It gives me great pleasure to be able to launch the Pacific Storms exhibition in Brisbane. This exhibition is the first ofits kind in Australia. It features leading Pacific Islander artists, both from Australia and the Pacific, and it has as its theme the changing climatic conditions which are affecting the islands in dramatic ways. Pacific art is always vibrant and full of colour, and this collection is no exception. The wonderful colour and feeling jumps off the canvass to grab the attention of the viewer, and also carries a powerful message. As an Australian of Pacific Islands ancestry I am very conscious of the importance of the Pacific to the future of Australia. Australia has Pacific communities scattered across all of the States and Territories, yet these people are hard to quantify. If we

believe the 2001 census there are around 100,000 Pacific Islanders in Australia. This figure is conservative, because and the real figure is certainly more than 300,000 and may even be close to 500,000. If you ask the Papua New Guinea Consul in Brisbane he will tell you that there are 30,000 Papua New Guineans in Australia, 75 percent of who live in Queensland, most of them in the Greater Brisbane area. The census says 24,000. There are supposed to be 30,000 people of Samoan descent living in the Logan-Ipswich corridor, yet the census suggests that there are only 15,240 Samoans in all of Australia. Many are obscured in the statistics because they entered Australia via New Zealand. And others, like my own people are obscured by generations of living in Australia.

I am a descendant of the approximately 50,000 Pacific Islanders who entered Queensland as indentured labourers between 1863 and 1904, working on 62,000 indenture contracts. Two unique words that identify my people—now known as Australian South Sea Islanders—are Blackbirding and Kanaka. Blackbirding was the term used to describe the process which brought my ancestors to Queensland: the word has a strong taint of illegality and stealing of labourers. Kanaka is actually a Polynesian word for ordinary rural people, but the word became a unique identifier of the South Sea Islanders. Today, in New Caledonia the word has become Kanak, a signifier of nationalist pride, now totally detached from its original depreciating meaning. These Islanders lived all along the Queensland sugar coast and in northern New South Wales; and many of the families remain today in the same areas. Pacific Storms first opened in Bundaberg, a sugar town which remains important as a centre for Pacific Islanders.

As a sportsman I have always been conscious that I am a role model for younger sportsmen and sportswomen, and have tried to play a role in community development in many different ways. Pacific Storms allows me to link together my Pacific ancestry, arts and community development, and to use my sporting background to promote the art and culture of Pacific peoples.

The exhibition also represents the developments in contemporary Pacific arts which are far better accepted and appreciated in New Zealand, United States and many European countries than in Australia. Pacific arts are still struggling to find a place in Australia, and Pacific Storms is part of the giving Pacific arts a more prominent place in an Australian arts environment.

This exhibition is an important mixture of art, environmental issues and Pacific peoples. I hope that it has the impact it deserves on Australia. It shows works of great beauty, but it also contains a warning about the changing environment; a warning that we ignore at our peril.

Endnote

[1] This speech was first published as 'Foreword Guest of honour and rugby league legend, Mal Meninga,' in Beyond Pacific Art Catalogue, Brisbane, 2009, pp. 5–6.