Taking politics out of the policies
Prasad: People should take this crisis seriously
IAM sure that you are all showing leadership on this in your own organisations. I certainly encourage everyone to take this crisis seriously. We cannot afford to let it take hold. We have a health system with only limited resources. It is already under strain. It cannot deal with an influx of many seriously ill people.
But the coronavirus has actually brought some good news. Apparently Government ministers will stop travelling. This means they will not receive their princely overseas travelling allowances. So the Fiji taxpayers will save a fortune!
Zero flexibility and ruin
Today, I want to talk about our job, as politicians, to promote business and economic growth — and the role NFP sees for the business community. This is not just about business and government. We need you well before we get there, which is in policy formulation — and that is right now.
At the moment our lives are completely dominated by the coronavirus crisis. We know that it will be ruinous for us. So it is right that we are all focused on the short-term.
However, we will eventually get through it, for better or worse. And it is very important that, even as we focus on the current crisis, we keep the long-term, the big picture, firmly in mind.
And the big picture is not in micro-managing the economy. It is about getting the fundamentals right.
One of the things I have been talking about for years is debt levels. I am not alone in this. My friend Savenaca Narube, the former governor of the Reserve Bank of Fiji, has been saying the same thing.
He too has warned that past borrowing, for low quality government spending, has left us with no room to spend money when a crisis arrives. And now we are here.
Dr Eddie McCaig, in The Fiji Times, highlighted the shocking state of our hospitals. What this means is that we have zero flexibility to deal with the coronavirus.
Because we have no resources to treat people, we will have to take extreme preventive measures. The more extreme the measures, of course, the greater the restrictions on normal activity, the greater is the impact on the economy.
If we do not do this and the virus takes hold and spreads, the human cost and the economic consequences, including for tourism, will be disastrous.
So economically, we have left ourselves no room to move. One way or the other, we will pay the price for poor economic management in the past.
I want to cover four things:
first a quick update on our political future as I see it — because we know businesses give priority to planning for the future;
second, how politicians must change politics and political leadership so that Fiji’s people are empowered to lead in their own areas of strength;
third, how we must harness the skills and talents of everyone; and
fourth, a few core economic ideas we want to develop, with your help.
Everything is connected
Many of the things I wish to talk about are not “hard economics”. But I want to remind you of a simple rule of economics, ecology and many other sciences.
Everything is connected to everything else. As politicians we must create the environment which will allow others to succeed.
First I want to say – there will be a change in government. This is not a campaign speech. This is simple demographics.
In the 2014, election the current government got 60 per cent of the vote. In 2018 it fell to 50.02 per cent. There is a clear political trend here. We all know it.
NFP will be fighting for every vote. Of course in the current proportionate electoral system every vote we get adds to our seats in Parliament.
We expect to increase our numbers and to hold the balance of power in Parliament.
But we have a responsibility as political leaders. We do not just want to take power because it is there.
We have to offer a vision for a different type of leadership. We must have policies and priorities that reflect what the people need and want and give them confidence. And this is where we need everyone to contribute, right now.
My second point — I want to go back to what I said at the beginning. I thanked you for the opportunity to speak to you. Because for opposition politicians these opportunities are rare.
This is not the first time I have spoken to this Rotary Club. I believe the last time was a few weeks before the last election. I appreciated then the importance you give to listening to all views. I appreciate it now. This is not a common trend in the business community.
Toxic politics
Many business people would rather cross the street than shake my hand. Others look over their shoulders before they say anything encouraging to me, or critical of the government. They are worried about who might hear them.
How has it come to this?
It is because of our toxic politics. Why do business people need politicians? It is not to tell you about how to make sales or cut costs. It is not to tell you how to comply with laws, or how to run your affairs. Of course, I know one politician who will lecture you on anything and everything.
But business does need politicians to deliver good political leadership. Good political leadership means good government. It means consultative law-making. It means accountable spending of the taxes that, in large part, business delivers to government.
I use the phrase “political leadership”. Because political leadership is only one form of the leadership our country needs. We need leadership in every aspect of national life.
We need it in our social, cultural and religious organisations. We need it in sports. We need it in economic activity such as business and organised labour. All leadership is important.
Political leaders should not dominate the scene. Politicians must lead when necessary. But their tenure is temporary. Their job is to empower others to lead.
You may say to yourselves, “this is obvious”. But after 14 years of the same twoman rule, many of us have lost sight of this simple idea. We have a government that has set itself up to dominate everything.
Over time, this government has become driven by insecurity. The government must get the credit for everything. You must never criticise or question Government ministers.
Schools and religious, cultural and other community organisations must be tightly regulated.
We live in a society where business people fear being investigated by FICAC or by the tax authorities. So they do not try to highlight national problems or criticise people in power.
Government departments and statutory authorities are important customers. One wrongly-placed word can end the contract.
This is not transparent and accountable government.
In the NFP we laugh quite a lot at this government. We laugh loudest when they accuse the opposition parties of “playing politics.” We are politicians, what else do they expect us to play?
Political toxicity
But the most intense political animals in our arena are the government. They are not in politics for government. They are in government for politics. They govern for headlines in the Fiji Sun and video clips on FBC TV.
