'Rust bucket' Ashika disaster findings rock Tonga

REPERCUSSIONS from Tonga's "rust bucket" disaster that killed 74 people - mainly women and children - at sea in the kingdom last August are finally rocking the royal and noble establishment to its very core. And while several layers of maritime and government authorities have been exposed, some senior expatriates look set for paying a heavy price for the tragedy.

Comical efforts by Information Minister 'Eseta Fusitu'a to effectively gag the local Tongan media over the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Princess Ashika ferry disaster last August 5 were in vain as Matangi Tonga reported on the here-is-the-report-but-you-can't-have-it farce. Barbara Dreaver, writing on her TVNZ blog, also took a potshot at the Tongan government for "hiding behind procedures". As well as extensive coverage, the online news portal Matangi Tonga published a leaked copy of the inquiry report. It was also published by Pacific Media Watch.

The leaked report has been highlighted by the Scotsman for describing Lord Ramsay Dalgety QC, secretary of the Shipping Corporation of Polynesia, which operated the government-owned ferry, as "unfit to hold such an important position", "lacking credibility" and accused of being "evasive when giving evidence".

The commission also said the former director of Scottish Opera was "dishonest and lacked integrity in his role".

Lord Dalgety, 64, was arrested, charged with perjury, and put under house arrest for 24 hours on his last day of giving evidence to the committee in February.

Tonga imposed a blackout on reporting the case. Two others had been arrested earlier.

Radio NZ International reports that the New Zealand businessman who formerly headed the Shipping Corp, John Jonesse, is one of three people charged with manslaughter by negligence over the sinking of the Ashika.

Court officials named the other accused as the former skipper of the Princess Ashika, Makahokovalu Tuputupu, and the acting director of Tonga’s marine division, Viliami Tuipulotu.

The Shipping Corp itself is also facing a charge of manslaughter.

According to the Scotsman's Shan Ross, the final report details "unimaginable and careless errors by people in positions of responsibility":

It also says the sinking was the result of systemic and individual failures and that the deaths were both "preventable and senseless".

[Lord Dalgety] has been strongly criticised in the report for failing to order an independent survey before the purchase of the ferry, which he admitted to the commission in January had been a "rust bucket".

The report criticised Lord Dalgety's lack of competence in admiralty law, in which he said he was a specialist. It described as "disturbing" the fact that he did not have an up-to-date copy of the Shipping Act and admitted he had not "checked it for years".

A claim by officials that the vessel was in good condition or well maintained "is not only patently absurd, but dishonest", the report said. It notes the ferry was "grossly overloaded" the day it sank.

Lord Dalgety, a former Conservative councillor on Edinburgh District Council, moved to Tonga in 1991.

In 2008, King George Tupou V made him a law lord and privy counsellor with the title Lord Dalgety of Sikotilani Tonga – Lord Dalgety of Scotland.

Lord Dalgety holds a number of powerful and well-paid posts in Tonga, including chairman of the electricity commission.

The royal commission said it considered evidence regarding civil responsibility, but that determining criminal responsibility was up to other authorities. Police have said their investigations are continuing.

Meanwhile, the Tongan king is under pressure to sack members of government amid allegations they were in part to blame for the failures that led to the tragedy.

Pacific Media Watch's Josephine Latu has filed some excellent reports on the leaked inquiry, including a comprehensive backgrounder, on Pacific Scoop. The full inquiry report is on the Pacific Media Watch database.

Pictured: Top: Tongan Information Minister 'Eseta Fusitu'a tells local media they can't have the Ashika inquiry report she is holding. Photo: Matangi Tonga. Above: The Princess Ashika at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Photo: Royal NZ Navy.

• Special report: Why the Ashika tragedy is shaking the Sevele government to the core
• Damning inquiry report says failure of authority at the heart of Ashika
• Dishonest, evasive, lacking integrity – Scots QC damned after ferry tragedy
• Manslaughter charges laid over Ashika sinking
• Tonga hides behind procedures
  

The browning of New Zealand media

CURIOUS how a seminar with many of the movers and shakers in the New Zealand diversity media industry running the show didn’t cut it in the news itself. Hardly a mention in news coverage, apart from on the Pacific Media Centre niusblog at AUT University and a John Drinnen item in the NZ Herald's Business about how public broadcasting was being ignored. Nevertheless, this year’s NZ On Air seminar with the theme “Screen and Heard: NZ broadcast audiences in 2020” was really worthwhile with many contributors giving fascinating and inspirational insights into this country’s media future – from SBS managing director Shaun Brown’s rundown on multicultural programmes in Australia, through BBC’s Murray Holgate on the changing role of the global broadcaster in the Asia-Pacific region to Oscar Kightley and Stan Wolfgramm on the future of diversity creations such as bro’Town and Pacific Beat Street. Brown encountered some light hearted flak over his metamorphosis from his old role in market-driven TVNZ to cross-cultural SBS – “the browning of Shaun Brown”, as Asia Downunder’s Bharat Jamnadas (and onetime Fiji journo) coined it. Brown himself said:

New Zealand is – in at least some respects – ahead of Australia in confronting and debating the issue of diversity in programme making.

