March 2008:  Enterprise Challenge Fund Launch

April 2008:     Tsunami Warning Systems in the Pacific

Enterprise Challenge Fund Launch

• Senior officials, businesspeople, distinguished guests all. I’m very pleased to be officiating tonight at the launch of the Australian Government-funded Enterprise Challenge Fund in Vanuatu. And I’m particularly happy to see so many people here who attended the first workshop AusAID ran on this idea in this very room back in November 2006

• Back then many of you expressed the hope that a donor would help fill funding gaps so that promising business projects could get moving and start to improve people’s lives in Vanuatu. You pointed to Vanuatu’s strong economic performance and policy stability and Vanuatu’s resources. You saw a need for “someone” to take action to remove obstacles to innovative private sector projects, be they problems of logistics or funding. There was, I recall, a particular interest in agribusiness projects and a concern that Vanuatu’s poor – whether they lived on the fringes of the towns or in isolated communities in the islands - should benefit from private sector investments.

• This was an idea with great potential, so I was pleased when the Australian Government through AusAID decided in mid-2007 to launch a pilot project, the Enterprise Challenge Fund, with AUD20.5m to invest over six years in private sector development projects. It then began operating in Fiji, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines. I am even more delighted tonight to help launch the Enterprise Challenge Fund’s operations in Vanuatu.

• The projects the Enterprise Challenge Fund is looking to finance in Vanuatu will be large by local standards – the Fund is looking at helping finance up to 50% of the costs of projects which have a total cost of at least AUD200,000 - or around 18 million vatu or more.

• Of course, vigorous competition for financing from the Enterprise Challenge Fund will mean that only the best projects from the region will be supported, but I remember from that session in this room back in 2006 that the private sector in Vanuatu wasn’t short on good ideas for projects, or on a willingness to invest its own funds in them. Producing successful project proposals will take hard work, but the Fund, through its local agent Tess Newton-Cain, will be happy to advise on how project proposals should be put together.

• So I’d like to end by issuing a challenge to the private sector in Vanuatu. The Enterprise Challenge Fund stands ready to make large contributions to big projects if they meet the Fund’s criteria. Of course, I hope the Fund will finance many projects in Vanuatu, but even if the Fund only supports one project here, the Fund’s contribution to that one big project will have a significant impact on the development of Vanuatu’s small economy, and on poverty.

• However, the Fund won’t be able to make any development impact at all here without innovative and commercially sustainable project proposals from Vanuatu’s private sector. So please get in touch with Tess with your ideas, if you haven’t done so already.

• With these words, it’s now my pleasure to introduce the Enterprise Challenge Fund’s Director, Mr. John Hardin.                               

Tsunami Warning Systems in the Pacific

National Capacity Assessment of Vanuatu’s Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System
Melanesian Hotel, Port Vila, Vanuatu
22 April 2008

Deputy Prime Minister & MIPU, the Hon Edward Nipake Natapei
Director, Vanuatu Meteorological Service, Mr Jotham Napat
Manager Geo-Hazards Division, Ms Esline Garae
Visiting Course Presenters, Rob Webb (BOM), Nood Leenders (SOPAC), Andrew Gissing (NSW SES), Gary Clarke (Met Service of NZ), Vanessa Coli (Emergency Management Australia)

Other participants

• I’m very pleased to be here for the opening of this important Workshop.

• Most people in Vanuatu know tsunamis well. They’ve grown-up with earthquakes and many look for signs of a tsunami as soon as they feel the ground shake under their feet. In the last serious tsunami at Baie Martelli in Pentecost in November 1999, five people died, but 300 saved themselves by fleeing to high ground as soon as they saw the sea draw back.

• But the great Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 showed people around the region that tsunamis can devastate communities without warning. You might not be able to feel an earthquake thousands of kilometers away under your feet and when a tsunami strikes far from the earthquake that caused it, the sea doesn’t always draw back. The Indian Ocean tsunami killed 300,000 people – more than the population of Vanuatu.

• The Indian Ocean tsunami was a major wake-up call for Australia. Most Australians had no idea that tsunamis could be so devastating and Australia’s leaders were worried when they learnt that there were large gaps in the network of tsunami warning devices in both the Indian and Pacific Oceans which exposed Australians and their neighbours to serious danger. The Tsunami in the Western Province of Solomon Islands in April last year underlined the urgency of the situation.

• So in 2005, the Australian Government announced that it would establish an Australian Tsunami Warning System – or ATWS - to try to reduce the tsunami risk in our own region of the South West Pacific and Southern Indian Ocean. The aim is to create a network of sea level measuring and seismic devices capable of delivering timely and effective tsunami warnings throughout this region by June 2009. The first ATWS onshore device outside Australia was installed in Luganville in December 2007.

• The ATWS will expand the amount of sea level and seismic information available to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii, which provides tsunami advisories for the South West Pacific and the information gathered from monitoring devices, such as the one in Luganville, will also be made available in real time, as soon as it is measured, to scientists around the world on the internet. The ATWS is working on installing another such device in Port Vila by the end of the year, either upgrading or replacing the sea-level monitoring device you will see later in the Workshop.

• The successful installation of the Luganville device – the first in the region- is a tribute to the personal enthusiasm of DPM Natapei for the Tsunami Warning System Project and the strong working relationships between our Meteorological Bureaux, and the strong desire of the Australian and Vanuatu Governments to protect people in their region against tsunamis

• But of course, detecting and tracking a tsunami is only the first step. Once a tsunami warning is received, that warning needs to be sent out to the people at risk and this is why this workshop is so very important. Vanuatu faces real challenges in getting the message out, especially in the remote islands where communications are unreliable, and you will all test Vanuatu’s warning and mitigation system. There is always room for improvement in natural disaster warning systems and you will all, I hope, be able to make practical suggestions for improvements which the government and donors can support.

• So with those small words of encouragement, and thanks for the hard work that has already been done by so many people from so many agencies in putting this Workshop together, I wish you all a successful workshop because it could, after all, save lives.

Thank you for your attention