Remarks - Opening Session Vale Ni Valua Knowledge Exchange Pre-COP31, Fiji

Thank you very much. I join in acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the land, and I also acknowledge First Nations people from Australia and from around the world for you [indistinct] thank them for their stewardship and their countries over millennia. I also want to acknowledge my friend and partner, Murat Kurum, President of COP31, who’s travelled with his large delegation all the way here to Fiji, because the road to Antalya starts here in this room, as it should.

And as has been a feature of the collaboration of Australia and Turkiye, from the very first days of our partnership in Belem, Minister Kurum and I have been of one mind, that we must use COP31 to elevate the views and the experiences of the Pacific in the top processes which have not been heard strongly enough in the past. I also acknowledge the President of COP29, my friend, Mukhtar Babayev; the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, Simon Stiell, the world’s most senior climate official; former prime minister Julia Gillard and ministers from around the world who are joining us over these few days.

I also want to acknowledge our climate envoys. Pacific COP31 climate envoys, Kristina Stege of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, is our Envoy for Oceania and keeping 1.5 alive; Ruel Yamuna, who’s the Envoy for Climate Finance, which is such an important part of our deliberations; and the Honourable Inia Seruiratu, the Envoy for the Ocean, who are doing a magnificent job in helping us with the issues of the Pacific on the world stage.

I also acknowledge our COP31 youth champion, Sally Higgins. If you haven’t got to know Sally yet, please use the opportunity whether you’re young or young at heart. Get to know Sally over these few days because she too is doing an absolutely magnificent job at elevating the views of those who have so much at stake in the future.

And also, to assist Sally we have the Youth Ocean Advocate, Kal Glanznig, who is helping us with the importance of oceans in the conversation. Well, it's appropriate, my friends that pre-COP begins with this Vale ni Vanua, a knowledge exchange, because pre-COP is about exchanging experiences and knowledge and ideas about how we can make COP31 a success. And no one is more important in that process than the Pacific, the Pacific which has done so little to cause climate change, and has so much at stake in combatting climate change.

Every nation is impacted by climate change, every nation. Nepal, Thailand, Turkiye, Australia, every single nation is feeling the effects of climate change as we speak. Bushfires in Scotland, floods in Nepal and in Thailand.

While every nation is impacted, none are more impacted than the nations of the Pacific. There are four nations in the world that on a sober reading of the projections face the very real risk of, to be very frank with you, of being submerged. Three of them are here in the Pacific, one of them we will visit tomorrow.

They’re low-lying atolls who have the most at stake out of any country in the world. Tomorrow we will visit the least visited country in the world. No country has fewer visitors in the world than Tuvalu, and tomorrow we are taking 34 leaders, influential people, presidents of multilateral development banks, to lift the profile of these issues on the world stage, to do our best to point out that this is the why – not the how, but the why we are here in the Pacific, that this is what we are working so hard to tackle around the world.

And I say this also: I see the Pacific not just elevating their own issues, but also on behalf of the world’s vulnerable states, on behalf of the small island developing states around the world. whether they be in the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, or anywhere, lifting those issues that are common for all, but using the Pacific to do so. The fact that some of the nations that need the climate finance for adaptation the most are those who struggle to get it the hardest, who find it more difficult.

The fact that oceans which are so important in terms of potential outcomes, potential mitigation, but also the impacts, have not featured so strongly in COP negotiations in years past. The fact that the recognition that the world will overshoot 1.5 has the biggest impact here, right where we stand. So today in Fiji, we are again calling on the world to match ambition with delivery.

Again, Mr Kurum and I have been of one mind that this COP must be about implementation and acceleration, that our COP will be transparent, predictable and inclusive for all, and it will be a real opportunity for information and knowledge sharing, which is what this session today is all about – about capturing, capitalising on and putting to work the knowledge of those who have been dealing with climate change here at this forefront, here at this cutting edge.

The fact that we have more work to do to ensure that the pledges that countries have made in the past about renewable energy and energy efficiency are met and implemented, and we have more work to do to ensure that pledges that have not yet made about accompanying that increase in renewable energy with electrification are put at the forefront – Turkiye’s leadership in the action agenda and in our work in the negotiations which we’re bringing together as one.

So Australia is a proud member of the Pacific family. We share a region, we share an ocean and we share a future. And we all succeed when the Pacific is safe, resilient and prosperous.

And in this contested world, this most difficult world that we live in with the most contested and difficult geopolitical environment we could imagine, our work here matters not less, but more than ever before. As we seek to build consensus, which is not easy, across more than 190 parties to find a consensus, and we'll have to work hard to get consensus even here at Pre-COP, let alone at Antalya.

But we will leave nothing on the field. We will leave no stone unturned to do so. I'm very confident that COP31 will be remembered as one in which in a difficult environment, the world took a forward step.

In a difficult environment, the world said multilateralism matters more than ever before. And in a difficult environment, a region which has not had its voices heard, like the Pacific, has had its voices heard when we get to the end of Antalya. So it’s my great pleasure to join with my friend Lynda, whom I thank so much for your partnership, for your leadership, for your generosity in hosting this here today, to declare Vale ni Vanua open and to look forward to your learnings, to your insights and to your experience.

We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of country throughout Australia and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.