They pay for ads publishing their speeches. They desperately suppress any bad news. But in the end there is nothing of substance underneath.
In most democratic countries the business community contributes publicly and robustly to national debate. But in Fiji the business community is largely silent. I think there are two reasons.
The first is the fear I talked about. But the second is that the business community has given up.
The government does not listen to their ideas anyway. So why bother to bring problems to their attention? There are only risks, not benefits.
So toxic political leadership is the first thing that must change. We need a government that is more relaxed and open to criticism.
We need a government that does not believe its leaders are messiahs. We need a government that is a little bit more modest and prepared to listen to the views and ideas of others.
A government for all
This leads me to my third point. We need a Government that will harness the talent, experience, wisdom and innovation of our own people, and combine it with the best global expertise to find solutions to our problems.
We need to re-establish schools, health centres, police posts and places of worship as important centres of community life and community leadership. And also businesses.
Businesses are important, because they are unlike many other community organisations. Businesses, through employment, bring together people who are diverse in every way.
Diverse by ethnic group and language, by gender and by geography.
One of the things NFP is working on as a policy is something called FijiCAN — a nationwide Fiji Community Advocacy Network.
We want Government to use leaders in the community as advocates. We want them to work with Government and NGOs to improve communication on critical issues such as health, education, domestic violence and disaster preparedness.
This will be two-way, not just Government telling the people. It is also about listening to their complaints and their criticisms, acknowledging where we have failed, and asking for help when we fail. We build trust in government when we work honestly with the people.
Look at the current coronavirus crisis. All we see in the news media is Government ministers. These are not the people we want to see right now.
We want to see independent health experts giving us objective information. We need people talking critically about what our needs are, even if the Government does not look perfect.
We want to see health workers, teachers and public servants out in the community, preparing our people for the worst, teaching them how to minimise health risks.
If we could activate an established network of trusted leaders, to whom we could pass down important information in times of crisis, we would be well ahead of the crisis now.
Allocation of resources
Take health. I was interested in a statistic mentioned by Dr McCaig in The Fiji Times 10 days ago. He said 80 per cent of patients treated in public hospitals were suffering from NCDs (non-communicable diseases). Think about the economic cost and impact of this.
So we need to massively move government resources towards prevention, so that the next generation is healthier and our health services can focus on more complex issues.
This means integrating our policies on health, education, agriculture and food and nutrition. Employers are critical in this.
The dividend — from simple advocacy and focus on good health — is better productivity and better use of scarce health resources. The economic benefits are huge.
Remember, on the Government’s own statistics, we are a country that has failed to materially improve net worker productivity for 20 years.
My fourth point — specific policies. There are many policy areas I wish I could discuss. We have been calling, for years, for joint action on education. We also want this for the sugar industry.
These are two huge, economically impactful areas where current policy is taking us to long-term disaster. We are very focused on wholesale change in both of these areas.
We have a number of core ideas. We want to begin testing these. Your help on this is critical.
Priorities
Let me talk broadly about some of them:
there are many aspects of our economy we cannot change – our smallness, our vulnerability to climate change, our isolation from major markets. But we can change our politics. I have talked about that;
we can also change the way we regulate business and investment. The Industry Minister thinks this is about changing how you get a business licence. It is not. This needs a whole-of-government approach. Government policies must be transparent, predictable and consistent. They must stay the same to give certainty to investors and existing businesses. We need to cut out pointless rules, regulations, fees and taxes. We have people in NFP who are very focused on this and will have detailed policies on it;
we need to continue to develop tourism – because this is a global growth industry where Fiji can perform well. But we need to integrate it further into the local economy. We need more local services and activities for tourists. If we could develop aged care and health tourism we could keep health professionals in Fiji and reward them well – meaning their skills are also retained for national benefit;
we need to develop agriculture to service tourism. For example - we spend tens of millions of dollars on beef imports for the tourism industry. But we have vast amounts of land on which we could rear cattle. What is the missing link?;
we need commercial-level investment in modern, value-adding agriculture for export. Take, for example, the organic food industry. Globally it is worth $US100 billion ($F232.8b) a year. It is rapidly growing. If we could get just half of one per cent of this market, that would be one billion Fiji dollars. It would transform our small economy; and
we need additional investment in growth industries such as call centres and business process outsourcing. These are dynamic, people-focused industries which constantly modernise and innovate using technology — and promote creativity and growth.
Good politics, good policy
I know we have opportunities in the areas of shipping services, ecotourism, sustainable energy and the wider blue and green economies. Every day I hear about people with new ideas for small businesses. I know that if I went around this room I would get at least one good business and investment idea from each of you.
I look forward to your help – both before and after the next election. Even though we are politicians, as far as possible we want to take the politics out of policy. We know that good politics is not always good policy but we must remember that for our people it must always be good policy. We want to bring people together and combine all of our best ideas to advance Fiji’s economic future.
On Thursday, March 19, National Federation Party leader Prof Biman Prasad spoke at a luncheon of the Rotary Club of Suva. These are excerpts from his speech. The views expressed are Prof Prasad’s and not necessarily shared by this newspaper.