I wasn't going to report this item. In terms of substance it contained nothing new. But I changed my mind when I reflected on the lack of substance, the choice of words, and learnt more about the speaker.ABC Online reports that Australia's Foreign Minister Stephen Smith (photo) says Australia is prepared for the "long, hard, tough battle" to restore Fiji to democratic rule. "We will do everything we can to return Fiji to democracy and we'll do that in conjunction
Curious to know more of the Minister's background, I visited his ministry's website to learn what he knew about foreign affairs, the Pacific and Fiji. Mr Smith, a lawyer from Perth, Western Australia, has at various times been the Australian Labor Party's shadow minister of Trade, Resources and Energy, Communications, Health, Immigration, Industry and Infrastructure, Industrial Relations, and Education and Training! A long, varied list but he appears to have no expertise in foreign affairs. [This reminds me of many years ago when a NZ PM, struggling to establish the credentials of his pakeha (European) Minister of Maori Affairs, could only drum up: "He went to school with Maoris!" Sorry. I couldn't resist that.] In fairness to Australia, NZ Foreign Minister Murray McCully, also a lawyer, is no better qualified.
In both countries there seems to be be an unfortunate gap between the hands-on ("been there; done that") knowledge of the Ministers and their presumably better informed advisers.
Australian Aid to Fiji 2009-10
Australia, whose policy continue to cause severe economic damage to Fiji, paradoxically is offsetting some of this damage with its ongoing aid programme, although it accepts no responsibility for Fiji's plight and passes blame (in rugby it's called a hospital pass) totally onto the 2006 Coup and the global recession.
RealFijiNews (a pro-Government blog) reports:
"Australia’s aid to Fiji for the 2009-10 year is increasingly focused on mitigating the economic and social impacts of the 2006 coup and the global economic recession on the ordinary people of Fiji, according to Australia’s Counsellor for Pacific Development Co-operation, Judith Robinson, speaking in Labasa. The aid ... estimated at $48 million in 2009-10 ... will be directed at maintaining essential health and education services, and small and medium enterprise development, including contributing to efforts to make financial services available to the wider population, in particular poorer rural areas."
Australia previously gave $3million in flood relief, and "$A895,000 has been allocated to the agriculture sector for the procurement of vegetable seedlings, provision of veterinary antibiotics to prevent disease outbreaks amongst livestock herd, clearing debris from farms, improvement to on-farm infrastructure such as farm sheds and repair of farm access roads and irrigation ... As much as possible, Australia’s aid to Fiji seeks to make a practical difference to people’s lives. For example, through the National Centre for Small and Micro Enterprise Development, 20 new small businesses were started as a result of income generation training” said Ms Robinson.
The aid, of course, does nothing for Fiji's two largest industries, tourism and sugar production, the two industries that Australian political policies have helped undermine. This is not to denigrate aid, but bitsy, piecemeal, micro aid policies "tread water": they never resolve the bigger problems caused by rich-poor nation inequalities.
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The emotive tone of several recent editorial entries to this blog appears not to be in keeping with its laudable aim “…to present a balanced and helpful representation of events in Fiji as they relate to the post-2006 military coup…”
“[Australia’s] aid, of course, does nothing for Fiji's two largest industries, tourism and sugar production, the two industries that Australian political policies have helped undermine.”
Australian policies have not, to my knowledge, undermined the Fiji sugar industry. The industry has been the architect of its own weakness since for years there has been a lack of will and planning by those in authority to either modernise the industry or to negate the reduction in EU subsidies by encouraging the farming of alternative cash crops.
With regard to tourism, please will you provide examples of the policies that have helped undermine this industry? The travel advisories that are updated by the Australian High Commission advise visitors to Fiji to be on the same level of alert as visitors to the UK and, for visitors to Suva, to exercise the same caution as those visiting South Africa as a whole. In the context of keeping one’s citizens abreast of potential problems, the advisory for Fiji does not seem to be unreasonable.
“This is not to denigrate aid, but bitsy, piecemeal, micro aid policies ‘tread water’: they never resolve the bigger problems caused by rich-poor nation inequalities.”
So as to ensure that aid money is spent where required (in general, alleviating the plight of the poor) there is a strong argument in favour of micro aid policies that are well managed and are headed by those with practical expertise. The interim government (although that prefix may now be considered redundant in view of the present timetable for elections) is particularly cash strapped due to a reduction in tax revenue. This is as a result of many factors, one of the most telling of which is the reluctance of Fiji’s own citizens to invest in, or even do business in, their country.
When local citizens show a mass lack of confidence in the economic future of their country, it calls into question the policies which the government, elected or otherwise, has imposed. In those circumstances any aid donor would be wise to avoid providing unfettered access to funds and prefer instead to micromanage the disbursement of money to approved aid projects.
The greatly increased expenditure for the military in the last Fiji budget, which indicates that this government does not always know how best to spend its tax revenue, is a case in point.
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