N.Z. AND FIJI CO-OPERATION BASED ON SUGAR-PRICE ADVOCATED

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30559, 30 September 1964, Page 16

N.Z. AND FIJI CO-OPERATION BASED ON SUGAR-PRICE ADVOCATED

[By M. D. SADLER. BA.. B Scl Sir Leslie Munro is reported as saying, in Parliament, that “from his observations New Zealand was going to be linked more and more with Fiji.” This indeed ought to be so, but few New Zealanders are fully aware of the possibilities, or of the extent to which they are being neglected. For instance. Fiji has exported copper and zinc ore to Japan. It would be better if the metals were extracted before transportation, but Fiji has no coal. To make a smelting industry possible, ships could perhaps carry New Zealand coal over, and such things as Fijian rock-phosphate back.

A similar arrangement might eventually evolve from Fiji’s reserves of iron-ore. In agriculture, a formal agreement to buy Fiji’s maturing cocoa and coffee crop could be made part of a general trade agreement. In the development of new massproduction industries there would be advantages in joint planning whereby a new Fiji factory would supply most of the New Zealand market for a given commodity and vice versa. Australia Ahead In comparison with Australia, New Zealand’s economic relations with Fiji are almost totally unorganised. Australia has several large trading firms selling in Fiji. New Zealand has no comparable business representation. The Australian Government recently appointed a permanent trade commissioner to Fiji. New Zealand has not yet matched this move. When Fiji’s export earnings and resultant imports rose in 1963. Australia got more than £900,000 worth of the extra trade, compared with extra sales of only £129,000 by New Zealand. During the first six months of 1964, Fiji’s best customer was Nevi Zealand which bought £3 million worth of Fiji’s goods but sold only £836,000 worth. Australia’s sales to Fiji in the same period were £3,451,000 compared with imports from Fiji of only £789,000. In short Fiji, like New Zealand is involved in a very one-sided trade-relationship with Australia which had no qualms about blocking Fijian exports such as bananas and passionfruit. There are thus clear opportunities for New Zealand to build an economic relationship which would be more satisfactory for Fiji than its present relationship with Australia. Racial Differences Such indications of potential mutual advantages should lead New Zealand to take more interest in Fiji. Conversely, Fiji has certain problems which it may not be able to solve without additional help. One of these, the danger of conflict between the two main races, the Indians and the native Fijians, has taken an ominous new turn during 1964. When the “indenturedlabour” system under which Indians were brought to the colony ended after the 1914-18 war, many of the freed

Indians were eventually granted leases of Fijianowned land. To this day, nearly all Indian farmers in Fiji are tenant-farmers and their original tenancyagreements are beginning to expire. When the leases of 1298 Indian farmers were considered for renewal this year, the Fijian owners, in almost every case, demanded their land back for their own use. Evictions of Indian tenant-farmers would be likely to lead to serious political trouble: but the Fijians want to have the use of a larger percentage of the sugar-farms, which grow Fiji’s main agricultural export, 92 per cent of which is now grown by the Indians. Assistance Fund Total sugar-production is governed by quotas, and practical remedies are likely to require the development of more local factories to employ Indian labour, and the conversion of more jungle into profitable farms growing crops other than sugar. But such solutions, on a large enough scale, would require financial resources which the Fiji Government does not have in sufficient quantity. This is where, I believe, New Zealand should help by creating an assistance fund based on imported Fijian sugar. After Britain and Canada, New Zealand is the third largest buyer of Fijian sugar but, whereas Britain pays a guaranteed price, New Zealand has traditionally paid Fiji only the “world” price, no matter how low this fell. This opportunism on the part of New Zealand at the expense of a fellow-member of the Commonwealth should cease. The world-price has now fallen below 3ld per lb, which is less than a fair reward for producers, and, before a lower New Zealand retail-price for sugar is fixed, the idea of offering a just and guaranteed price for sugar bought from Fiji should be seriously considered. Ideally, the New Zealand Government should go beyond the current Commonwealth Agreement price of £46 a ton, which was not negotiated on a very generous basis, and offer Fiji £6O a ton (6Jd per lb), on condition that some of the extra money would go into a

fund to help develop new land and industries in Fiji. and in return obtain a prom ise that Fiji’s imports from New Zealand would in future move nearer equality with those from Australia. Such a gesture on the part of New Zealand would be not so much charitable “aid” as a combination of statesmanship and simple justice. For years we have paid a price for Fijian sugar which often con detnned the sugar-workers to a subsistence level of living This has not constituted equality or justice. If the British Commonwealth is to grow in strength, then its members must base their relations on concepts of economic equality. Sugar-worker’s Shack I have never forgotten how. before catching an aircraft back to New Zealand in 1959, I spent my last night in Fiji at the home of a sugar-worker in Lautoka. He and his family lived in a shack with two small rooms bare of all furniture. Cooking facilities and a water-tap were situated outside the living quarters in a yard that consisted entirely of trampled mud. All this was counter-balanced by the fact that my hosts seemed a happy and contented couple. It was only when I watched the children eat a breakfast of drybread without butter or anything else to make it palatable that I decided that the situation was not satisfactory and that something ought to bo done to raise the Fiiian sugar-worker’s standard-of-living a little closer to New Zealand’s. As the world price for sugar seems to be still falling. I believe that a generous guaranteed price from New Zealand for Fijian sugar would achieve three worth while ends. It would help to promote a mutually beneficial economic partnership: it would contribute to the solution of serious problems resulting from the pressure of rapid population increase on developed land and available jobs; and it would inaugurate an era of greater justice in which New Zealanders need no longer need to feel that their standard-of-living was part based on a continuation of living conditions such as I have mentioned.