Call from Kiribati

Abstract

Citizens of the Planet, and Fellow Australians. Australians come from all the lands on Earth, and I have come here from the islands of Kiribati, in the midmost heart of the Pacific Ocean. Firstly, I would like to acknowledge the Elders of the Traditional Owners of this land past and present.

Kiribati was once the British colony of the Gilbert Islands, its cultural dances praised by Robert Louis Stevenson, and its people seen by Arthur Grimble in his book, A Pattern of Islands as a "people of poetry, romance and love". Kiribati is the first nation upon which the sun rises in the morning, the first to see the new day, and now among the first Nations (which includes its sister Tuvalu), to be lost to Climate Change. For the people that have never heard of Kiribati before, it consists of 33 atolls, averaging only two metres above sea level. It has a population of over 112,000 people.