 Good morning everyone. Thank you all for joining from your various locations on behalf of international ideas regional office for Asia and the Pacific. I would like to welcome you all who have joined us this morning for the first webinar of the democratic development in Melanesia webinar series. We would also like to welcome our panelists and participants as part of international ideas Asia and the Pacific regional program work plan for 2023. These webinars aim to provide opportunities to citizens of the Melanesian region to take part in substantive discussions surrounding democracy in Melanesia. It is also intended that through the webinars citizens of Melanesian countries who participate may gain knowledge on the subject matter and on the experiences of other countries. This will in turn enhance debates on institutional and procedural improvements in their perspective democracies. The first webinar title perceptions of corruption in PG and Melanesian anti-corruption mechanisms is a continuation of the webinar series of 2022 where we covered Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Due to the elections in PG we could not complete the Melanesian countries last year. We have some house rules for this webinar. The webinar will have two speakers who will deliver their presentation first and then the audience will have 30 minutes after both the speakers have presented their questions. Audiences can use the raise hand feature to ask questions. The audience are reminded to keep the mic off during the webinar and only on it when asking questions. Also audience can pose questions through the chat feature. Before we proceed any further, please note that the session is being recorded. We also have a disclaimer from International Idea. The statements, views or opinions expressed in the presentation do not necessarily represent the institutional position of International Idea, its Board of Advisors or its Council of Member States. Our first speaker for today is Dr. Joseph Baramo, hails from Sub-Savo. He studied at the London South Bank University and holds Master in Science, Master in Philosophy and PhD degrees. He previously worked as a high school teacher and a USP lecturer before joining UNDP and UNICEF. He currently works as Executive Director at CLCT Integrity PG, a CSO accredited to Transparency International. Dr. Baramo is married with two children. He likes writing poems and stories in his spare time. I'll give the floor to you, Dr. Baramo, for your presentation. Thank you. Yes, thank you very much Vikash. And thank you to all the listeners. I would like to express my deep appreciation to International Idea for hosting this webinar. I will basically be talking about the CPI for Fiji and explain it also, just a brief touch briefly on some Malaysian countries. And I'm assuming that most of you already know about the CPI. It's on our website, transparency.org, and our YouTube channel, Transparency International also has this. So I'm going to share two slides. The first one was prepared on January the 25th when we launched the CPI for this year. So I'll very quickly go over that before I go to the next one. The question. The question people asked is, how did Fiji perform the corruption perceptions index for 2022? Sorry, can you get that? Yeah, the corruption perception index results released on January the 31st, 2023. It showed that Fiji has not fared well. Its score has gone down from last year's figure of 55 out of 100 to 53 out of 100 for this year. Fiji's ranking has also fallen from 45 out of 180 nations. That's from last year to 49 out of 180 nations this year. While the fall of two points, implying an increase in corruption might not seem to be statistically significant. It highlights the urgent need for civil society, the business sector, the media, and all stakeholders to work together with Fiji's anti-corruption agency, White Deck, to curb corruption. For most of you who may not be aware, Transparency National notes that in the corruption perceptions index, a country's score is the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 means clean. So a country's rank is its position relative to the other countries in the index, ranks can change merely if the number of countries included in the index changes. The rank is therefore not as important as the score in terms of indicating the level of corruption in the country. So the point is here that Fiji's quite an interesting case because Fiji first appeared in the CPI in 2006, 2005 or 2006. And there was a lapse of 17 years, 16, 17 years there was a lapse, there was no CPI. And, and people were thinking when they were looking at the CPI they were thinking that did this mean that Fiji was corruption free. The fact that Fiji was not listed in the CPI meant that there was not enough data available to accurately measure levels of corruption. And some of you may notice that in Fiji they don't release certain data, degraded data of ethnic levels and there was a point I think that the director of statistics was removed. So if the data is not going to the international bodies, the world bank, the IMF, all these bodies, then they're not able to do the CPI for Fiji. So the fact that the coalition government is taking over after 16 years is quite reassuring, because that means that there won't be interference in the work of the Bureau of Statistics. The Department of Statistics showed ethnic distribution and the true picture of poverty in the House of Income and Experience Survey that was unflattering. It was sort of not released to the public. So these are the kinds of things that affect the CPI because they need this data. Another question that we get asked is, how come we only we get these good scores, like there's a lot of corrupt activities reported, but they're not being reported, actually reporting the CPI score. How could this happen? One of the reasons of a number of possible reasons for this is that corrupt activities, not within the timeframe of that year CPI would take a year or more to reflect in the data sources. And so of course the developments in controlling public sector corruption might have been captured balancing out of this negative cases. Okay, so those are some of the things that need to be taken into account. One positive aspect of this year's CPI score and ranking for Fiji is that a new government is coming to power that is not authoritarian. And I'm given to understand that there's a bill in Parliament that will repeal the media act and allow for free speech and assembly amongst other democratic rights. And I think they're also going to repeal a land bill, bill 17. So all these things with more democracy will be reflected in the CPI. I might also explain here that the CPI is not just about corruption. If you saw the video that I international idea played before I spoke, you'll notice that the secret also covers a free media freedom of speech and assembly, human rights, gender rights, and a country run on a dynamic democratic principle. And I also stress here that indigenous rights are also important in the equation. I shall now go on to the second slide that I have a second slide. And as they're putting it on screen, I want to say that I'm concentrating only on Fiji and Malaysia, because most of the information on the CPI, you can easily get it on, on the website transparency.org websites. I'll go to Fiji. Sorry about that. Yeah. All right. You'll notice that our score was 53 out