Joint Press Conference, Suva

SUBJECTS: Australia-Fiji Relationship; Pacific Australia Labour Mobility. 

SITIVENI RABUKA, PRIME MINISTER OF FIJI:  Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, press corps, welcome to the newly opened Maritime Essential Services Centre. And we welcome the Honourable Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, the Honourable Richard Marles, who is also Minister for Defence. And today has been a great, great event.  From Fiji’s point of view, it is the culmination of a long period of worrying, and planning, and hoping, and looking for someone to come along, share with us their idea of our idea and establish something similar to what– something like what we have done today: that is the establishment of the Centre of the Vuvale Maritime Essential Services. You will recall that last week I was with the United Nations General Assembly where I highlighted the need of the small island states of the Pacific, particularly our concern for the major developments going on around the world; transnational crimes, drug trafficking and all those. Now Australia, our very loyal neighbour and friend has come forward and put this $120 million project into the ground, and we had the opening today. And as you heard the Deputy Prime Minister mentioned this morning, it over the two years has provided employment for 1,275 workers. That’s a great input into our GDP and the social wellbeing of our people. So today has been a welcome event. We pay a lot of respect to our neighbour, Australia, and also those other partners who have participated in the development, in the building and now today, the consecration and opening of the Centre. So once again, welcome Deputy Prime Minister. Thank you very much what your great government has done for us in our Pacific.

RICHARD MARLES, DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA:  Thank you. Firstly, let me just say what an honour it is to be here with Prime Minister Rabuka, who is one of the great figures of the Pacific. And I really want to acknowledge his leadership of Fiji, obviously, but also his leadership across our region. And I also would like to, through you, Prime Minister, just thank you for the incredible ceremony which was performed today. I feel very humbled by it. It was an enormous display of respect, obviously, for me, but much more for the relationship between our two countries and we do not take that for granted, and we're very grateful for that ceremony. Today is a really significant day in opening, formally opening the Vuvale Maritime Essential Services Centre. As the Prime Minister has said, it's a $120 million Fijian dollar facility, an $83 million Australian investment in this facility. That represents one of the biggest infrastructure investments we've made anywhere in the world. And along with the investment that we have made at Black Rock, these are really the two biggest investments that Australia has made here in Fiji, and it greatly contributes to the military capability of Fiji. It is hard to overstate the significance of having all the maritime agencies housed under the same roof as the headquarters of Fiji's Navy. Really what that means in terms of the ability to coordinate, the ability to take intelligence from one sector and in real time to see responses and effects in another agency, is incredible. It will really give the Fijian Government enormous agency over its own maritime domain. And as we said in our speeches, Fiji is, in so many ways a maritime nation, and the maritime domain is fundamentally important to Fiji's economic prosperity and its national security. But I'd also want to observe that in this facility here and in Black Rock, what we've also got is facilities which are incredible assets for the region. This enables us to do so much more as a Pacific community in terms of responding to security threats, but also responding to disasters and providing for humanitarian relief, and that is a great contribution to the region. It also reflects the centrality of Fiji within the Pacific, and it reflects Fiji's leadership within the Pacific. And as I said, I'd also like to acknowledge the personal leadership of Prime Minister Rabuka. As I said in the speech, we are, as Australians, residents of the Pacific as well. And so providing for the security of the Pacific is about providing for our own security and really, the facility that we've opened today is very much an expression; a tangible, physical expression, of the significance of the relationship between our two countries. And I feel so honoured to be a part of this ceremony today, and very much look forward to my meetings later today with Pio to take forward the very significant relationship between our two nations.

JOURNALIST: Deputy Prime Minister Marles, one question for you and one for Prime Minister Rabuka. For you, Mr Marles (inaudible). My question is, aside from humanitarian relief, what is Australia’s strategic defence priorities in the Pacific? Why so much investment in Fiji’s defence? 

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER MARLES: Well, we are residents of the Pacific ourselves, Australia. I think rightly, now we are seeing under our government the appropriate focus and attention on the Pacific. I mean, it is a practical fact that the Pacific is front and centre in terms of Australia's national security. You can look back through history and understand the lessons of that in terms of the security of Australia. And Australia has been present, I think, in the Pacific in a significant way, over a long period of time. But what we are seeking to do under the Albanese Government is bring an intent to that. To really fulfil our role as the partner of choice for the countries of the Pacific. And we don't take that for granted. That is not something we get by right. That is something that we must earn. And that is what we are seeking to do in the way in which we are engaging here in Fiji, but right around the Pacific. So the short answer to your question is we are playing the role that we believe Australia should always have played, and we feel that under our government, the Pacific really does now have the appropriate place in our world view and the appropriate priority in terms of our spending abroad. 

