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Belajar di Negeri Kangguru

OLEH: Duma Tato Sanda

Ini sesi bersama Suzy Woodhouse

Ini sesi bersama Suzy Woodhouse

BERUNTUNG, mungkin itu kata yang tepat untuk menggambarkan kesempatan 11 jurnalis dari kultur berbeda di 4 negara di Asia – Pasifik: Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon dan Fiji untuk belajar jurnalisme di negeri kangguru, Australia.

Peserta dari Indonesia adalah Lovina Soenmi, Tommy Apriando, Achmad Choirudin, Dian Muhtadiah Hamna, Wan Ulfa Nur Zuhra dan saya. Gynnie Kero, Gabriel Bego termasuk Mapun Pidian dari Papua New Guinea, Rickson Jorban Bau asal Solomon, sementara Tevita Komaidruka Vuibau datang dari Fiji.

Cahaya Papua adalah media cetak tempat saya bekerja, di ibukota Papua Barat, Manokwari. Tommy kontributor portal berita lingkungan mongabay, Achmad bekerja di Selamatkan Bumi, Wan Ulfa kontributor Lentera Timur, Dian di Fajar Makassar, Lovina di Riau Corruption Watch, Gynnie kerja di The National, Gabriel  dan Mapun di NBC, sedang Tevita di Fiji Times.

Para jurnalis ini tiba di Melbourne 24 Agustus 2013 lalu, mereka akan kembali ke negara masing-masing pada 28 September 2013. Selama di Australia, mereka akan cerita pengalaman dan belajar jurnalisme dengan tema: Mining, Media dan Development yang difasilitasi oleh Asia Pacific Journalism Centre. APJC adalah sebuah organisasi yang konsen pada peningkatan kualitas jurnalis di Asia – Pacific. APJC berkantor di Melbourne, Australia

Para jurnalis akan bertemu para ahli di bidang jurnalisme baik praktisi maupun pengajar di sejumlah universitas di Australia ketika mereka belajar. Mereka juga akan kunjungi sebuah tempat berbeda di Australia dan langsung ke pengalaman untuk lihat praktek pengelolaan tambang perusahaan Tambang di Australia.

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Sesi pertama, Suzy Woodhouse. Ia coba beri pemahaman tentang kepemimpinan, terutama dalam posisi kita sebagai jurnalis yang punya pengaruh besar buat lingkungan sekitar.

Susi bilang wartawan harus bisa identifikasi dirinya, baik yang terlihat atau tersembunyi. Ini penting sebab wartawan bisa mengendus lebih dalam soal diri orang lain atau narasumbernya setelah dia bisa bedakan mana yang terlihat atau tampak dan mana yang tersembunyi atau disembunyikan. Metode ini dia sebut Johari Window.

Ia juga bagi materi tentang MBTI, ini sebuah alat untuk identifikasi diri. Susi bilang alat ini cukup berguna karena bisa dipakai untuk melacak sedikit kebiasan narasumber kita. Ini baik karena kita bisa tahu bagaimana memposisikan diri secara luwes ketika berhadapan dengan para sumber berita. Singkatnya alat ini bisa bantu kita lakukan wawancara dengan baik.

Banyak cara lain yang Susi sampaikan juga. Ia coba buat kita bisa bekerjsama dengan tim secara baik. Kerja tim menurut Susi penting ketika kita bekerja sebagai jurnalis. Cara ini ia bagi dengan melibatkan kita pada kelompok berbeda untuk bahas topik berbeda. Sesi materi Susi 4 hari.

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Sesi kedua disampaikan Nigel McCarthy. Ia adalah instruktur jurnalisme bisnis di Australia. Nigel banyak berikan cara praktis menulis berita, seperti cara mencari informasi dari sumber terbuka yang bertebaran di internet. Misalnya, Nigel bilang laporan tahunan atau laporan keuangan sebuah perusahaan yang di posting di website perusahaan adalah contoh informasi yang bisa dipakai sebagai informasi awal untuk menulis berita.

Dalam sesi Nigel, kita juga dikenalkan tentang : Civil Society and the Extractive Industries Transparancy Initiative oleh koordinator Advokasi Tambang Oxfam Australia Serena Lillywhite. Serena cerita soal peran perusahaan tambang bagi komunitas lokal di sekitar tambang. Bagi Serena Tambang belum bisa memberi peran yang berarti kepada perempuan, yang merupakan kelompok paling rentan dalam eksploitasi.

Professor Jurnalisme dari Monash University, Philip Chubb dalam materi Mining, Media dan Climate Change banyak ceritakan soal relasi media, tambang dan perubahan iklim di Australia. Sesi ini ia cerita panjang, tapi banyak dalam bahasa Inggris yang sangat baik. Intinya di Australia hubungan tiga bidang itu cukup rumit. Isu perubahan iklim telah membuat sejumlah kelompok politik di Australia saling berhadap-hadapan.

Akhirnya saya harus katakan, tulisan ini adalah tulisan saya dalam sesi belajar Digital Journalism, Jumat, 6 September 2013, yang akan diposting di weblog saya, hehehehe…. Sesi ini dipandu oleh Renee Barnes.

Ini sesi Digital Journalism. Renee Barnes sedang berbicara kepada peserta workshop.

Ini sesi Digital Journalism. Renee Barnes sedang berbicara kepada peserta workshop.

Learning Climate Change in Five Weeks

The Reporting Climate Change and the Environment Workshop organised by the Asia Pacific Journalism Centre was a good experience for me personally as I got to meet other journalists from around the region, share stories and experiences, talk to the scientists and experts involved in organisations concerned with the issue of climate change and visit some of the sites within Melbourne and Tasmania.

The first week was quite effective in helping us to prepare for the four weeks ahead, involving personal and leadership skills. I discovered a lot about my personality and how I do things at work. Also learning about how to manage stress and how to become a better negotiator by influencing others at work. I also found that mentoring skills were useful to resolve problems I might be dealing with at work.

During the second week I was nervous as I didn’t know what to expect discussing climate change but Philip Chubb was quite helpful in providing a basic introduction into the topic first by telling us about Australia’s position on climate change with the passing of Australia’s legislation in parliament on carbon tax. Also guest speakers from The Age, Oxfam, the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility and Monash University gave a better insight into climate change effects happening globally and ways to report it.

The visit to the Melbourne Zoo was enjoyable as we got to see the animals but were also informed of the conservation areas around the world and extinct species under protection programs. Going to the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation was quite eye opening and interesting as I got to learn about the science of climate change and being able to get a report on Samoa under the Pacific Climate Change Science Program which is something I would like to follow up when I get home.

By the second week I learned to create a blog and I found it a nifty way to get my news stories out there and is also a good way to keep in touch with the other fellows and get an update on what climate change stories they have written since the workshop.

More discussions followed on climate change during the following week with Phil Chubb before we had to prepare for Hobart. While in Tasmania we met Environment Editor for The Age, Adam Morton and visited Styx Valley. Also met Vica Bayley from the Wilderness Society and two representatives from REDD. Seeing firsthand what had been discussed at APJC, I got to see areas that had been logged and heard from Vica how they were trying to conserve some of the forests that were to be logged. The next day we visited the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park and fed kangaroos which was fun! :)…We then continued on to Port Arthur and took the ferry to the Isle of the Dead to see a mark which measures sea level rise and according to John Hunter from the Institute for the Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania the sea level has risen by 13cm during a certain period since they conducted their research.

We also visited the Environmental Defenders Office to talk about the environmental policies in Tasmania and the Australia Antarctic Division which I found interesting how Dr Rob King explained how they were conducting a special research on krill from the Antarctic. The symposium at the University of Tasmania gave us all the opportunity to share the experience of reporting climate change within the Asia Pacific Region. I thought the group did really well in answering questions from the audience and they were just as impressed too. It was sad to leave Hobart as it was such a nice quiet place and we had seen so much but the memories will be with me always.

Returning back to APJC, we have one more week to go and this week will be assigned for work attachment. I have learnt so much during this workshop and am grateful to APJC, AusAid and Cherelle Jackson for this valuable opportunity.

My APJC Training Experience

APJC Fellows with The Age Senior Environment Journalist Adam Morton at the University of Tasmania

The Climate Change Reporting Fellowship carried out by the Asia Pacific Journalism Centre, APJC, in Melbourne and Hobart in the last five weeks have been a fruitful and informative one for me as a pacific journalist. It was also a memorable trip with visits to some of Australia’s famous locations such as the Mona Museum and Port Arthur in Tasmania.

I also particularly found the personal leadership skills workshop with Torry Orton, the Psychologist and Leadership specialist in the first week of the training very valuable as it made me know more about what kind of person I was and the stress levels I had. It also helped me understand myself more.

The various presentations of how stories could be generated from climate change issues were also helpful with The Age Senior Writer, Jo Chandler really driving the nail home with her suggestions of getting stories from rural areas but also verifying if the effects they were suffering from were from climate change or caused by man- made activities not related to climate change.  She also emphasized the importance of humanizing and simplifying stories.

Professional visits to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation,  CSIRO Aspendale Office also were very informative with new information and data collected from their observations in the changing climate in pacific island countries, while the visit to Tasmania’s CSIRO centre -also known as Australia’s gate-way to Antarctica was also an exciting one with us having a video conference with one of their Scientists at the Casey Station.

Sessions with Phil Chubb were also very helpful and it made me understand more Australia’s debate on Carbon Tax – we were here when it was passed – and also what it meant for big companies, the Australian government and the public.

From this workshop – I take with me better skills to report properly on climate change in Solomon Islands, a better understanding of myself,  more knowledge of the Australian debate on climate change and how it actually determines the nation’s prime minister , an understanding of how climate change is a complex issue that involves the biggest international organisations such the United Nations right to the people on the remote islands back at home. I have also established a network of professional people which include the Indonesian Reporters at the workshops, various journalism academics, Australian journalists and scientists whom I was privileged to meet, I know these connections will be useful to my work on environmental reporting in the future.

I would also like to thank the Asia Pacific Journalism Centre, the Australian Government and the Pacific Alliance for Developmental Journalists who have made this training possible!!! I have learnt a lot of new things and also established a new network!Thank you for the opportunity!! 🙂

Australia could do more to help Pacific Island countries deal with climate change

As small island developing states, including the pacific, gear up towards the Conference of the Parties meeting in Durban next week to once again reinforce the urgent plea of saving their people and countries from the effects of climate change, Tasmania Greens Senator says Australia could do more to help pacific island countries deal with climate change in funding a Secretariat for the Alliance of Small Island Developing States.

AOSIS is a non-governmental organization of low lying atolls and coastal countries established since 1990 to consolidate the voices of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to address global warming. AOSIS has been very active from its inception and 15 out of the 42 members and observers from all around the world are pacific island countries.

Speaking to pacific journalists last Friday following a presentation at the 2011 Environmental Politics and Conflict in an Age of Digital Media Symposium at the University of Tasmania, in Australia, Greens Senator Christine Milne says the first thing Australia could do is to provide funding for  a Secretariat for AOSIS.

“ I understand that the pacific is being given the chair of the AOSIS and the first thing Australia could do is give a couple of million dollars to the pacific to provide a secretariat for AOSIS, because if AOSIS is to maintain a good profile and capacity in global climate talks it needs to have a secretariat support, so the first thing Australia could do is to get involved  and give more support at that level.”

Senator Milne adds that Australia also needs to separate climate finance from the aid budget for transparency purposes.