of 100, and we were ranked 49 out of 180. And in the previous explanation I said that the rank was not as important as a score, because I think the score was the most important aspect. And for Fiji, as I mentioned, the score for last year was 55. And these are was 53. And they, they, they just had about two or three data sources. You're free. They had from global insights. That's one source, the right piece of democracy and our source and the world that's the other source of the data that we have. I'm not going into how they do the calculations. If you have any questions on this. It's in our website, the explanation. If you look at our ranking with other Malaysian countries, we, this year we are ranked, sorry, rank was 49, our score was 53. Von Watt was ranked 60, and the score was 48. The Solomon's was ranked 77, and the score was out of 100. We were ranked 130, and the score was was 30. And from last year, the score of the variations was just by one point by one point for PNG the Solomon's and Von Watt and Fiji dropped by two. Some people, when they look at this figure, they say, oh Fiji is not that bad. I mean, when you look at this, but I take the view that we are a developed nation we are the hub of the Pacific. But it's important for us to model ourselves on New Zealand and Australia, because we clearly can improve our scores. Our score can really go up to 60 or 65. So that's what we are saying, yeah, that we can do much, much better than this. When you look at the Solomon Islands, the government, one of the reasons for the, the, the scourge come down is that the government is so far is delaying elections are scheduled for 2023. Because of the, they say because of the games, and they had been civil unrest that broke out in 2021. And there were issues with the China that boiled over that boiled over. And this year in an attempt to further respond to all the government began to require approval of stories in the national board. Basically, there was media, replacing media like the media is now being repressed. It's not a free media, the laws that are coming in. So those things affect the CPI scores. We look at Fiji. Fiji offers some hope for the future. Despite the warning signs about two point a drop this year. In 2022, the government began attacks on the free press, threatening to find or even increasing journalists for publishing materials, contrary to the public interest. But a new election law also gave survivors, the survivors extraordinary powers and free speech. However, the December elections produced a new coalition government, and in the next year rule, and the new prime minister and government have been. I've already begun to implement 100 plan that includes provisions to protect media freedom and misabloy and you can see that now empowerment. They have to repeal the media act. This strategy not hold for the entire region. Despite a history of electoral strife, Papua New Guinea with a score of 30. The 233 elections is being called all of the country's worst ever and tiered Papua New Guinea reports found numerously regularities with out of date election rolls with the stolen ballot boxes, and even bouts of violence. None of this bodes well for democratic development in PNG and may directly affect its future CPI scores. And in Vanuatu, I was a bright sport this year. The people are becoming more aware of corruption as an issue as civil society organizations from coalitions to hold government accountable. It's an important win the government committed to establish establishing an anti corruption commission in late 2021. Yet the country continues to grapple with political instability with snap elections held this year after the prospect of a no confidence vote to get the president to call elections in August. And then the funding remarks. Based in the Pacific region. There are many opportunities. So the. For example, this year, the Pacific Island Forum endorsed the 2050 strategy for the blue Pacific continent, which includes commitments to good governance and anti corruption efforts. A new vision. So this vision is part of the strategy of the blue Pacific. And now the important thing is to turn this into policy to take action on it. On that vision. So that's any corruption strategies can be carried can be enacted throughout the Pacific. That's basically my presentation that I have. And later when there are questions, I'll be able to answer questions. I haven't gone on the CPI, because that data is readily available on our transparency.org website, and also on you, Transparency International YouTube channel. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening. Thank you so much, Mr. Joseph Arama. Well, that was great and a great presentation from his end. And I would like to introduce myself as the moderator. I am now my private TV producer and presenter, and I'm glad that I'm able to be part of this conversation more like a session on this beautiful Tuesday. And for those that are just joining us, we'll welcome you to this webinar. And we thank you for joining us as we take on the comments, especially if you have questions, we can keep this for later. And as we finish, and we have a concluding remarks from Mr. Arama would like to also acknowledge and welcome associate professor Grant Walton. Professor Grant, what's at the Development Policy Center and the Policy and Governance Program within the Crafts Corps of Public Policy at the Australian National University. He's on the editorial board for the General Asian Pacific Policy Studies, and we can then have the integrity and anti-corruption specialization of the Crafts Corps' Master of Public Policy. For more than 15 years, Mr. Grant has conducted research in the Pacific, particularly in Melanesia, in our Melanesian countries. Grant has also published in academic journals and books, and has authored major reports for donors and NGOs. His book, Interruption and its Discontents, Local, National and International Perspectives on Corruption in Upper New Guinea, was published through our workbook in 2020. We thank you, Mr. Grant Walton, and we welcome you over to you, Sam. Thank you so much for that introduction and welcome everybody to the seminar. I would first like to acknowledge and celebrate the Ngunnawal people on whose lands that I'm coming to you from and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. I'd like to thank the organizers of today's event. It's a really great opportunity to discuss with you some of the emerging researchers coming out about corruption measures in Fiji and in the region. So what I'm going to do today is I'm going to go through a number of different indicators to show a bit about what we know about the measures and solutions to corruption in Fiji. And I'll touch on some other Pacific Island countries, particularly focusing on Melanesia as I go. So by way of introduction, in 2006, of course, Fiji had what was named at the time the good governance coup, whereby there was a military takeover led by the previous Prime Minister Barney Marama, took over the government and justified this coup in the name of good governance and in the name of fighting corruption amongst other issues. So one of the questions that we can ask we've had an election last year which brought in a new Democrat democratically elected government in Fiji is how far has Fiji come since that good governance coup. And in part of this presentation I'll be answering that question and I'll also