ws | James Boorman |Joe Fulwood |Enid Westerlund |Vaimoana Mase
As I said in my last article, wise political scientists avoid making predictions about elections in the Western Pacific. But I’ve just made myself a coffee, the fan in my office at the University of PNG is whirring happily and I have some data to reassure me.
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Mar 14, 2024 | 
fijitimes.com.fj | James Boorman |Joe Fulwood
It is a truth universally acknowledged that digital developments have shrunk space and time, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Pacific. The arrival of undersea cables and the availability of satellite connectivity have provided faster and more reliable access to the global digital economy, enabled progressive digitisation of government services and supported rapid digitisation in response to COVID-19.
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Mar 9, 2024 | 
samoaobserver.ws | Ben P Scott |Amrita Jash |James Boorman |Joe Fulwood
Happy women’s day and every day should be women’s day. Words are nice but actions are better. Women and girls need to feel safe. This begins at home. Fathers, brothers, cousins, husbands, whatever male influence or figure we have in our lives should be protective, loving and supportive. Girls and women need to feel safe on the bus. If you are a male, keep your hands to yourself. Keep your dirty, moekolo, coercive, seductive comments to yourself.
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Mar 6, 2024 | 
devpolicy.org | James Boorman |Joe Fulwood
It is a truth universally acknowledged that digital developments have shrunk space and time, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Pacific. The arrival of undersea cables and the availability of satellite connectivity have provided faster and more reliable access to the global digital economy, enabled progressive digitisation of government services and supported rapid digitisation in response to COVID-19.
