POLICING THE PACIFIC • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM
FILM AUSTRALIA PRESENTS IN ASSOCIATION WITH ESSENTIAL VIEWING
Policing the Pacific
The Australian Federal Police find adventure and challenges in the region as they join the
multinational police force known as the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands
(RAMSI) and embark on a tour of duty to East Timor.
Directors Alan Erson, Andrew Merrifield
Writers Alan Erson, Stephen Oliver
Series Producer Chris Hilton
Producer Nial Fulton
Original Concept and Co-Producer Andrew Merrifield
Executive Producer Penny Robins
Narrated by David Wenham
Duration 4 x 26 minutes
A Film Australia National Interest Program in association with Essential Viewing.
Produced in association with SBS Independent. © 2006 Film Australia.
AN AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT OWNED COMPANY, FILM AUSTRALIA IS A LEADING PRODUCER AND DISTRIBUTOR OF
TELEVISION DOCUMENTARIES AND EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS.
www.filmaust.com.au
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POLICING THE PACIFIC • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM
Series Synopses
One Line:
The Australian Federal Police find adventure and challenges in the region as they join the
multinational police force known as the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands
(RAMSI) and embark on a tour of duty to East Timor.
One Page:
The Australian Federal Police find adventure and challenges in the region as they join the
multinational police force known as the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands
(RAMSI) and embark on a tour of duty to East Timor.
Australian Federal Agents have policed the Solomon Islands since 2003 at the invitation of its
Prime Minister as part of RAMSI. The Solomon Islands has been torn apart by ethnic violence
during a four year period of civil strife. During this time rival paramilitary gangs have raped,
kidnapped, tortured and murdered, yet the perpetrators often remain at large, sheltered by their
local communities.
This series follows several Australian Federal Agents deployed to the Solomon Islands, where
they patrol the streets of the capital Honiara, the remote and dangerous Weather Coast and
outer islands that rarely, if ever, see law enforcement. In the final episode we are re-acquainted
with Australian Federal Agent Dave Elson who makes a tour of duty to Dili in East Timor after
the recent unrest.
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POLICING THE PACIFIC • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM
Episode Synopses
Episode One - Dave’s New Beat
One Line:
Australian Federal Agent Dave Elson is nearing the end of his 18-month tour of duty to maintain
the fragile peace as a community constable in the Solomon’s remote outer islands.
One Page:
Australian Federal Agent Dave Elson is nearing the end of his 18-month tour of duty to maintain
the fragile peace as a community constable in the Solomon’s remote outer islands. He patrols
the Weather Coast, an area that looks like paradise, but until 2003, this area was a battleground
for warring tribes in a four-year cycle of revenge killings, rapes, murders and village raids.
Also part of the RAMSI project, Papua New Guinean police officer Maggie Babate is Dave’s
boss. Together they visit remote villages on foot, including the now arrested militia leader Harold
Keke’s stronghold, educating people on the future of the Solomon.
Together Dave and Maggie aim to break down the deep-seated fear the people harbour,
encouraging them to talk to the police so that community and broader issues can be resolved
through the legal system, rather than traditional justice practices. In what appears to be a fairly
relaxed assignment Dave familiarises himself with Pidgin and dances with the locals, little
knowing he will be heading off to police the dangerous streets of East Timor where our series
picks up with him again (see episode 4).
Episode Two – Dead Man’s Tale
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POLICING THE PACIFIC • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM
One Line:
Australian Federal Agent Paul Chambers is in the Solomon Islands to investigate killings that
occurred during the civil conflict which ended in 2003 and to hopefully bring the perpetrators to
justice.
One Page:
Australian Federal Agent Paul Chambers is in the Solomon Islands to investigate killings that
occurred during the civil conflict which ended in 2003 and to hopefully bring the perpetrators to
justice. He travels to a remote island to exhume the body of pastor Cederic Hairiu so that cause
of death can be determined and his family and community can finally put him to rest.
Meanwhile, Sydney Federal Agent Adam Stuart is involved in monitoring the Solomon Islands
environment which is exploited for its forestry and fisheries. He visits logging companies clearfelling forests to ensure that the companies are operating with proper permits. He also visits an
export company that sends clown fish to the Australian aquarium market, noting that due to the
popularity of films such as Finding Nemo, these life-paired fish will have to face a future without
their partners. To get these fish, locals sometimes blast the reef, destroying it for a pittance
compared to the money the exporters and resellers earn.
Episode Three – The Disillusionment of Patrick Veitch
One Line:
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POLICING THE PACIFIC • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM
Melbourne Federal Agent Patrick Veitch teaches the Solomon Island police what he has learned
on Melbourne’s streets, but with the national elections there are surprises in store for Patrick.