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister Rabuka, my question is to do with a part of your speech where you sent out a message directly to crime syndicates, saying, we’re watching you and we will come and get you. But aside from the Centre, what else is Australia's support giving Fiji in terms of its capability to make good of this threat that you issued this morning?

PRIME MINISTER RABUKA: Thank you very much. In the corridors of the discussions last week, I had mentioned in New York that we will need the cooperation of the exporting countries. So when we are talking about fighting drugs and international drug trafficking, we're not only looking at defending as they come towards us in the high seas and our EEZ, we would like to have cooperation between our maritime agencies, and customs, and so on with the– particularly those that are suspected of originating the movement of those tradable bad things, or narcotics. And also in line with your question to the Deputy Prime Minister, you asked him why they have come out, you will recall, if you look at the history of all the conflicts that have happened in the world, Australia and New Zealand have been called to the European theatre in the First and Second World War, and then closer in far east, with the trying to contain the fall of those various territories in the domino effect of the spread of communism. We have to balance up between either defending at home, or going further abroad and defend in depth. This is what we are seeing in the world, not only Australia and Fiji doing it, the rest of the world is also doing it – spreading out your area of influence, area of, not really area of operation, well it will become when they come up and work with us, but it is all part of a strategy – looking after home. 

JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER MARLES: Well, thank you for that question. Firstly, the seasonal workers program is obviously really important in terms of the opportunity it represents for the economic development of the Pacific. One of the real opportunities we have in terms of building our relationship is providing moments where we can have access for people in the Pacific to the Australian economy, and that very much includes working within it. And we've seen really great benefits come to countries in the Pacific who have been able to take up the opportunity of sending people to the seasonal workers program. We continue to monitor how the experience is for those who are in Australia. And it's a constant process of fine tuning that and making sure that where there are issues, they are being addressed. And we are doing that in respect of those who are working in Australia, and we will continue to do that. We very much want to listen to the experiences of those people from the Pacific, from Fiji, who are working in Australia to ensure that we are improving their experiences as much as possible. And we also, in saying that, want to work with the respective governments, in this instance the Government of Fiji, to make sure that the program is working for the benefit of Fiji, for the nation of Fiji. And that means both in terms of the experiences that people are having, what economic wealth they're able to bring home, but also making sure that the numbers of people coming are appropriate in the context of the domestic economy here in Fiji. So we will continue to both monitor the experience of those who are working in Australia, but also work with the Fijian Government to make sure that this is a program delivering for both of our nations. 

JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)

PRIME MINISTER RABUKA: Well, for me as a Prime Minister, it has been embarrassing. Most of the problems we hear are problems caused by our workers in Australia, not by the employers or not by the Australian Government, and that is something that we have to sort out here before they are deployed. That is also very personal. A lot of those things are not national. They cannot brand the whole of Fiji just because a few of our workers have misbehaved. I have four young men from within the family who are out there, and they have been very responsible to their families here, as well as their employers in Australia. And three of them have been to Fiji on home leave, and they speak glowingly of their employer and their neighbourhood where they are employed. So let us not take those individual cases to thump the whole issue. It is something that Labour Ministry should look at in detail. And this next weekend, the Fiji Day weekend, when they celebrate Fiji Day in the Australian diaspora, I will also have a representative from the Fiji Ministry of Labour, and hopefully I can ask the Australian Government to accept or to allow their representative in Fiji to come along with us so that he and I can hear the problem together from the same gathering.

JOURNALIST: My question is for you both Deputy Prime Minister and Prime Minister. Recently, at the Pacific Islands Forum, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated that you were willing to upgrade the relationship between the two countries from the Vuvale Partnership to a security treaty. So what do both leaders think of the security treaty? Second, can both leaders confirm talks on this are underway, and if so what will it cover– what the security treaty covers (inaudible)? 

PRIME MINISTER RABUKA: For my part, I told the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Australia that I'm jealous of my brother James, for them having signed theirs while they were still talking about ours. Yes, it's something that we would like to consider very seriously. It is probably just a manifestation of things that have been happening over the years. 

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER MARLES: Exactly, so we are in a constant process of taking our relationship forward, and we're very interested in ways in which we can elevate the agreements that exist between our two countries. And as I said, I'll be having a meeting with my counterpart, Pio Tikoduadua this afternoon, the Minister for Defence, to look at ways in which we can take that forward. And we're very open minded about how we can elevate the existing Vuvale Partnership between our two countries. But as the Prime Minister has said, at a practical level, when you look at what we're doing with infrastructure, such as what we're celebrating today, but also the embeds, for example, that exist – Fijians serving in our Defence Force or being embedded in our Defence Force and vice versa. You know, today, I've met a number of Australian personnel who are doing exchanges here in Fiji – when you look at the way in which we are exercising and operating together, supporting each other,