Australia

There are about 1700 lawyers in the Pacific, excluding Australia and New Zealand, and about 100 of them are expected at the two-day conference being run by the South Pacific Lawyers Association.

Its chairman, Ross Ray QC, says the meeting will include sessions on issues such as document drafting, case analysis, commercial law and legal aid.

He says the conference is a good opportunity to promote ties between the different law societies across the region.

Mr Turnbull won a party room ballot 54 votes to 44 last night, less than six hours after announcing he would challenge Mr Abbott.

The ballot also saw Julie Bishop elected as deputy leader over Kevin Andrews 70 votes to 30 — keeping the position she has held since 2007.

Mr Turnbull, who will now become Australia's fourth prime minister in two years, spoke to reporters outside his apartment this morning.

"It was a long night, and it's going to be a big day today," he said.

“Australia and New Zealand have shown themselves to be the worst of neighbours with their self-serving approach to climate change. They will be remembered for their callousness in the face of the grave threats facing Pacific islands, as people are forced to leave their land and lose their livelihoods through climate change,” said Ritter.

“Australia and New Zealand have inadequate national targets are, they are frustrating global talks, they are beholden to big polluters - and now they are blocking a united Pacific voice.”

Leaders of small island states maintained their position of temperature target of 1.5 degrees and loss and damage while Australia and New Zealand refused to budge from the 2 degrees target.

Tuvalu’s Prime Minister, Enele Sopoaga, one of the most vocal leader from the Smaller Island States told PACNEWS despite the Forum position, his country will push for the 1.5 degree target, loss and damage and an ambitious and legally binding target in Paris.

On Friday, Mr Dutton was making small talk with Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who had just returned from the Pacific Islands Forum in Papua New Guinea.

Noting that a meeting was running late, Mr Dutton remarked it was running to Cape York time, to which Mr Abbott replied: We had a bit of that up in Port Moresby.

Mr Dutton then quipped: Time doesn't mean anything when you're about to have water lapping at your door, a comment caught on a television microphone.

The three, who worked for a security contractor at the asylum seeker processing centre on PNG's Manus Island, are accused of raping another employee at the Australian-run centre.

Shortly after the alleged rape in July, the three were flown out of the country.

PNG police efforts to have the three extradited have so far been unsuccessful.

PNG's Prime Minister Peter O'Neill said the three guards must be returned to be tried under the law in PNG, where rape convictions carry the death sentence.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott revealed this to the media tonight after the Pacific Island Forum Leaders’ retreat in Port Moresby.

“Australia will be increasing its Ariel surveillance of the Pacific (Ocean) and will be committing additional $19million a year so the fisheries (industry) can be properly patrolled and policed,” Abbott said.

Australia will also be giving a new patrol boat to monitor illegal fishing in the PIF nation’s exclusive economic zone. 

He said a “stronger economy is vital and fishing and tourism is a mainstay of Pacific economies.”

Kiribati president Anote Tong warned people in the region would have to flee in waves similar to the current migrant crisis in Europe unless stronger action was taken to reduce emissions.

"I think it would be incumbent on them because how relevant [would] their presence be," he said.

"We expect them as a our big brothers, not bad brothers, our big brothers to support us on this one."

Australia and New Zealand are the two most economically powerful members of the PIF, which is meeting this week in Port Moresby.

The Australian Government has announced that it will take in an extra 12,000 refugees affected by the conflict in Syria and Iraq.

But the Coalition's Ian Rintoul says there are some Iraqi and Syrian asylum seekers that have been held for more than two years at the Australian run camps on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island, and Nauru.

He says they fled their countries for exactly the same reasons as those who are caught up in Europe's migrant crisis.

Representatives from the 16 forum member countries have gathered in Port Moresby to address issues concerning the region, but there are a number of conflicting positions, particularly when it comes to Australia and New Zealand and climate change.

Small island states have called for a global moratorium on new coal mines, which may struggle to get the backing of the wider forum, and enough of a reduction in emissions so that global temperature increases do not exceed 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels.