Within the Pacific region, the increasingly short journey from the travel pages to the international section of any New Zealand newspaper feels like a voyage between two different parts of the world. The travel pages still reveal the Pacific of popular imagination: warm, welcoming and peaceful. The world pages, alternatively implode with a Pacific of much less cheerful images; corruption, poverty, ill health, instability and armed conflict. It seems implausible that these two Pacifics could exist in the same ocean, much less within the same newspaper. Part of the reason for this contrast is simply that the Pacific of popular imagination never really existed. Marketing campaigns and exclusive resorts insulated from the countries they are situated in have long kept issues of Pacific development out of the sight of tourists. Likewise, the media has, until relatively recently, tended to under report Pacific issues, while now it is arguably guilty of over-sensationalizing them. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Pacific region is currently facing a series of challenges – some new, some the result of previously unaddressed issues coming to a head – that pose a major threat to the region’s development and most importantly to its people.