One Page:
Melbourne Federal Agent Patrick Veitch teaches the Solomon Island police what he has learned
on Melbourne’s streets, but with the national elections there are surprises in store for Patrick.
After 12 years as a Federal Agent he is seven weeks into his mission in Honiara, where, along
with other Pacific police, he is helping local police build their skills and policing knowledge. In
return Patrick and his Australian colleagues need to understand and work through cultural
barriers and the tensions of a population fed up with corruption.
As riots emerge on the streets of Honiara and the Australian Federal Police arrest the politician,
recently made Prime Minister, the need for law and order in the Solomon Islands becomes even
more important.
Episode Four – Dili’s New Street Cops
One Line:
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POLICING THE PACIFIC • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM
Australian Federal Agents Dave Elson and Danielle Woodward spend 6 hours a day, seven
days per week patrolling the streets of Dili, the capital of the fledging independent nation of East
Timor.
One Page:
Australian Federal Agent Dave Elson, who we met on the Weather Coast of the Solomon
Islands in Episode One, is now deployed to East Timor. He and his colleague Danielle
Woodward spend 6 hours a day, seven days per week patrolling the streets of Dili, the capital of
the fledging independent nation of East Timor.
Danielle, from Melbourne, is on her second tour of duty to East Timor, which is part of the
broader Australia Asia Pacific Regional Assistance Mission. She wants to extend dialogue as a
means of managing the violence. She impressed on the locals that they need to call the police
rather than take action into their own hands when trouble arises. She hopes to get warring
gangs to engage in dialogue rather than the tit for tat violence that is commonplace.
Meanwhile Dave finds working in East Timor more highly pressured compared to his experience
in the Solomon Islands. In the Solomons he made one arrest in 18 months. In East Timor he
averages five per day as the gang violence since independence and the departure of the
Indonesian police force continues.
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POLICING THE PACIFIC • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM
About the making of the series
White sandy beaches fringed by coconut palms belie the violence and hatred that for many
years wracked the tropical paradise that is the Solomon Islands. Beneath swaying palms,
Melbourne Federal Agent Patrick Veitch tackles a uniformed constable as part of a defence
training program for local police.
Federal Agent Veitch is one of 450 police from around the Pacific who make up RAMSI, the
Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands, despatched in 2003 to
restore justice to a nation torn apart by bloody civil conflict.
His story and those of several other Australian officers are told in POLICING THE PACIFIC, a
four-part documentary series from Film Australia.
The documentary picks up Veitch’s story seven weeks after his arrival in the capital, Honiara, in
the lead-up to the nation’s April 2006 election. It captures the terrifying descent into chaos,
when locals riot over what they perceive to be a corrupt result. Violence and lawlessness quickly
spreads, fuelled by simmering tensions between Islanders and members of the business
community who are predominantly ethnic Chinese.
“Tragic as they were for the people of the Solomon Islands and the police, the riots show the
scale of the problems that RAMSI and Solomon Islanders are trying to overcome,” director Alan
Erson says. “The fact that the Honiara riots happened within our story period made the story we
tell much more powerful.”
A Film Australia National Interest Program, POLICING THE PACIFIC was directed by Alan
Erson and Andrew Merrifield and produced by Nial Fulton in association with SBS Independent.
Essential Viewing’s Chris Hilton is the Series Producer and Film Australia’s Penny Robins is the
Executive Producer.
Narrated by David Wenham, the series provides edge-of-your-seat, real-life drama as Australian
and Pacific police risk their lives in the battle to end lawlessness in the Solomon Islands and
East Timor. It follows the volunteers as they patrol the streets of Honiara, the remote Weather
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POLICING THE PACIFIC • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM
Coast and rarely policed outer islands, before shifting to the riot-torn streets of East Timor’s
capital Dili.
“We realised that the best stories were going to be the personal stories of the police on the
ground, the Australians who actually have to learn to deal with the local people: people unlike
them, people whose language they don’t speak, people of whom they had no initial
understanding,” Erson says.
Merrifield and Erson spent nearly four months filming in the Solomon Islands with Merrifield also
filming for three weeks in East Timor.
“It was tough working in the Solomon Islands because there is only basic infrastructure,” Erson
says. ”When Andrew was shooting on the Weather Coast he was sleeping rough on the floor of
the police station. It wasn’t great hardship, but it was really humid, it was really hot and it rains
like crazy at any time of the day and night.”
It wasn’t an easy shoot to coordinate. As well as the difficult logistics of travelling and working in
countries with limited infrastructure, series producer Chris Hilton devoted time to risk
assessment and ensuring the safety of the crew, developing a detailed evacuation plan should a
need arise.
But the biggest challenge was convincing the Australian police to relax in front of the camera
and trust that their story would be well told. Hilton and Merrifield negotiated for 18 months with
the Australian Federal Police’s International Deployment Group before access to Australian
Federal Police Agents was granted.
“The interesting thing to us about our police in the Solomon Islands was that not many people
knew what was happening,” Hilton explains. “Some people were saying that Australia was
playing deputy sheriff to the United States and that we were acting as a post-colonial power and
securing our interests in the region. We wanted to see what was really going on, to see what the
motivation and practices were. I think you can draw your own conclusions by watching the
documentary. But in my mind we are watching the best of a very challenging situation.”
Winning the trust of the police on the ground also proved a hurdle for the directors.
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POLICING THE PACIFIC • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM
“They were really the people with the hardest job and I think they were worried about being
seen to be making mistakes,” Erson explains. “I quickly gained a lot of respect for them. The
whole idea of being a policeman in a foreign culture is a really big thing to ask. They are trying
to solve problems that are often caused by basic economic hardship. These people are really,
really poor; they can hardly feed their families. And a lot of the time the issues are cultural.”
On the remote and dangerous Weather Coast, a former stronghold of murderous militia leader
Harold Keke, Federal Agent Dave Elson is the only Caucasian and the only fluent English
speaker. It is one of the poorest and most isolated areas of the South Pacific – it’s an arduous
three-day hike to the nearest road. There are no vehicles and Elson and his police partner,
Maggie Babate, a young female officer from PNG, walk a 28-kilometre beat, trying to bring
Western-style justice to a very traditional “wantok” or tribal culture.
Keke was jailed by RAMSI forces in 2003 for the murder of seven Anglican priests, but his
community remains damaged and divided, torn apart by years of terror, rape, murder and a lack
of trust in law-enforcement agencies, including the Royal Solomon Islands Police, whose
reputation was tainted during years of civil conflict. RAMSI’s main goal in this area is to pave the
way for Solomon Islands police to return.
“There are rapes, there is also child molesting,” Elson says. “Culturally it’s not accepted, but it is
a part of life so we are here to try and stop that as well.”
But the locals have their own way of dealing with crime and criminals, and formal complaints
often are not made. Even if they are, family and wantok loyalties mean perpetrators may be
protected or hidden for years, further hindering the administration of western-style justice.
Elsewhere, Brisbane Federal Agent Paul Chambers is teaching local police about forensic
crime-scene investigation. He hopes using forensic evidence to solve past crimes will help heal
wounds left by years of violence and mistrust.
“These people went through a couple of years of some terrible, terrible things; this must have
been a very, very scary place to be,” Chambers says. “To unlearn that fear and to learn trust in
law enforcement is going to take a little while.”
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POLICING THE PACIFIC • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM
Director Alan Erson says the work of Chambers and others like him is starting to reap rewards.
“Paul Chambers, in particular, is starting to think like a local now,” Erson says. “He’s realises
that they don’t have expensive equipment for things like DNA testing so he’s concentrating on
the basics, showing local police how to take a clean fingerprint and a good photograph.”
The final episode of POLICING THE PACIFIC follows Dave Elson to East Timor, where he has
been deployed as part of an international mission to help contain civil disorder, sparked by the
massacre of unarmed police in Dili. Local police have fled to the provinces leaving the capital
without any law enforcement and the 200 Australian federal agents, supported by heavily armed
Malaysian police, hope to restore order and pave the way for the East Timor police to return.
For the Australians, it’s not an everyday policing experience, with riots, rock-throwing and the
threat of being ambushed by gangs armed with poison-tipped darts. But despite the difficulties,
they are happy to be involved.
“We’re doing this as a team for the greater good,” Federal Agent Elson explains. “It’s not just
financial, the reason I’m here. I’m here to do policing that I’m trained for overseas in a totally
different atmosphere and climate … It’s exciting and it’s a lot more challenging.”
Melbourne Federal Agent Danielle Woodward concurs: “It’s very, very satisfying and very
rewarding work. You feel like you have actually achieved something.”
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POLICING THE PACIFIC • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM
About the filmmakers
Alan Erson – Writer/Director
A long-time director, Alan Erson is now working on Race for the Beach, an observational
documentary for SBS Television and the BBC about the training of Lebanese Muslim lifeguards
in the wake of race riots at Sydney’s Cronulla beach. He worked as the series producer of The
Two of Us, a 13-part documentary series for SBS Television and wrote, directed and executive
produced the critically acclaimed series Dust to Dust, an observational documentary series set
in a Sydney funeral home, for ABC Australia and TVNZ. Erson’s film credits include Dope, a
forensic detective story about doping in the lead up to the Athens Olympics. He told the stories
of scientists with a personal stake in cutting-edge genetic research in the Search for a Miracle
series, which premiered on Discovery Health (USA) in 2003. His spectacular Himalayan wildlife
film, At the Edge, won awards at the Sondrio, Albert and Missoula film festivals in 2001. Erson
has made critically acclaimed New Zealand films in a variety of genres ranging from the off-beat
Flatmates and A New Breed of Hero through to the award-winning Heartland and Country
Calendar series to important historical works such as Nuclear Reaction and The Game of Our
Lives. He will soon direct Flightless, a fiction-factual hybrid inspired by the paintings of Bill
Hammond.
