Peter Roberts – the Australian High Commissioner to Fiji – doesn’t go to the CFL Fiji Village studios like any local to be interviewed by Vijay Narayan. Vijay goes to him at the Australian official residence – a slice of Oz in the gated complex on Princes Road high above the capital.
If the Mountain won’t go to Mohammed – goes an old saying – then Mohammed must go to the Mountain. And Vijay traipsing up the hill to Tamavua is a sign, if any were needed, that Australia is calling the shots in this relationship, just it is calling the shots in the government-to-government relationship in which Canberra has the Rabuka government on a budgetary drip of hundreds of millions of dollars a year and without which Fiji couldn’t survive.
Australia is also playing a major role in the local economy with the biggest influx of personnel of any of Fiji’s diplomatic partners. Grubsheet understands that Canberra now has some 200 people working for it in various roles on top of the funding it is giving for capacity building in government, the institutions of state, the RFMF, police and civil society. All of which is filling Suva’s best restaurants and making local prestige property landlords even more rich.
Peter Roberts tries to signal to a watching nation that he is “one of us” – again donning a sulu which depending on your point of view, is either quaint for a white man or an act of cultural appropriation for cynical political purposes.
Yet “whatever it takes” is precisely what the High Commissioner is meant to do to protect Australia’s new military alliance with Fiji, which is its fourth after its long-standing ANZUS Treaty with the US and New Zealand and another recently-signed agreement with Papua New Guinea.
His job is to keep Fiji in the “vuvale” Australia has designed to house the two nations and their new security pact – the Ocean of Peace Alliance or Veitacini Treaty – a strategic framework put up after years of official neglect to keep Fiji on the inside of the tent with Australia and the other democracies and to keep the Chinese out. Everyone knows it even if Peter Roberts has taken to trying to pretend otherwise in the local media. (see below)
That’s the other part of his job – to try to placate the Chinese who are mightily upset with the new treaty, which obliges Australia and Fiji to come to each other’s defence if either of them are attacked. And to use his winning smile and bare legs to try to placate those Fijians who believe that signing a new security agreement with Australia is hardly being “friends to all and enemies to none” – the principle that has long underpinned Fiji’s foreign policy but not anymore.
Tonight, many Fijians have had their best chance with this interview to make up their own minds about the arguments for a stronger alliance with Australia.
For the record, Grubsheet supports the new arrangements as essential for the security of both nations and the entire region, not just from big power plays but the transcontinental drug trade. But listen for yourself to the case Peter Roberts outlines and tell us what you think in the comments section below.
Call it diplomatic spin or lasulasu-jhoot, of course it’s all about keeping the Chinese out. It’s the elephant in the room no-one seems to be able to mention. Though having the odd Chinese ballistic missile fired into the region is enough to make anyone choose their words carefully.
This interview alone shows how weak the media in Fiji is. Not once does this Fiji Times reporter challenge the high commissioner’s narrative that Australia’s partnership with Fiji is NOT based on containing China, when it is the bleeding obvious that just about everything Australia is doing in Fiji and the Pacific is specifically about that – containing China! I’m not a journlalist or analyst of any kind but even I can see that.
Vijay Narayan’s interview is equally shallow.
How stupid are our journalists?
Someone has correctly pointed out that while Vijay, Fred Wesley and Stanley Simpson regard themselves as the swinging dicks of the Fiji media, they are rightfully the limp dicks.
Whoever christened Fred Wesley as “Feeble Fred” in this blog is also right. Just pick up the Fiji Times on any given day if you need proof.
Make vuvale effective by allowing Fiji citizens to visit Australia without applying for visa and paying senseless exorbitant visa fees to travel to a country which calls itself a close ally to Fiji. Can the Australian High Commission in Fiji also reveal how much they rake in visa application fees per year from Fiji citizens? You would be surprised at how much Fiji citizens paid, if stats are released for the last 30 years.
Vuvale is only effective if Fiji citizens travel to Australia without any visa, since Fiji allows Australian citizen without any visa to enter Fiji, so reciprocate the same treatment to Fiji citizens please without discrimination.
If you still can’t, then at least review your senseless exorbitant visa fees.