A member of the Eminent Persons Group, currently reviewing the service provided by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, and its role in the region, Sir Julius, a former Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, said that the problem with big island countries, with an abundance of natural wealth, was that it tended to make its population live very comfortably and therefore they became very lazy, whereas people in smaller island countries with very little natural wealth tended to be more active and more enterprising.

"That is why I said, big is useful, but small is beautiful," he said in Nuku'alofa.