Pacific

The study has listed Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea as having expensive internet service.

According to Network Strategies of New Zealand, the last updated report on internet access affordability on Pacific Islands was three years ago.

“Technological progress in Internet access is slowly but surely being felt in the Pacific.”

It states that ADSL and/or fixed wireless broadband is available in all the countries they have included in their analysis including newcomer Nauru.

That’s over and above those who came to Australia under the earlier seasonal worker pilot programme, said Minister for Trade and Investment, Senator Richard Colbeck.

“We are in the process of negotiating an updated seasonal worker programme MOU with participant countries and we will sign an updated MOU with the Solomon Islands, and we're very pleased to be doing that.

In January, the US pulled out of a 30-year-old fisheries deal with the Pacific, after earlier committing to pay FFA members US$89 million for the right to fish in the region in 2016.

The FFA said the Pacific offered the US a revised package with fewer fishing days, reducing the required payment commitment to US$66 million.

In New Zealand's region of Hawke's Bay, there's an increased demand for Pacific workers contracted through the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme.

The General Manager of Focus Contracting Ltd, Linley King, said the industries would not have grown as much as they had in the past decade without the involvement of Pacific islands workers.

She said the companies that hire the workers - who come from countries like Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga and Solomon Islands - benefitted when these people returned for successive seasons.

China has developed a growing influence in the Pacific over recent years and this month Russia sent nearly US$9 million worth of weapons to Fiji with the negotiations for a second shipment underway.

However the US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Daniel Russel, said all countries could operate in the region effectively.

The report aims to assist Pacific Island countries with their decision making concerning deep sea minerals and provide information about the potential magnitude of the impacts of deep sea mining.

It gave US$6.5 million dollars last year and has just announced another US$359,000 dollars in additional support for the North Pacific.

The foreign minister Julie Bishop said the money will focus initially on the Marshall Islands where a state of emergency is in force.

In 2015, the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared the third ever global coral bleaching event, describing the problem as worse than the 1998 disaster when 16 percent of the world's reefs were killed.

Thirty-eight percent of reefs are under threat and over 12,000 square kilometres of reefs will be killed according to the Pacific Community's Brad Moore.

It says this could boost economies by up to 3.5 per cent over the next five years, creating thousands of jobs in the process.

The bank's monthly research survey shows outsourcing could emerge as a new driver of Pacific growth.

The bank says Fiji is already showing promise as major companies set up operations there.

Foreign Minister Murray McCully says $250,000 (US$167,000) of that money will go to the World Health Organisation's Pacific Zika Action Plan while the rest will be given to “enable countries in the region to respond rapidly if required”.

“With the Zika virus now confirmed in a number of Pacific countries, New Zealand is committed to helping limit the impact and spread of the virus in the region,” says McCully.

“Our package of support is targeted at prevention and detection measures and builds on our existing support for improving health outcomes in the region.