Honiara

You know, clean water, we've introduced bottled water, so they've got clean water.

But now there's all these plastic bottles that, and, you know, if you go into Honiara, for example, the gutters are just full of plastic bottles.

So you've got this huge rubbish problem, even though they've now got clean drinking water.

Yeah.

And, uh, in that case, we brought together 11 Pacific countries, including also, um, well, not including, uh, uh, and, and in addition to Timor-Leste.

Um, and those officers, uh, came together in Honiara with AUSTRAC facilitators, um, to give them the skills to trace cryptocurrency transactions, um, and really helping, uh, our Pacific partners to understand how those cryptocurrencies are being used for illicit money flows.

And, and indeed, uh, to give, uh, our Pacific partners the tools to address the rapidly changing payment platform technologies.

Um, the, the other, uh, activity that you're referring to in Papua New Guinea, um, in that case, it was for all of the agencies in Papua New Guinea that are tasked with anti-money laundering.

We're going to head around the region.

We're starting in the Solomon Islands, where I believe Australian National has been remanded in custody over a firearm threat allegation, Honiara, over the weekend.

What's happened here?

Yeah, so according to the Solomon Star, 33-year-old Matthew Lewis Small is accused of pointing a firearm at a shop owner in East Honiara in the early hours of Saturday.

Now, police are still investigating the incident, but they allege that Mr.

Small stopped his vehicle directly in front of the shop, entered the store, spoke aggressively in English, and then allegedly pointed a pistol at the shop owner's head.

By late Sunday, Mr Mailanga had withdrawn the motion, ending a week of crisis and reconfiguration for Matthew Wale's government.

Meanwhile, fresh from having staved off the collapse of his government, Mr Wale held talks with the visiting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in Honiara.

Their talks focused on areas of mutual interest, including the resumption of the U.S. Peace Corps program to Solomon Islands after more than 20 years.

The two leaders also discussed Solomon Islands' economic development priorities and areas where the U.S. can provide support.

The most difficult thing, I think, for them was the fact that they And when I was six years old, they decided that they could no longer teach my sister and myself correspondence lessons.

And another family had actually suggested that they ran a hostel on Guadalcanal in Honiara, the capital.

And so at six years old, I left home to go to school on a different island.

And that was pretty tough at times.

Yeah, it was an early morning start for me today because we were at the airport seeing off our PNG under-16 women's team.

They've departed this morning for Honiara ahead of the OFC under-16 women's championship that's starting on Sunday.

For Papua New Guinea, it's an interesting entry for them into this championship because they competed in the qualifying tournament for this championship back in i think in april yeah and they finished um just second uh in the qualifying tournament after cook islands and missed out on uh qualifying for the championship but they got a second chance when a couple of months after the qualifiers tahiti pulled out of the tournament of the championship um That's happening in Solomon Island.

So with Tahiti withdrawing, PNG automatically qualifies for the championship, having finished second after Cook Islands.

So now they are off to Honiara where the tournament will start.

On Sunday, we've got eight countries competing in the championship in two groups of four.

We've got Fiji, Cook Islands, New Zealand and Solomon Islands in Group A, while in Group B, we've got New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Tonga.

So from this tournament, the eight countries competing, the two teams that make it into the grand final will automatically qualify for the FIFA Under-17 Women's World Cup next year.

So in many ways, everyone's winning out of this right now, except China.

The situation in Honiara doesn't affect this.

I am leading the delegation.

As to what's behind it, well, there's enough detail for one to be highly suspicious.

Now, I know before we get into what's happening today, though, Stephen, it seems from afar that the gathering has so far been dominated by external issues.

We've got the China-Taiwan spat, we've got absent leaders, Prime Minister Matthew Wale heading back to Honiara to head off that leadership challenge.

Even the US Cook Islands, New Zealand Port Development announcement.

I mean, is that how it feels on the ground? Yeah.

Welcome back to Pacific Beach.

The Solomon Islands Council of Trade Unions is calling on its members to stay calm and not get involved in the current political standoff between Prime Minister Matthew Wale and some former members of his government.

As we heard earlier, Mr Wale had to abandon the Pacific Islands Forum leaders' meeting in Palau to head back to Honiara to fend off a potential vote of no confidence.

He's only been in the job for three months and had left for Palau when his Home Affairs Minister, Manasi Mailanga, filed a no-confidence motion with the Parliament.