Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama says the Pacific needs Australia on it’s side on the issue of climate change and the damaging effects it is already having on low lying atolls and coastal areas.

In a letter congratulating the new Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull, Bainimarama asked that Australia reconsider its stand on its current carbon gas emission.

Bainimarama says it is a matter of grave disappointment to him and other Island Leaders that rather than recognizing our plight, Australia has been putting its own interests- and especially those of its Coal Industry- before the welfare of the Pacific peoples.

He hopes that Turnbull can provide the leadership Australia needs to recognize its responsibility to be a good neighbor and stand with the Pacific in this struggle.

Bainimarama adds, Australia also needs to recognize that the further development of it’s reserves of coal- the most polluting of energy sources- is also detrimental to the Australian people and the world as a whole.