Fiji’s Coalition government strongly believes that addressing the country’s priorities head-on is the cornerstone to building a progressive and prosperous nation for future generations, says Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka.

Speaking at the National Economic Summit 2023 in Suva today, Rabuka said the event was an opportunity for Fiji to take stock, make necessary changes, and move forward decisively.

The last summit was held 15 years ago.

Rabuka said the meeting would address daunting challenges faced by Fiji, including unsustainable national debt levels, geopolitical and global economic uncertainties, and the impact of the covid-19 pandemic, particularly on small island developing economies like Fiji.

“As a Small Island Developing State, we are vulnerable to such events which are beyond our control,” he said at the Grand Pacific Hotel.

“It is critical that we must make timely adjustments so that we can cope and be able to survive in the global trading environment.

“We have just been through one of the world’s worst pandemics of modern times, with covid-19. It affected the whole world.

Russian-Ukrainian war
“The Russian-Ukrainian war in Europe made our efforts to recover from the pandemic more challenging, particularly due to the supply-chain issues. We must address these challenges collectively through this summit, and craft solutions together as a nation.”

Rabuka, wearing an Adam Smith tie, referenced the renowned economist’s 1776 book The Wealth of Nations, and urged those implementing the summit’s outcomes to be mindful of Smith’s principles of free market and capital formation for economic growth.

The Prime Minister also noted a need to strengthen laws and institutions, as well as restore investor confidence and improve the business environment while protecting the country’s natural resources.

“We need to rebuild our infrastructure which has been neglected, and most importantly look at ways to ease the burden of the high cost of living for our people,” he said.

“We need to strengthen the private sector which we so glibly call the ‘engine of growth’. It is important to promote trade and build the confidence of the private sector.”

Strengthening multilateral and bilateral relations with Fiji’s trading and development partners was also a key point raised by Rabuka as he shared that the findings and recommendations from the summit would contribute to the formulation of the national budget and “our National Development Plan”.

“Reshaping our future means more than just promoting economic growth and development.

Brighter future
“A brighter future for our nation requires our communities to be united and move away from divisions,” he said.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Professor Biman Prasad said plenary sessions had been organised to set the scene for more detailed discussions on macroeconomic management, key growth sectors, governance and reforms and human development.

“We have an intense two days ahead of us. We are putting special focus on critical issues such as water resource management, transport, energy and technology.

“We are also casting a wider net over rural and outer islands development, land and marine-based economic activities and indigenous participation in business.

“There are 32 specific subject areas for discussion,” Professor Prasad said.

It is understood each summit participant has been allocated a thematic working group with a communique expected to be issued at the conclusion of the event tomorrow.

Viliame Tawanakoro is a final-year journalism student at USP’s Laucala Campus. He is also the 2023 student editor for Wansolwara, USP Journalism’s student training newspaper and online publication. USP Journalism collaborates with Asia Pacific Report.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

There is something decidedly sinister about the way the right-wing media is pursuing the “elimination strategy is madness” argument so doggedly. Yes, it’s always interesting to discover what people are saying about New Zealand overseas, but The New Zealand Herald republishing anti-Jacinda Ardern editorials from the Daily Telegraph — mouthpiece of the British Conservative Party — points to an altogether more disturbing preoccupation.

These misgivings are only reinforced when one considers the near unanimous hostility directed towards the Prime Minister and her government by New Zealand’s talkback hosts.

At the most superficial level, one could argue that the right-wing media’s editorial hostility is generated almost entirely by bottomline anxieties. With most of its advertising revenue generated by realtors, retailers, the hospitality industry and tourist operators, the big media outlets must experience significant financial pain whenever New Zealand and/or its most important economic hub, Auckland, goes into lockdown.

The pressure brought to bear on the media bosses to get the doors open for their advertisers’ paying customers is easily imagined.

More than anything else, commercial enterprises hate surprises. Certainty and predictability are what they need to go on generating profits for their shareholders. The sudden appearance of covid-19 in the community, followed by lockdowns of a severity to make the eyes of overseas commentators water, bring with them consequences that are costly, disruptive and generally bad for business.

Unsurprisingly, a significant fraction of the business community would very much prefer that covid-19 was responded to in a fashion less injurious to their financial health.

Those business leaders less bound by the short-term selfishness of their colleagues take a more responsible position. They understand how very bad it looks for businesspeople to convey the impression that they care a great deal less about people getting very ill, and quite possibly dying, than they do about making money.

Short, sharp, uncompromising lockdowns
They also know that New Zealand’s style of short, sharp, uncompromising lockdowns protect the economic interests of the business community a whole lot more effectively than the loose, dangerously porous, lockdowns on display in the UK, the USA, and across the Tasman in Australia.

Not that anything as mundane as “the facts of the matter” have ever slowed the government’s critics down. Neither New Zealand’s extraordinary success in keeping the number of covid-19 deaths below 30, nor the powerful bounce-back of its economy, cuts any ice with the “elimination strategy is madness” brigade. Indeed, the obvious success of Jacinda Ardern’s elimination strategy only seems to make them madder.

So what is it? What drives Ardern’s critics so crazy?

Sadly, a great many of her right-wing opponents seem to be inspired by nothing more edifying than sexist antipathy towards a young, female prime minister, from a tiny and powerless country at the bottom of the world, who has outperformed (by a wide margin) the male leaders of much larger and more powerful nations.

