John Tunidau, Australia Awards for Development recipient, Fiji

When I was chosen to be one of the Awardees for the Australian Pacific Island award given by the Australian
Prime Minister. It was a great experience I'm from a poor background and I started out
very poor and had hardships in life but been given the chance and I hope I've prove myself
and I've given back to what AusAID has given me. The program is actually a Masters Degree
in Maritime Law and Policy. And it was actually related to the work I'm doing because as a
maritime safety authority you've got to know all these laws. So when I came back I was put
into the legal section to lead the legal section and the first, probably the first task that
I was given was to look into the, review the Act, the principal Marine Act, which covers
all, governs all maritime activities in our local waters, that includes the Fiji waters.
this is a new field, probably one or two or three people have gone through this program
of study so we need to get people into looking into these things because as you see it is
not only an issue here in Fiji but all the Pacific Island countries and also throughout
the sub-Pacific region, probably in Asia, probably the Asia Pacific region most especially
these are issues when you look at ocean governance. Ocean governance is an issue that we need to look at.