Andrew Merrifield – Director/co-Producer and original concept
Andrew Merrifield developed the idea for Policing the Pacific as a documentary investigating
Australia’s role as a power in the Pacific region. For many years Andrew has worked directing
internationally successful television series, including Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules, Mercy
Peak, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers Mystic Force, Power Rangers Dino
Thunder and Being Eve.
Nial Fulton – Producer
Nial Fulton has worked as a producer in Australia and Britain for several years. His credits
include British documentaries A Secret History of the S.A.S, King Rat – the Murder of Billy
Wright and Jump Britain, as well as Australia’s Bondi Rescue, Two of Us and In the Line of Fire.
He is currently working in two new projects, an Australian-British co-production Ten Pound
Poms and The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce, both for Essential Viewing.
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POLICING THE PACIFIC • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM
Chris Hilton – Series Producer
Chris Hilton is one of Australia’s most prolific and awarded documentary producer/directors,
who has made films across a broad spectrum of subjects for the world’s major broadcasters.
The head of factual for Essential Viewing and previously a founding partner of Hilton Cordell
Productions, Chris has executive produced or produced over 60 hours of quality documentary
for PBS, BBC, Channel Four, Arte France and ZDF, as well as local television networks. He has
writer/director credits on more than 10 major productions including Dealing with the Demon
(2001) for BBC, PBS, SBS and Arte France. His most recent production as
writer/director/producer was Dying to Leave, a series about people trafficking, which premiered
in the USA on PBS as a two-hour primetime special. As writer/producer he also recently
produced The Colony, a living history series for SBS, RTE and History Channel UK.
Essential Viewing is a newly formed independent production company producing feature films,
television drama, factual entertainment and documentaries. www.essentialviewing.com.au
Penny Robins - Executive Producer
Penny Robins joined Film Australia in 2003, and was previously an independent producer.
Formerly Documentary Division Manager and Executive Producer at Film Victoria, Penny also
was manager of the Australian Film Commission's Women's Program and has served on the
boards of the Open Channel and Melbourne International Film Festival. At Film Australia she
has been executive producer of a slate of series and documentaries including the Logienominated series Divorce Stories, Tom Zubrycki’s multi-award winning Vietnam Symphony, the
AFI award-winning Mr Patterns, the award-winning Nerves of Steel and the first part of the
recently aired cross-platform longitudinal series Life at 1.
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POLICING THE PACIFIC • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM
Credits
Sound Mix
Leon Horrocks
David White
Narrator
David Wenham
Online and Grade
Jake Simmonds
Directors
Alan Erson (Episodes 1, 2, 3)
Post Production Supervisor
Andrew Merrifield (Episodes 1, 3, 4)
Jake Southall
Writers
Essential Viewing Production Unit
Alan Erson (Episode 1, 3)
Stephen Oliver (Episode 2, 4)
Production Accountant
Lorraine Pickering
Producer
John Russell
Nial Fulton
Business Affairs
Original Concept And Co-Producer
Julia Leigh
Andrew Merrifield
Production Staff
Editor
Peter Scobie
Ray Thomas
Rachael Everingham
Composer
Film Australia Production Unit
Scott Saunders
Production Affairs Manager
Camera
Martien Coucke
Wade Fairley (Episode 1)
Phil Bull (Episode 2, 3, 4)
Production Assistant
Alan Erson (Episode 2, 3)
Genevieve Derwent
Andrew Merrifield (Episode 3)
Production Accountant
Sound
Frederique Olivier
Rachelle Bakarich
Sarah Lawrence
Executive Producer’s Assistant
Translation
Carmen Galan
Moses Havini (Episode 1, 2, 3)
Maria Dos Reis Piedade (Episode 4)
Graphics
Bruce Dunlop Associates
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POLICING THE PACIFIC • A FILM AUSTRALIA NATIONAL INTEREST PROGRAM
Post Production
2 Dogs Post
Thanks To
The Australian Federal Police
Rob Olney
Mandi Meldrum
Dominic Feenan
Nick Pedley
Tony Murney
Jane O’Brien
International Deployment Group
The Royal Solomon Islands Police
Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon
Islands (RAMSI)
Developed with the Assistance of The
Australian Film Commission
Produced in association with SBS
Independent
Commissioning Editor
Jennifer Crone
Series Producer
Chris Hilton
Executive Producer
Penny Robins
A Film Australia Production in association
with Essential Viewing
A National Interest Program
Film Australia Ltd © MMVI
www.filmaust.com.au
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