“Secondly they should be separating out climate finance faster and long term from the aid budget because what Australia has done is that is has put the aid budget and climate finance together and so Australian people are told constantly that we are doing the right thing with their climate funding plus the increase of the aid budget but actually if you separate them out, you’ll see that we are not.”

“So the next thing Australia needs to do is to make sure that it has transparency and it’s aid funding is separate from climate financing.”

The Tasmanian Greens Senator also spoke of the need to increase capacity building with pacific government departments by allowing people to come to work in Australian government departments such as the Great Barrier Reef Park Authority.

“I worked really hard to get the coral reefs of New Caledonia, for example, listed as world heritage and I worked very hard on that and am delighted that we succeeded in doing that a couple of years ago, but obviously there’s a huge amount that could be learnt from the management of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, PNG could learn from those fantastic coral reefs, but right through the pacific there’s a whole range of issues.

In terms of assistance with adaptation, certainly assisting with know-how and technology that enables people to be able to keep being able to produce food where they live in light of the rising sea levels and salt water incursion is really important as well, plus a whole range of things.”

“But also there has to be a long term plan and this is what nobody is talking about and it goes to what I mentioned hearing Tuvalu says in the global talks in Nairobi – who will take my people? – hearing a pacific leader stand up and say that if the world knew that six countries were going to disappear but didn’t know which six, maybe people would be a bit more focused in acting on climate change and I thought that was a really good way of putting it because even with all the adaptation that will occur in the pacific, there are going to be some places like Kiribati and Tuvalu, for example, where ultimately people are going to have to move and we need to be thinking about how people can move and maintain their cultural identity and communities when they do move.”

So I think there’s a lot we could be doing but the first thing we should be doing is acknowledging that climate change is real and already creating substantial problems and internal migration, loss of burial and cultural sites, agricultural capacity and fresh water right now.”

Meanwhile on the question of the lack of coverage of climate change issues in pacific island countries by the Australian media, Senator Milne says the Australian media does not cover in a factual way the existing impact of climate change on pacific island countries.

She says it is extremely rare to find a photograph prominently placed in the Australian print media or stories prominently placed in current affairs or news bulletins about the impacts of storm surge or of any of the extreme weather events or issues such as salt water incursion, loss of capacity to grow food and loss of fresh water.

“You just don’t see those photographs in the Australian media or the stories, and if you do, they are placed as the sort of stories as human interest not related to news coverage of why the world needs to take action of climate change so it’s more of a travel log story than a front page story saying these are the existing consequences of climate change, that’s why we have to take action.

And the reason they’re not there is because if you say that, it makes it much harder for people to argue that there is no such thing as climate change, it’s not happening and it won’t happen for another hundred years, it’s going to cost us too much therefore we don’t need to do much about it – so it completely contradicts the line of argument that the Murdoch Press in particular want to take and that’s why it’s an inconvenient story that doesn’t get covered.”

Senator Christine Milner was interviewed by Vere Raicola of the Fiji Times, Rozalee Nongebatu of the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation and Rikamati Nare Kiribati’s Broadcasting Commission who are currently doing a Climate Change Reporting fellowship in Australia under the Australian Leadership Award Scheme.

The three pacific journalists are part of a group of 15 journalists from the Asia Pacific region who  are undertaking the training coordinated by the Asia Pacific Journalism Centre in Melbourne and Tasmania.

ENDS/////

Carbon tax affecting the Australian economy

Australian anti-carbon tax protesters in Melbourne. Photo by mugfaker

Since the introduction of a carbon tax, Australians have been divided about whether the tax is good or bad for the economy.

Protesters in Melbourne recently called for the carbon tax to be lifted, while Australia’s Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says he’ll “repeal it in blood“.

The Greens, who supported the tax, say it’s necessary for Australia to take action on the issue, because of the high rate of per capita emissions in the country.