Something about this picture is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Young women are supposed to defer to the “big dogs” of the international community — not show them up. Ardern has produced a disturbance in the conservative “Force” that makes them shudder: as if an entire political ideology suddenly cried out in indignation and was rudely silenced.

They fear something terrible is going on.

And, in a way, they’re right. From the perspective of those responsible for creating a world in which the interests of business take precedence over even the ordinary person’s right to stay safe and well (some might say especially over the ordinary person’s right to stay safe and well) the sight of a young, female prime minister putting the interests of ordinary people first is a terrible thing.

Ardern’s “kindness” works way beyond neoliberalism’s explanation
Because Jacinda Ardern’s “kindness” doesn’t just work a little bit, it works way beyond neoliberalism’s capacity to supply a credible explanation.

Take Sweden, for example. For a while it was the “who needs lockdowns?” brigade’s poster child. But Sweden, with just twice the population of New Zealand, racked-up a horrifying 14,000+ covid fatalities. Had Ardern followed the Swedish prime minister’s example, her country would have sustained upwards of 7,000 deaths.

By following its leader’s strict elimination strategy, however, New Zealand’s “Team of Five Million” kept their country’s covid death toll to 26.

On the Right, however, this sort of science-guided, humanitarian response to covid-19 just doesn’t compute. Conservatives around the world react by accusing Ardern of political cowardice. She simply doesn’t have the balls to adopt a strategy that will lead directly to hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths.

Look at the Brits; look at the Yanks; they had the courage to condemn tens-of-thousands of their people to early and unnecessary deaths; they know that “you can’t live in a cave forever”; that, in the end, the economy must come first.

This is the upside-down world towards which the right-wing media’s wayward editorial decisions are dragging its readers, viewers and listeners. A world in which saving New Zealanders’ lives is the wrong thing to do. A world where “freedom” means nothing more than being able to go shopping wherever and whenever you want – without a mask.

That the big media companies haven’t quite arrived there yet is because there are still some executives who understand that, ultimately, the news media relies on ordinary people to read its copy and listen to its broadcasters’ opinions.

Ordinary people who, if right-wing editors and producers ever get around to actually swallowing the insanity-inducing Kool-Aid swishing about in their mouths, will be offered-up to deranged conservatives (and the advertisers) as unavoidable human sacrifices to the Moloch god of the free market.

The only elimination strategy the right-wing media will ever wholeheartedly support.

This essay, by Chris Trotter, was originally posted on the Bowalley Road blog of Thursday, 26 August 2021, under the title: “A Disturbing Preoccupation: Why the Right-Wing Media Hates Jacinda’s Covid Elimination Strategy”.  It is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the permission of the author.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Dear Prime Minister Marape

Our government has to admit the fact that there is a glaring imbalance between Papua New Guinean and foreign ownership of businesses. We own very little in our country.

The retail, wholesale and real estate in our towns and cities are controlled by Chinese interests. We own almost nothing in the logging industry. It is, as we all know, controlled by Malaysian interests.

There is an increasing push by (new) Chinese business owners who are buying up National Housing Corporation (NHC) properties and forcing out Papua New Guineans – YOUR people – onto the streets.

There is no strong legislation that prevents 100 percent foreign ownership of property and land. We need those laws in place now. We need the political will to do it. Now.

The justice system can’t protect our people. They don’t have the money to fight long protracted legal battles… …and the syndicate – yes, syndicates – know this and they take advantage of it.

Recently, local people along the North Coast of Madang protested against a sand mining proposal. The people associated with the sand mining company have also evicted families from NHC properties in Madang.

It is no secret. It was reported by the media.

Tack Back PNG more than a slogan
Take Back PNG must not remain a political slogan for elections. The people must live it.

I am calling for legislation that protects the social and economic rights of our people. I want lower taxes (or no taxes at all) for struggling SMEs.

Give them tax holidays like the government did for RD Tuna and the petroleum sector. Give them REAL financing. Not a figure on paper they can’t access.

We want shop spaces in the centre of our towns and cities. Give it to us. This is our country. We want what is ours.

If the laws don’t allow it. Change the laws to suit our people’s needs.

We cannot continue to exist on the fringes of a large Pacific economy that boasts a “healthy” GDP yet cannot show it in the impact on the lives of our people.

Tax the alcohol companies. They contribute to the widespread abuse and the violence associated with it.

Society not mature enough
Our society is not mature enough to allow the widespread consumption of alcohol.

Tax the cigarette companies. Make them all pay for the ill health of our people.

We are not taking back PNG by allowing these cancers to continue untreated. We are in fact, selling off PNG’s future.

Reduce the cost of medical treatment at the private clinics and hospitals. Reduce the cost of dental care. It’s UNAFFORDABLE. How can a papa or mama in the village afford K500 for a tooth extraction.

Give your people the means to look after themselves. Give your people the means to pay for their children’s education so they don’t become enslaved by politicians who peddle election policies that don’t really serve our people.

We don’t want to be dependent on government. We want to make our own money. Wealth in the hand of its people is real wealth.

We demand preferential treatment for US.

Our resources. Our country. We deserve more.

Scott Waide is a leading Papua New Guinean journalist and a senior editor with a national television network. He writes a personal blog, My Land, My Country. Asia Pacific Report republishes his articles with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz