Australian High Commisioner Phillip Kentwell (backrow) on a visit to the office at the St Lucia Diabetics Association.

Strengthening Australian ties with the Caribbean and helping the region in ways best suited to the large desert island country, Australia, were areas up for discussion when Australian High Commissioner Phillip Kentwell paid a visit to
St Lucia this week.
It was the third visit to the island by the high Commissioner whose office is based in Port of Spain, Trinidad and the STAR caught up with Kentwell at the offices of the St Lucia Diabetics Association in Castries. Last year the Australian government provided funding to the Diabetics Association and the high commission visit had to do with reviewing advantages of that assistance.
Kentwell explained that it also was necessary in his role, to have a presence in St Lucia in order to have a better understanding of “priorities facing the people and the government of St Lucia.” With regard to the government, the Australian High Commissioner had an audience with acting prime minister Leonard Montoute, minister of external affairs Stephenson King, as well as the permanent secretary of the external affairs ministry.
The Australian High Commissioner indicated that his government’s fiscal year commenced on July 1st and there was provision for the country to strengthen ties and cooperation with Caribbean countries.
“For us to do that I need to make recommendations back to my government on how we could strengthen ties,” said Kentwell. “Obviously we don’t want to do that unilaterally. We need to do it in consultation with the St Lucian government and also look at areas where Australia may have some comparative advantage over some of the traditional friends and donors to St Lucia.”
In that context Kentwell referred to climate change noting that the issue was a global one. He referred to a project undertaken by a new Australian government in 2007 where the country embarked on a program of 150 million dollars a year for adaptation and mitigation measures for the small island states of the South Pacific.
“There’s going to be lessons we’ve learned from what we’ve already started in the South Pacific, because the tropical environment of these pacific countries is parallel in many ways to the tropical environment in the Caribbean.”
Rather than having the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center in Belize duplicate what had already been done in Australia, Kentwell said information could be shared between Australian and St Lucian specialists.
Kentwell used the Great Barrier Reef of Australia as an example of similarities the country shared with the Caribbean expressing that the reef had already been exposed to coral bleaching as a result of climate change.
“Here’s an area where Australia has knowledge, which the Americans and Europeans won’t know about because they don’t have reefs. It’s something Australia can offer in terms of collaboration, cooperation, and dialogue.
There was also the issue of boarder protection. Kentwell said over the last 30-40 years Australia had been developing and devising ways of monitoring and controlling illegal movement of drugs, weapons and people across costal shores. In the 1980’s Australia helped the South Pacific islands protect their fishing industries from illegal poaching.
“We know for instance there’s a crime wave coming through the Caribbean which is probably as a direct result of an increase in illegal trafficking of drugs and small arms coming south, going north, so that whole protection of coastal boarders is an area where Australia’s probably got some expertise we can share with countries in the Caribbean.”
Sports assistance was another area of focus when the Australian high commissioner met with government representatives this week as he noted that both Australian and St Lucian people were “outdoors-loving people.”  Sports like cricket, netball, as well as track and field, were areas up for consideration for a program where St Lucian athletes would be exposed to professional sporting institutions that would assist with their development.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites