Tuned in to the good oil

By MARY LOUISE O'CALLAGHAN

All eyes might be on the swarm of giant black butterflies that has just fluttered in through the open sides of the tropical leaf hut, but all ears this morning are tuned to Talking Truth, the live talkback radio programme which for the past five months has enabled Solomon Islanders to exchange information about the Australian-led intervention into their country.

This particular morning the programme has relocated to the remote province of Choiseul, close to the Solomons maritime border with Bougainville.

And the questions are coming not from anonymous phone callers but from a live audience of more than 100 people gathered in and around the local police leaf house.

It's just after 10am but already the steam is rising off the ground and the sun glancing off the blue seas surrounding this remote island community which, like the rest of the Solomons, relies on radio for virtually all their information about what is going on in their country. (They do not have a television station.)

One of the first to ask a question is Alpha Kimata, a former member of Parliament who was finance minister at the time of the 2000 coup.

Many of the questions contain vital nuggets of information for three men, the leaders of the intervention who form the Talking Truth panel today: the civilian co-ordinator of the regional assistance mission to Solomon Islands, Nick Warner; the Australian Federal Police assistant commissioner Ben McDevitt, and Colonel Quentin Flowers, who is commanding the regional military contingent.

A young Solomon Islands police officer, John Foru, asks what is going to be done to assist the police in remote provinces such as Choiseul.

They have been trying to cope for more than a decade with the spillover from the Bougainville conflict while experiencing a chronic lack of funds, transport and manpower.

McDevitt takes the microphone, explaining the plans to radically reform and revitalise the police force and how he hopes he can bring other government agencies back in to play their roles in monitoring the border. Heads nod in approval.

Talking Truth is the brainchild of communication strategist Kate Graham and, like the intervention itself, has proved something of a breath of fresh air for Solomon Islanders who have spent a good part of the past four years getting the real news by reading between the lines of the sole daily newspaper, the Solomon Star, or listening to the latest rumours sweeping the local market.

Returning this year to run the information campaign of the Solomon Islands Government's Intervention Taskforce, Graham drew on her experience working for institutions from both sides of the Solomons conflict, first with the Solomon Islands Peace Monitoring Council, who in 2000 had to implement a now-defunct peace agreement, and then last year with the much maligned Royal Solomon Islands Police, some of whom had taken part in the coup.

She knew immediately that Solomon Islanders needed to be able to hear information about the intervention straight from the horse's mouth from a neutral, non-political source they could trust.

"Talking Truth strips back the spin," says Graham. "The information is taken straight to the people without interpretation or middlemen.

"People in towns and villages put forward questions and the men and women making the news - Australians, New Zealanders, Pacific Islanders, Solomon Islanders - answer them live."

It's proved to be a lively two-way exchange which, like any live programme, has had its surprises.

In one of the first programmes, a caller confronted Solomon Islands Prime Minister Allan Kemakeza over his alleged involvement in directing local thugs to attack a law firm last year.

Sir Allan was quick to point out on air that he'd already refuted these allegations but said that like anyone he would face the courts if necessary.

Another time a caller rang in claiming to have witnessed a murder.

"Keep him on the line," mouthed McDevitt, according to the show's moderator, the savvy Solomon Islands journalist, Dorothy Wickham.

Ben then quietly left the studio to take the call in another room, not realising that all the while he was conducting his impromptu interview of the witness, he was also holding up the only line for calls into the show.

Wickham's no-nonsense style and her journalist's instinct to probe has helped to give Talking Truth its edge. And its credibility.

Johnson Honimae, general manager of the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation, which broadcasts Talking Truth twice a week, believes the programme has played a central role in Solomon Islanders' understanding and acceptance of the intervention.

"The Talking Truth programme has become a household name in the past several months," says Honimae, who is a former broadcast journalist himself.

When a three-week gun amnesty was declared soon after the arrival of the intervention forces in August, the programme proved a crucial means for communicating not only the progress in the collection of weapons but the clear message that this was the last chance for people to hand in a weapon without facing the full force of the law, says Paul Tovua, the chairman of the intervention taskforce ultimately responsible for the show and a regular participant in it.

"We were able to get the message out very clearly that this was the last opportunity to hand in their weapons," says Tovua.

Because SIBC broadcasts on short-wave throughout the entire Solomons archipelago its reach is nationwide.

"I've had people in deepest Malaita say to me, 'I heard that on Talking Truth'," says Peter Noble, the New Zealand defence official, who is the deputy special co-ordinator of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), as the intervention is officially known.

A programme regular, Noble says he has witnessed a change in people's level of understanding of the intervention since he first arrived in July, largely as a result of Talking Truth.

"When we first came here I think there was quite a bit of anxiety about what is RAMSI, what are they going to do and what does this really mean for Solomon Islands?

"Talking Truth was one of the only mediums we had of at least getting the messages out to the people and satisfying their need for knowledge in the face of curiosity and anxieties."

Issues aired have been as diverse as why there was a need to recruit a greater percentage of women into the police force to what the stabilisation of budget finances means to the man or woman in the street, says Graham.

There have also been occasions when the programme has provided timely feedback for the leaders of the intervention, giving them insight into how their actions are being interpreted by Solomon Islanders.

Now the first stage of the intervention has successfully stabilised the security situation, a question repeatedly coming up in the latest programmes is what is the intervention doing about the endemic corruption that has so affected public life in the Solomons over the past decade or more.

Taking the microphone more often than not to answer this particular question is Warner.

A former director of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, Public Relations branch, he recognised from the start that the support of Solomon Islanders was crucial to the success of the intervention.

"Just as important as locking up the guns or the criminals, has been communicating the purpose of all this to ordinary Solomon Islanders," Warner said. "If we get that right, we're more than halfway there."

* Mary-Louise O'Callaghan is based in the Solomon Islands; she has been covering the South Pacific for the past 16 years.