be drawing on a variety of measures to show what we know about the nature of corruption in Fiji or highlights on the key challenges and perhaps opportunities to addressing it and then I'll conclude. So first of all, if we can get into measuring corruption, there are many ways to measure corruption. And, and Joseph has just done an excellent job in highlighting the corruption perceptions index. Now I'm not going to go through this slide all about much other than to say that the corruption perceptions index is a measure of perceptions about the levels of corruption across 180 countries. And it's the most popular measure. It's the most known against the most media coverage. Now, Fiji first and Barney Marama in particular highlighted Fiji's score on the corruption perceptions index in the lead up to last year's election to say we are the party that is addressing corruption in the nation. You can see that by this this this fly here, suggesting that Fiji's rank on the corruption perceptions index is an indicator that they were governing well and they were addressing corruption. Now, there is some there are some measures to suggest that actually there's a list of kernel of truth in that. Now, if we have a look at another measure and this is coming from the worldwide governance indicators this measures. The control of corruption in a range of countries and far more countries in the Pacific than the corruption perceptions in index. We see that actually the percentile rank of Fiji has improved from 2007 the year after the coup from around 60 to 2021 the most recent data in improving to 67.3. So there has been some indication that there has been improvement over the over the the last number of years during the previous government. When we compare the control of corruption score in Oceania to other Pacific countries we see that Fiji does relatively well does better than countries such as Kiribati, Marshall Islands all the way down to Poppen, New Guinea, Solomon and Solomon Islands, but it doesn't do as well as American Samoa, Tuvalu, Samoa and Micronesia so it's kind of you know it towards the upper end of the the median score there. Now, these measures that I presented to you are mostly expert opinions right that and what we need to do to get a fuller picture of what's going on in the country is to also ask citizens now in 2021 there was the first Pacific global corruption barometer that was undertaken now this was the first attempt to statistically measure people's perceptions of corruption across the Pacific region, it included 17 countries. So when I present this data and I was involved in in in the analysis of the smaller Pacific Island case studies, but this was conducted by transparency international. When I present it you can see that on the left hand side we have the larger Pacific Island countries which includes Fiji, these are statistically statistically significant results, the smaller Pacific Island case studies they are representative but not to the degree of the large one so that's why they are separated in this analysis. So, the global corruption barometer found that 68% in Fiji saw that the government corruption was a big problem now that wasn't as bad as Solomon Islands, PNG and Vanuatu to name a few. But it was better than it was it was not as good sorry as Tonga, Kiribati, Samoa and other smaller countries. 51% saw the private sector corruption as a big problem that was not as bad as Solomon Islands and PNG with their larger particularly logging sectors and marine sectors, but Fiji wasn't as didn't receive as good a score on that response on that compared to a number of other Pacific countries as you can see. One of the things with corruption across the Pacific we know and and we have to be very careful about is that the difference between a gift and corruption can be blurry right so the global corruption barometer asked some questions about reciprocity, and this is one of them and it shows that and it shows responses to the question if helped by somebody in a position of authority I should give them a gift or political support. So what we see that in Fiji around a third of respondents said that they would help somebody in a position of authority if they if they help them out and that was that was not as high as Kiribati and Vanuatu, but higher than in and then in Samoa and in other Pacific countries as you can see there so it's less important that some of the other Pacific Pacific Island countries, particularly those larger ones there. The other thing we have to keep in mind about corruption and accusations of corruption in Fiji is that corruption in Fiji doesn't just depend on people and institutions and and and actors within Fiji itself. Corruption is transnational in nature ducks and weaves and moves across national boundaries across subnational boundaries. The proceeds of corruption end up in places like Australia Singapore the United States and other places and to capture this. This table shows the trans justice networks financial security in a secrecy index sorry, and it shows across the world when it comes to hiding illicitly gained money. The United States is the worst country in the world. Right. So oftentimes when we think about corruption and corruption perceptions index we think about these developing countries being the problem. This is a different way of seeing the issue. So we see that the United States is the worst in the world Singapore is pretty bad. We also have countries like China, Australia and Malaysia, where in particular illicitly gained money in from the Pacific goes to when we have a look at Fiji on this link list it's actually ranked fairly well it's, it's better than the Australia and and New Zealand. So we need to keep that in mind in terms of understanding that the kind of the broader picture of corruption in Fiji. So I want to now just highlight some of the challenges to addressing corruption in in Fiji and this is drawing on some of the research that I've been involved with with Huznir Husham and Nilesh Gounder as well so I'd like to thank them for their help. Let's go back to this global corruption barometer. Now, it's actually some there's some good results in this global corruption barometer. We found that 57% of respondents were optimistic about government efforts to fight corruption. And when we asked people if they thought they could make a difference in the fight against corruption. And 90% of people said that that that they thought that they could that ordinary people could make a difference. So that's quite good. However, only one fifth of respondents believe that corrupt officials are punished and this is an area of weakness across the Pacific people do not believe most people do not believe that those who engage in corruption face sanctions or their actions. There are many reasons for this but a part of the reason is due to the nature of the integrity agencies, agencies like the Ombudsman like the police or in the case of Vanuatu like the Fiji ICAP like the police, like the order to general and other integrity agencies. So if we start with the police, we actually see that there have been increases in spending and promise spending over the foot for more than a decade. So just to read this graph we have the blue line which is what the government promised to deliver to the police and other institutions and the red line is what they actually received. And you can see that there's a gap. There's a gap between these lines which means that these agencies of police here did not receive what they were initially promised and this is a bit of a concern and something that we have been monitoring. So you see that in terms of spending there has been an increase. However, the police is a concern because in the global corruption barometer, the police and MPs as well as business executives with the institutions that were most associated with corruption. So there's a concern there about corruption within the police. So the office of the order to general when we have a look at how much funding it gets there has been an increase but they're also these underspends so the agency is getting less than than what it has been promise there. You can see the gap. The Attorney General's office we also see reductions in funding and large underspends. We also get to the FICAC the Fiji Independent Commission against corruption which is the key anti corruption agency in Fiji and that agency was set up in 2007 in response to the government's promise to clean up corruption as to justify its taking over of the government. Now we can see that in terms of spending from 2010 spending reduced from 10.6 million Fijian dollars down to 8 million Fijian Fijian dollars. Now these figures have been adjusted for inflation so they are comparable over time. So there is some concerns there that has been some underspend also that's of concern for this agency. Now there's been some debate about the Fiji ICAC and in the lead up to last year's election the opposition at the time said that it would abolish the ICAC after 100 days. It doesn't look like it's happening as far as I'm aware at the moment, but there's certainly been some criticism against it. Now I'd like to say that it's important to note that whilst the Fiji ICAC was connected to the Bani Marama government that there have been some advantages to having an ICAC set up. Over time there's been a significant increase in complaints to the agency in 2017-18. There was about 3,000 complaints I think the year before it was even more around about 5,000. So initially there were a few complaints, around about 100 to 200 complaints per year and that's shot up and it's relatively well funded. And to give you an indication whilst there have been reductions in Papua New Guinea for its key in anti-corruption agencies about four or five of them. The government spends about 0.27% of its budget on all of those agencies. In Fiji the ICAC itself is promised to receive about that amount, about 0.28% in the 2023-2023 budget. So it's relatively, when we compare it to say P&G, well funded. But yes there have been accusations of political interference and the lack of independence and that has to be addressed. And there is another issue that it does not investigate the majority of complaints and I was involved with others in analysing the complaints that the Fiji ICAC got between 2007 and 2014. We found that about 5% of reports fell under its mandate and that had been dropping over time. The other thing that we found with our analysis is that there's a gender intervention to responding to corruption in Fiji. So females are far less likely to complain to the Fiji ICAC than men are. So in 2014, 25% of complaints were from females and that was that improved since 2007 but still far fewer than men. Women are far more likely to complain about the family as well as the state and the private sector. The global corruption barometer found that 11% of respondents say experienced extortion or knew someone who had. And this points to the idea that we need to better understand the gender dimensions of corruption and how women in particular can respond meaningfully to it. The analysis also showed that in terms of defining corruption there was a mismatch between the way that the Fiji ICAC defined corruption and complainants. With most complainants having a broader definition of corruption than Fiji ICAC and that led to a kind of a misalignment between what was reported and what fell under Fiji ICAC's mandate. In terms of any more anti-money laundering efforts, in general, this is a report that was put out by Transparency International last year. In general, it found that Fiji has sufficient preventative measures based upon a sound legal framework but money laundering, investigation, prosecution and recovery of corruption proceeds has not been actively pursued. And the report highlighted concerns about banking, real estate and foreign exchange sectors hiding funds from narco traffic in corruption and tax evasion. And certainly there have been concerns with organisations like Bikigangs becoming more prominent in Fiji. And this is the final slide before I wrap up, but there's also an opportunity for regional leadership. The Teowena vision, as Joseph mentioned, provides the region with an opportunity to contribute to more meaningful responses. The Teowena vision was an agreement by Pacific Island leaders and has been endorsed by the Pacific Islands Forum as an important statement of intent to fight corruption across the region. There have been suggestions that the region might look at setting up a Pacific Centre for Financial Crime, but there's certainly, it's certainly important that not only Fiji steps up into this regional space, but others do as well. And I'm thinking in particular about Australia, because Australia has a terrible reputation for facilitating money laundering. It's starting to over the last few years respond to these allegations, and particularly within the casino industry, but it has been criticised for ages for having a poor anti-money laundering response. The Senate Standing Committee that's provided some recommendations, it should be looking at doing that and also cooperating more with specific partners. So if you want to address corruption in Fiji, it's not just about people, institutions within Fiji, it needs metropolitan countries, Australia, New Zealand and others to also step up. Okay, I just want to conclude very briefly, there have been improvements in terms of responding to corruption in Fiji, and we can highlight some of those from the analysis, the increased analysis that's been done over the past few years. But corruption is still a serious challenge. I think we need to keep and reform the FICAC and also support other integrity agencies. In the Constitution, there is a provision for an accountability and transparency commission that also could help to take some of the load off the FICAC. But the other thing that I'd like to highlight is the importance of understanding some of the informal institutions around understandings of corruption and responding to it. And there is a need in Fiji and across the Pacific to really explore alternative responses. So often we rely on focusing on these formal institutions on the FICACs on the integrity agencies and what we need to be doing is having a look at how people understand corruption and are involved in addressing it in their everyday lives. There is a need for greater focus on the gender dimensions of the way in which people experience corruption and also are able to report it. It's important that people are aware about the role of integrity and anti-corruption agencies. And finally, there's this moment right now, which has not been there for a long time. If you look back to say 15 years ago, the anti-corruption good governance agenda was really something that was pushed onto the Pacific by donors. Donors like Australia, donors like New Zealand and multilateral agencies. Now we're seeing a Pacific response through the Teowena vision, through the Pacific Islands Forum and other kinds of engagements. And I think that there is an opportunity to build on that. And that will involve Pacific leaders like Fiji, the player, an important regional role. But also countries like Australia cleaning up their backyard and making sure that elicit funding doesn't easily so easily flow into those countries. I'm going to leave it there. Thank you very much for that and happy to answer any questions you might have or continue the conversation over email or what have you. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much, Mr. Walter. That was very insightful and it's so great to hear that we have a lot that's going on in our Malaysian countries. May I pose a question to you at the moment, especially with our participants that are joining us? Someone would love to ask what was your measure in the graphic comparison between our Malaysian countries? What was the measure? Yeah, what is the measure in the graphic comparison between the countries? Okay, I'm not sure which one, but let me go back if I can just share my slide. I've got a number in here, but let me just, this one here is the control of corruption measure. I'll switch out now. This is a survey of surveys. So it draws upon different surveys of corruption, including perceptions of bribery and others of corruption across the world. So this is a global analysis that is a part of the worldwide governance indicators. And look, the other thing that I drew on quite a lot was the global corruption barometer. It was rolled out across the Pacific in 2021. It was rolled out across 17 countries. I think it was about 7,000 people in total that were interviewed. Very large sample sizes anyway. And this provides a reference point for understanding public perceptions of corruption. And we haven't done a lot of this work in the Pacific. So it provides us with a point of comparison. So you can see here that in terms of who sees government as a government corruption is a big problem. Look, Solomon Islands and PNG, as you might expect, people are really concerned about government corruption in those countries. We're looking at Melanesian countries. Vanuatu is just over 70% close to Fiji. But then we get less of a concern in other countries across the Pacific, particularly those smaller ones here. So yeah, that's just a bit of an indication about the measures that I'm drawing on, but happy to answer any more questions around that methodology. Thank you so much, Mr. Walton, for that. And just on that note, what actually makes up the so-called clean countries that you mentioned, just the facilitating and hiding all this dirty money and all these transactions that are happening in our Melanesian counterparts. So in terms of money laundering, this is where we get a different picture of where the nature of the problem lies. And so if I, sorry, I'm just going to share my screen again. I hope you don't mind. But if we go down to this table here, what this does is it provides an alternative view on where the problem is in terms of corruption. The Corruption Perceptions Index provides us with one perspective. What the Corruption Perceptions Index does is it shows us where the transactions are perceived to be happening. And it focuses on the national scale. So it compares one country to another country. But when we look at where the money ends up, where does that corrupt money go? Where we see it going is into mostly more developed countries. The United States is shockingly bad in terms of hiding money. They've got industries in some states that are set up to provide secretive bank accounts for people and shell companies for people to hide their money in. And so this provides a different kind of perspective on the nature of the problem. It's still important to address corruption within Fiji, look at the FIAC and look at other measures to address corruption in the country. But this just shows that the corruption that goes on in Fiji is not just the responsibility of Fiji. We live in a globalized world and we need to have a look at the interconnections and enabling corruption. Thank you so much for that and I know it's very inspirational just having a listen. I hope I'll be able to also, what are your perspectives, what are your opinions on that, especially regarding Fiji? I guess Mr Ramu will be able to also have a listen to his opinion. Yes, thank you. Grant has clearly explained the case for Fiji and I think that's fantastic. So I thought that was a great work that is done. As I mentioned in the CBI, because there was a lapse of 17 years from 2006 to 2021, there was a lapse. The CBI would not give us a statistically significant figure for that, but I like the way Grant did it, where he showed the range of scores from 2007 in one of his slides. So I thought that was great. I suppose we should all work together to try and bring corruption down and work to make FIAC more independent. Yeah, thank you. Thank you Mr Ramu for that and it's so great to hear ideas, especially from the different perspectives and the different opinions. Just another question if I may pose to gentlemen. The transnational dimension shows that the Pacific is on the lower scale compared to our founders. How do we capture alternative natures of these funds, if you'd say that? So Joseph, do you mind if I go first? Yeah, okay, thank you. So look, there are a number of things that Australia needs to be doing in particular and I'm going to talk about Australia because I'm from Australia and I think Australia has been criticised for a long time for its poor response to transnational corruption. And so it is starting to, admittedly, Australia has introduced legislation that to address some of these concerns. It has started to look at its casinos, which is a major source of money laundering, but it needs to do more, particularly in the real estate sector. So we've got in Australia, in Queensland, a real estate area which is called the Cairns Colony, whereby we know that Pacific Island money is being spent on real estate. We know who owns the real estate in some cases and this real estate has been, in the past, purchased without any questions asked. Our banks have been involved in a number of money laundering scandals over the years and have been basically slapped on the wrist. In one case, my understanding is that if the bank involved was actually fined, the money that it was meant to be fined for facilitating money laundering transactions, it would have been bankrupt, but the regulator didn't do that. So more than Australia certainly can do. And this is not to take away from the task of addressing, you know, of supporting the FIAC, of doing things within Fiji, supporting civil society institutions like Transparency International, to address corruption within the country, but there needs to be a greater network looking at and responding to this. And yes, as the question notes, the donors have been pushing this good governance agenda for a number of years, and that's a kind of, you know, it's been relatively positive, but they also have to look at their own backyard. If I may just briefly respond. I think money laundering and transnational crimes are a huge issue in the Pacific. And I believe that this is not adequately covered in the CPI, because the CPI just looks at the national aspects and compares it to within countries. I think one of the ways of doing this is to have beneficiary like the company's registrar's office like in Fiji, when overseas companies register their companies, there should be a clear law on beneficiary ownership. You know, actually owns that company overseas, because in the case of Mr. Putin's super yachts. We just found out a couple of months ago that it was registered in the Marshall Islands in one of these offshore accounts the Marshall Islands. So those are some things that you need to look at. So I guess I don't have all the figures on this, but I just want to flag here that money laundry is a huge issue. And it's something that transparency the national and other the CSOs and government should work together to, to look at and tackle in this. And one of the things I like about this, this zoom this webinar is that international idea is sort of taking the lead in this and which is just fantastic for us. Thank you. Thank you very much gentlemen and the views and perspectives that we're hearing and noble and light and many of us, and would also like to just pose another question to Mr. Grant, because it is, it is where many questions arise, especially with this topics just a question. What do you think about the idea of setting up specific ombudsman that is housed under the great PI framework. And just in addition to that in asking this question. We're also mindful. I'm also mindful of the issues of sovereignty and non interference. This is a question that has been posed to us by our participants that are joining us on this webinar. Thank you. Thank you for for the question and thanks Teddy. I know Teddy when he's doing some excellent research. Look, I think I would be hesitant at this moment in terms of setting up new formal institutions, I think that there could be more work that's been done to to facilitate greater networks between existing national institutions. But look, I think that over time, it could be possible to to to develop some regional institutions but I just feel that right now, we are introducing these new anti corruption organizations. And Papua New Guinea and Fiji have, sorry, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands have introduced the their independent commissions against corruption. We've got other countries like Samoa promising to do do something similar, although not an actual ICAC. And I just think that setting up those national organizations should be a priority supporting them, providing a work of exchange between different country organizations so something a bit more informal I think first, then perhaps over time developing some of the potential infrastructure, but certainly, you know, something like a Pacific Financial Crime Center, which involves agencies from another number of different countries looking at that transnational dimension I think could be a valuable idea. So maybe a formal ombudsman, you know, in the medium term but in the short term I think you know more kind of, you know, networked hubs that are looking at issues like transnational crime and supporting these new anti corruption agencies that are in other countries. One of the big fear I fears I have I think this is less likely in Fiji but certainly in PNG and Solomon Islands. And in, you know, say, say, somebody somewhere like perhaps Samoa is that these new agencies will be created, and they'll fall over, and that would be a real disaster in terms of people's support of the government and the importance of addressing corruption in these countries so I think that there's really a need now for a regional regional support for these new organizations that are being set up as the first priority. Thanks, Teddy for your question. Thank you so much. Mr. Grant, Mr. Ronald. Would you like to just add on to what Mr. Watton has shared with that question. Yeah, and it's okay. Grant has answered that well. I was going to say something on the next question there on the media. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the policing corruption news to the people. Yeah, I was just going to say that know that the media act is going to be removed. Hopefully that the media will be a bit more open in exposing corruption news and so I think that'd be the important for us at Interity Fiji. And we are created to transfer is national, we sort of felt that we just have to be courageous in providing more government, but I think it also calls for them to be courageous and to expose things. So that is basically our take on this. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Watton. What are your views on the from the region's perspective. Thank you on the media question. Yeah, look, I mean, I think, just as a far, you know, better expert on on on this than I am. I mean, I will just say though that I think that the social media has been a really important development in, you know, across the region in Fiji, Solomon Islands, PNG. And there is this this balance that's that's happening. I mean, traditional media is really important because it's got much greater credibility. But, but social media is pressuring political elites to respond to accusations, even if they might might be unfounded. And I think that that and there are a number of different, you know, Facebook pages and things like that that have been set up, where, you know, that there are journalists that are that are curating the content and that's I think a really important trend and I hope to see some more credible kind of sites that coming up sharing information about corruption and things like I think that's a potential game changer, although there are obviously risks with with around social media faking using these types of things but I think that's an important component as well. Thanks. My apologies, Pamela has posed a question for Professor Walton, especially with in our country here in Fiji with faking, has there any research I'll have a research into the performance of the individual commissioners. If they were Fiji locals or expatriates and whether that should be a lesson for the Pacific Island. Look, we, we haven't done research on the commissioners themselves we've been tracking funding and we've been looking at you know the global corruption barometer score and some of the indicators of performance of the fire and we haven't linked that to the commissioners per se, but there is a, there is a broader question that I think that the questioner is alluding to across the Pacific and that is the role that foreigners can play in hitting up these independent against corruption and also the, the judiciary and we've seen, you know, you know, high level judges from New Zealand and Australia caught up in some controversies, you know, particularly in place like three of us. But in Papua New Guinea they've just announced that they will, there will be two commissioners from Australia and one from New Zealand heading up their anti corruption commission. And that has been justified on the basis that you know somebody within Papua New Guinea has got too many links. I personally prefer a look, I think it's a fraught space I personally would prefer to see citizens from within the country take these these positions or at least there be a kind of a timeframe to ensure that if if foreigners are heading up these anti corruption commissions or the judiciary, you know, in senior spots of the judiciary that there is a, an opportunity to hand over to and to train up and to make