For a start, while Australia has a vibrant sector dedicated to advocating on multicultural and indigenous issues, I cannot recall a discussion of this scale taking place between Australia’s broadcasters about our contribution (or even obligation) to reflect cultural realities on screen.

Also, an important element in reflecting diversity on either side of the Tasman is the place indigenous content occupies on our screens. Here particularly Australia has much to learn from New Zealand.

The outstanding success of Māori Television and the scale of Māori programming on other broadcasters places New Zealand well ahead of Australia.

Asked if he had “seen the light” about public broadcasting after he left TVNZ for SBS, Brown launched into a candid attack on a succession of NZ governments for their failures over broadcasting policy, which had been turned into a political football: “Without a charter, you don’t have a compass.”

The “scene setter “ was provided by demography professor Richard Bedford of Waikato University’s Population Studies Centre, who outlined the two-pronged challenge for New Zealand media – the demographic changes making the audiences “browner” and more culturally and ethnically diversified, and also becoming older. As PMC’s Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Josephine Latu reports:

In fact, by the year 2021, current statistical projections show that the Asian population will have increased by more than 70 percent, the Pacific Islander population by 44 percent, and the Māori population by about 24 percent since 2006.

New Zealanders of European or “other” ethnic backgrounds (including from African and South American and other nations) are altogether predicted to
increase by just below 6 percent in the same timeframe.

The number of people aged over 35 is also set to swell for all ethnic groups. Figures showed that between 2006 and 2021, those aged 35 and over will increase by 22 percent, compared to only about 5 percent for those under 35.

Café Pacific’s David Robie has produced an overview of the state of demographics and the rise of the ethnic media, published in the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review with the theme “Diversity, identity and the media”. (The edition was launched by the Human Rights Commission’s Sam Sefuiva at the seminar).

Radio Tarana’s Robert Khan and broadcasting manager Terri Byrne of Planet Radio – “the best thing we ever did” was moving from AUT University campus to Unitec, where it has been thriving – gave inspirational insights into how “minority” broadcasting was in fact becoming “mainstream”.

But in spite of the optimistic mood of the day, the seminar crashed to earth in the final session about “the broadcast media scene in 2020”. TVNZ head of television Jeff Latch, TV3’s associate director of programming Andrew Szusterman and Radio NZ’s head of news Don Rood didn’t seem to get it about the dramatic changes facing NZ’s media audiences. No visionary solutions there for the twin targets of diversity and age.

Bro'Town graphic from NZ On Air; photo of Shaun Brown by the Pacific Media Centre's Del Abcede.

• Diversity reportage in Aotearoa - by David Robie
• From minority to mainstream broadcasting - by Terri Byrne
• NZ faces growing media challenge over demographics
  
• NZ On Air
• NZ On Air to the rescue for TV
• Pacific Beat producer calls on ethnic groups to 'break into' mainstream
  

Vigilance for media freedom in East Timor

PETER CRONAU, one of the co-founders of Pacific Media Watch, has just done an interview with PMW's Josephine Latu about the state of media freedom in the Pacific 12 years on since the group's campaign to free Kalafi Moala from jail. (Moala was imprisoned unconstitutionally for contempt of Parliament). Cronau is busy writing a new book about East Timor and the case of the Balibo Five, the shameful murder by the Indonesians of five Australian-based journalists (including a Kiwi) back in 1975. He and his ABC Four Corners team won a Gold Walkley in 2006 for their programme Stoking the Fires about the bitter post-independence political rivalries in East Timor. This book is certain to rock the media and political establishments in Canberra with its revelations.

While there have been a few hard-to-find improvements in media freedom over the past decade or so, Cronau warns newshounds not to sit on any Pacific laurels. Vigilance is the name of the game. Peter - at the time director of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) - and Café Pacific's David Robie - then head of journalism at the University of Papua New Guinea - founded PMW at a particularly rocky time 21 years after the Balibo massacre:

Persistence by some journalists ... saw them reporting the Indonesian preparations for the invasion - and six media workers [the sixth, Roger East, was executed later on Dili wharf] paid with their lives for reporting this truth.

I guess the lesson to take from the book is that like all freedoms, freedom of the press is lost unless guarded vigilantly. That's the essential reason we set up Pacific Media Watch in the first place.

• Media freedom image from the Centru Jornalista Investigativu Timor Leste (CJITL) blog
• Interview with Peter Cronau
• Pacific Media Watch