A new Pacific profit

motive?

Self-sufficiency can be gained through

effort . . . but at what price?

THE PRINCIPAL employers of Fiji got together last month and in a review of where the Repub lic’s business community stands and where it may be going suggested that if the Government’s aim of lifting Fijian participation in business until a significant proportion of the national economy was in Fijian hands is to succeed, then Fijians would have to become much more selfish and individualistic.

Fiji is not alone in facing the choice between the islands idyll and a place in the world where only hard-heaaed business decisions, unclouded by past social principles and free of family fetters, can give the freedom to move an economy.

But Fiji has leapt into the spotlight, as it were, with the coups and the constitution drama, so that the choice is more starkly present for Fiji than for smal ler Pacific countries. Let them not be smug about it, however: “be tough and be businesslike, or be no thing” is the way the world runs.

Major-General Rabuka wants to perpetuate not only Fijian hegemony but also some very admirable social Qualities: and one does not have to share the General’s personal religious outlook to appreciate the value of tne sabbath ne hopes to uphold. A day a week of thorough rest is a very healthy contribution to a life of balanced content.

That, however, is not the way to make millions.

Such values have to be left to the also-rans, who can indulge in ease and excuse themselves for not suc ceeding because the price was too high. And you can’t have too much common or community own ership of services or resources: Australia and New Zealand are discovering that if the government owns the railways or the port facilities they only lose money, so those nations are joining the world move ment to put as much as possible into private hands.

The motive is to make every service pay (though quantifying the profitability of health, for example, or education, has so far eluded philosophers).

So, Fiji is being told, it is necessary to individualise land ownership so that, if not buying and selling land you can at least use it as collateral for a loan for your business. Nauru has already found that land can be portioned out in precise shares to all the traditional owners ... an adaptation of historical relationships the ancestors never envisaged.

Sadly, there’s no going back. Nostalgia is a luxury that can still be enjoyed, but the substance is gone and even if you aeplore the materialistic culture of these who arrive with plans for tourist development or resource exploitation, you have to meet them on terms of equal toughness if you’re going to retain your heritage and reed your people.

It is, as tne Pacific is discovering to its chagrin, a tough world. □