sure that this is not the status quo to continue on. So I look, I would personally like to see far more Pacific involvement understand the, the, the rationale behind it. But I think that there are a number of instances that we can point to where Pacific leadership has, you know, been at the top of these anti corruption agencies, and it has met with success. I won't comment on Fiji in particular, but I will say, if we have a look at task for sweeping in Papua New Guinea which was a clear, successful anti corruption agency that was set up and it was briefly very successful headed up by a dynamic Papua New Guinea leader and I think that that has some lessons for other agencies across the Pacific. Thank you so much for that, Mr. Walton. Thanks, Elena he'll fair question. I'd like to both Mr. Ramo. How does your politics link to this corruption. Yes, sorry. I wanted to respond to that question also. Actually, we have had two commissioners, Colonel Langman, and then after Colonel Langman, Rashmi Aslam is coming in. He's the current one. And we work closely with Mr. Aslam, and he's now a Fiji citizen. He's always very open to ideas and will welcome any zoom to answer any questions that people have. I take the view that when we advertise his positions we should always get the best person for this, while we want a local. It often happens that the person from overseas can deliver a better job on it. At the end of the day to me it's about marriage. And I know people may not agree with me this. I feel also in the rugby field, if the coach for overseas is better, let's use the guy or woman on that. It's really better to me whether somebody's from a local or overseas, so the job gets done. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. Good stuff from the gentleman, especially with the news in Fiji and also from within the region for Mr. Walter. If I may also continue. Just another question. What is the reason behind Fiji's performance, especially with compared to our Melanesia countries, which is above the 50% compared to the others. Yeah, I take the view that we shouldn't be what's the word for it to smug in Fiji. I think we can do much better than that at the score. We really should be looking into New Zealand and Australia as role models to improve our scores. But I'd rather not make any comments about other Melanesian countries. Thank you, Mr. Walter. Would you like to just add on a bit? Thank you. I think I feel like I've been put on the spot, but that's okay. Look, I think that Fiji is doing relatively well when you have a look at how it's going. And we know that from a number of measures. We have to be careful, I think, about just taking one measure. But if you have a look at the results in the global corruption barometer, you have a look at other scores. I think that there are lessons to be learned not just from other Melanesian countries, which if you have a look at Fiji in terms of other Melanesian countries, it's leading the pack. It is doing relatively well. I think Fiji should be looking at across the whole Pacific. And there are other countries that do that in terms of the corruption barometer in terms of the control of corruption indicator that do better. And so I think that having a look at some of these other countries that are smaller than Fiji and learning some of the lessons from that would also help. Look, I am of the view that Australia and New Zealand, while they are islands, I think that they're somewhat unique. You know, there's a different history and, you know, different society, cultural issues, those types of things. And so I think that, yes, some aspects of Fiji's response can be learned from Australia and New Zealand, I agree with Joseph on that. But I also think there's some things to be learned from other Pacific Island countries, particularly the way in which culture is drawn upon the relationship between, you know, culture and societal obligations and these formal institutions. I think there's some more learning to be done there. And I would say, as an academic, there's probably more research to be done. There's a lot that we don't understand. Thank you. Thank you. Explanation on that. With that being said, Mr. Walter, do you think that having institutions like the Fiji Independent Commission on Youth Corruption, which is fully functional compared to other modern Asian countries, which is why it had to operate, especially effectively had Fiji's performance. So, is that a good, I think that's a question about whether or not the FICAC, you know, what role the FICAC should play. Look, I think that there's a really, you know, it's a really important moment now. We've just had the election. The opposition have been very critical about the FICAC and there is a determination to reform it. And I think that's great. The thing that needs to happen now, I think, is that there needs to be some sort of greater independent oversight of the FICAC. It needs to be removed from government influence. And I think a review of the FICAC is absolutely necessary. The great thing about the FICAC is actually it stood the test of time. It's an anti-corruption agency in the Pacific that's lasted for more than 10 years. So what have we got, 16 years, about 15, 16 years now. And that's a success story in and of itself. You know, there have been some issues with, you know, you know, attacking the opposition and things like that. And I think that very important issues to address, there is reform required. But I think also we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. We should keep the FICAC and we should be looking at reforming it, making it far more independent. And also increasing its resources. I think its resources could be increased. And I think other agencies could be supported to take some of the waste off of its shoulders. Yeah. Rebecca Grant, thank you so much for that. What are your views on that? Yes, I think Grant has explained it very clearly. I don't have anything to add on that particular one. Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, Edward has posed a question. To keep China away from Pacific, Australia, New Zealand and U.S. is handing out direct budget support to support our military and many others. In your opinion, is this a form of bribery? Or is the word gentlemen? I'll start off first. I personally don't think it's a form of bribery. It's a way this has always happened where they give assistance to countries to support them. I could be the way that Western countries give aid to the Pacific tends to be in terms of strengthening democracy, gender issues, human rights. And that sort of links to the next question because a survey has been done of all the countries in the CPI, all 180 countries. And it was found that those countries with the poor democratic institutions, low democracy are the ones who do poorly in the CPI so that is that. We should also be mindful that with China, they are quite popular in the Pacific, especially in Malaysian countries because they fund infrastructure and things that people require, especially rural people. I think that there's always this tension between this because we want funding for strengthening democracy and we also want this infrastructure funding, but I don't think the view that it's bribery. The Chinese diplomat who told me, I'm not sure where he was been psychastic, he said that, yes, very well to fund all these things, gender issues and things, but at the end of the day, the people who are LGBT or gender or whatever, they want good roads and so forth. So I suppose it's a balance, but I don't think it's a full bribery. It's for the countries in the Pacific to manage the relationship with China and Western countries and come up with sort of a path that can benefit these countries. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Walter, what do you have to say about that. Yeah, look, I don't agree with Joseph. I don't see it as a form of bribery. It's certainly type of influence though, and, and, you know, Australia, New Zealand and China are all kind of fighting for influence and being a Pacific Island country has never been more advantageous as to right now because you've got these superpowers fighting over your support. Now, one of the things that is one of the things about budget support so budget support is two types of way, two main ways that donors can support countries one is through setting up projects so direct project support and that's been the dominant form of age for now, you know, 20 years or so. No, more than 20 years, 20, 30 years. And the other is budget support now budget support is giving money to a government to their budget right and so it's, it's, it's, there's less control that the donors have over that funding that form of assistance ramped up during COVID-19 across the Pacific There is, I think a great unspoken concern that that funding, because it's subject to less oversight is more. It's, it's, it's got the greater potential for corruption. Right, so there is an issue there about how that money is used for budget support which we've seen increase since you know the COVID-19 support packages coming from Australia, in particular and New Zealand and other countries. So, yeah, I don't see the bribery per se but I do think that it's it's it's more likely to be used for corruption is from what I understand of it. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you so much for that and just looking into the views from TDA from the new PNG ICAC which has three commissioners appointed the commissioners to the adapters who are expatriates. For the idea, according to a premise the more happy is to avoid the issues of political interference and other search and cautions that have been playing out the anti corruption borders for a very long time. Thank you for having your views on that and especially with the other question that's also been posed from you gentlemen, if you'd like to add on Mr Walter. Look, as I said before I understand the rationale for the idea is to have commissioners that are not likely to be influenced politically influenced or you know influenced by cultural obligations and other things. Very hesitant to support it. However, I think that perhaps if this is a short term agenda to get that the ICAC set up in PNG where it could fall over. And to have that as a short term measure I think that it is as a potential to be okay but I think there should be plans to after a certain number of years to to have even if it's not all the commissioners at least one commissioner from PNG and I think that that's that should be the case to for other Pacific countries. Joseph, did you have a view on that. Sorry, you know, I did. I'm part of my, I don't have much knowledge of PNG. Yeah, thanks. Thank you so much gentlemen thank you Mr Ramo Mr Walton is great hearing your ideas and perspectives, especially of this being a happening in our Malaysian copies. Just to wrap up things would you like to have a last comments from the two of you please. Yeah, I would like to thank international idea for for having this webinar. I think it's a we need to be talking about these things. And hopefully next one we could invite some of the commissioners from the Pacific, maybe the fight that one and I'm going to give it to be also part of the of the webinar, but I think it's a fantastic idea. I'd like to thank also all the those listening in, and especially the crowd from the Fiji National University that are also listening here. And it's also great for our work I think any publicity on any corruption advocacy is great for us. And I've only we've always said this that any corruption is not just the purview of Transparency National is for everybody of the CSOs, because whatever we do is always an element of corruption and interruption work should be integrated into whatever we do with its agenda, climate change, poverty alleviation, or any of those. And I'm so glad to mention here that the Fiji National University is offering a degree level course in any corruption, a new one with the Transparency National and Fiji, and we are deeply grateful for that. And I'm so glad that to also be grant because grants are produced at this report of corruption in seven Pacific countries, which is being used a lot. We are using that a lot in our studies at the university. And I just found out from our young people who are going to the Auckland Pacific governance program that they will also use that study, apart from the GCB. And just from the way I'm talking that I was a former school teacher, and we can do top stop a Google and talking talking so I think I'm stuck there. You know, thank you so much. Thank you, Mr Ramo. Just your last views, Mr Walter. Yeah, but okay, so thank you for everybody for for attending thank you for idea and for the participants for for Joseph for your excellent views on the corruption perceptions next and also the kind of depth perspective on Fiji. Just finally, I'd say that there are some, there's a question around the characteristics of corruption of countries with with high corruption from Vicky Vicky, I would say that in the Pacific we're seeing that most people are concerned about politicians in terms of corruption there are some variations in Fiji we've got police and politicians and police and politicians and generally the the groups that are most concerned. So in terms of the overall level of corruption in the Pacific versus other places in the world, you know, in the smaller countries, Fiji, it's not as bad as some of the other countries, particularly those in Africa, you know, places like Afghanistan and others. But there are reports that you can see. And, and if you'd like any of those reports please email me. Yes, overall look I think that for Fiji I just want to reiterate that I feel like it's and the Pacific in Fiji and the Pacific we're at a critical juncture. And there is an amazing leadership in response to this issue in Fiji and across the Pacific. And, you know, I think that the work that a number of people are doing like Joseph like others like idea is great in steering this and ensuring that specific lead response and I think we should keep that keep that momentum going. And if look if I can help I am happy to but yeah, great to see that Pacific leaders at the forefront. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. Thank you gentlemen. For my colleagues here the international idea and the patient Pacific regional office would like to thank you both for your participation and the insightful advice that we received today especially to the audience for joining us live on this event. We hope that through the discussions will be able to have more people that have gained knowledge and especially share issues about Fiji and the region. So from our international idea colleagues here in Fiji, we wish you well, and we hope you have a blessed day until the next webinar. Thank you very much.