Big Australian contribution to TC Yasa rebuilding a new milestone in Vuvale Partnership

The arrival of HMAS Adelaide in Fijian waters with 600 personnel to help us rebuild after Cyclone Yasa marks another milestone in the Fiji-Australia Vuvale

Partnership.

Since Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama and his Australian counterpart Scott Morrison signed the agreement more than a year ago, we have achieved significant results.

We have lived up to the spirit of Vuvale which means we are one family and “my home is your home.”

In January last year during the Black Summer bushfires that ravaged 11 million hectares of forests and killed at least 33 people in Australia, 54 Republic of Fiji Military Forces engineers were deployed to Australia to help fight the bushfires there.

The gesture drew from this “deepseated sense of belonging that Fiji and Australia aspire to have through this Vuvale Partnership for a new era of elevated cooperation, consultation and friendship.”

The Australians have not forgotten that and reciprocated after Cyclone Yasa struck the North, Lomaiviti and Lau.

They sent HMAS Adelaide with doctors, nurses, engineers and other professionals to help in the rebuilding, particularly of schools.

Both countries agree they are natural Partners – even in sports.

This led to the setting up of the Lautoka-based Kaiviti Silktails rugby league club that is competing in the New South Wales Ron Massey Cup 2021 competition.

The Australian initiative is designed to tap into the local Fijian talents and give them exposure to the highly competitive Australian league competition.

The Fijians played their debut and their only game last year at Churchchill Park in Lautoka before COVID-19 forced the suspension of the competition. They thrashed the Windsor Wolves 40-16.

The Australian contribution in the current cyclone Rehabilitation work lifts the partnership to a new level and affirms the countries’ shared ambition to use this connection as the basis for a new, higher level of cooperation.

Their engagements so far bring to life the Principles on which the Vuvale Partnership is founded.

The key principles are we will:

■ engage each other with trust, respect, and understanding;

■ share responsibility for delivering programmes and policies to achieve our goals;

■ listen and speak carefully to understand our respective points of view when differences arise;

■ share in the prosperity of improved economic and social wellbeing;

■ help each other to grow as individual sovereign states and as partners; and

■ work in a considered and sustainable manner that achieves lasting outcomes.

Together, we will endeavour to pass down to our children a partnership they will be proud to inherit, based on the following five pillars that provide the bedrock for this work:

■ strengthening our people-to-people links, which is what makes us ‘ vuvale’;

■ enhancing our security cooperation to meet common challenges and maintain a

■ secure region;

■ deepening our economic relationship to achieve greater prosperity for our people;

■ building our cooperation on international and regional issues, as we pledge to safeguard a sovereign region and represent the Pacific and its interests on the world stage; and

■ fostering closer institutional linkages in support of strong and inclusive societies.

The agreement says the relationship between Fiji and Australia over the coming years will be underpinned by close and practical cooperation.

“Our shared work will recognise the vital importance of an enduring strategic partnership between the two governments and peoples, and responds to our shared priorities.

“This cooperation is based on trust and mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty, as we make our best efforts to build a Pacific region that is secure strategically, stable socially and economically, and sovereign politically.”