 If Reality Check Radio enriches your day and life, support us to keep bringing you the content, voices, perspectives and dose of reality you won't get anywhere else. Visit www.realitycheck.radio forward slash donate. Graham Davis is like me, a kiviti. That's Fijian for Born in Fiji. He's an award-winning Fijian investigative journalist who is concerned about all sorts of shenanigans going on with the new government in Fiji, among which is a roller-king-six scandal involving two cabinet ministers. He joined me on the line now from Sydney to discuss developments. Welcome back to the crunch, Graham Davis, Fijian journalist, currently residing in Australia. But you're like me, a kiviti and you've got a huge interest in what's going on in our homeland. Yes, quite right, Cam. Thank you for having me on the show again. Yes, and very interesting times in our country of birth, our homeland, so to speak. Let me lead you into it. This is quite a complicated story, and particularly for a foreign audience to sort of understand the full scope of the horror of this. But let me just ask you, you, Cam Slater, to imagine this. A New Zealand cabinet minister who is married, a woman, goes on an overseas trip. It is a parliamentary delegation, and another cabinet minister, a man, brings his wife with him along with him on this parliamentary delegation. When they're away, the woman cabinet minister entices the man to her hotel room, and they have sex while his wife sleeps in an adjoining room. Text messages between the two are leaked, referring to them having brutal sex, so much so that she complains she can't walk the day afterwards. She also says in these texts that she's high on weed, marijuana, and drunk on Jack Daniels whiskey. They eventually go home, and the prime minister hears about their antics. He calls them in and asks them if it's true, and they lie. He then misleads the nation by issuing a formal statement saying that he asked them whether it was true, and they denied it, and he asked the public to stop spreading rumors about what's going on. Then five months later, the leaked texts emerge and prove that the whole thing is true. Now, let me ask you this, Cam. What would happen under those circumstances in New Zealand? Well, you lie to a prime minister when you confront it, and you tell her there's a lexicon in New Zealand that's called an orchestrated litany of lies. It came from the man inquiry into the arabist crash of Air New Zealand, and Justice Mann said that Air New Zealand's evidence was an orchestrated litany of lies. That would probably come out. The media would probably say, well, they've lied to the prime minister. Lying to a prime minister is instant sacking. Forget all the details, the lying is what gets them in trouble, and they would be gone. Of course, there's all the lurid sex details. Of course, there's the question of how the minister actually got hold of cannabis. Did she bring it into the country, that foreign country herself, and breach of any number of anti-narcotics laws? Did they subvert the diplomatic pouch process? All of those sorts of things just raises a whole lot of questions. In New Zealand, if you did this, one or both of the ministers would be summarily dismissed from their portfolios to sit on the back bench, if not, throwing out of parliament entirely because of the embarrassment. Of course, there would be normal party processes that would kick in where you would perhaps have an investigation by a party, a disciplinary committee, findings of disrepute, all of those sorts of things. They could even be chucked out of a party eventually. We actually saw this in New Zealand with a bit of a sex scandal, with actually a mate of mine, Jamie Lee Ross, who was accused of ironically brutal sex while he was gone. He was out. See you later. That was it. This thing's catching. Let me tell you what happened in Fiji. The ruling party, the PAP, the People's Alliance, part of the coalition of three parties, set up a disciplinary committee hearing, including two lawyers. It has found the allegations proven yet 11 days after he received the report, the Prime Minister, Siti Veni Rambuka, still can't decide whether to sack the female minister. He had already expelled the male minister from the cabinet, but for an entirely separate reason, for insubordination. So we now have the most important thing. One of the most important things to understand here is that this woman Linda Tambuya is the minister for women and children and social protection in the Fijian government. She remains in place, as we speak, having had a disciplinary hearing of her own party find the allegations against her proven. It then went to the executive committee of the People's Alliance. They, on the basis of the disciplinary committee's report, stripped her of the title of deputy leader of the party. So she's out as deputy leader, but the Prime Minister, Siti Veni Rambuka, can't bring himself to do the logical next thing, which is to remove her as the minister for women and children. So that's the astonishing situation in Fiji, as we speak, and in a parliamentary week in which really this has not become an issue in the parliament at all. We're into day two of the session. And it's just the most astonishing thing. And I'm sure we'll be canvassing a lot of the detail as we go ahead, but there you have it. Well, there's an interesting situation, which involves you, of course, where Linda Tambuya has said one thing to the Fijian public, that this is fake news, that there's AI being used to generate these images, although I'm not sure how the AI managed to get an exact duplicate of the of the turtle tattoos that are on her back. Well, exactly. Yeah, exactly. But she stopped, she has actually stopped denying the veracity of all of this cam in recent days, because the disciplinary committee of her own party has found her guilty. So she's got a bit of a problem. As you know, she reported me to Australia's eSafety Commissioner, because I published in a censored form some of the leaked images of her that included what you've just mentioned, the tattoos on her back of turtles. Now, the importance of that is that she comes from Kandavu, the southern island in Fiji, where they do the calling of the turtles. So that explains why there's turtles on her back. Now, I've had sort of wags, say to me, call on her to show us her text, which would have established the veracity of these photographs once and for all. Of course, this was ignored, but the disciplinary committee spent two weeks or so forensically going through the evidence against her, which, by the way, included correspondence to me by the eSafety Commissioner in Australia saying, not that the images that I had used or published were fake, but that I didn't have her consent to use them. Now, this was a very powerful piece of hard evidence that when she went to the eSafety Commissioner to make a complaint about me, it wasn't to say, look, he's publishing these images of me that are false. She went to them saying, I haven't given my consent for him to use these. And Australia has very, very sort of tough online safety laws, and I fell foul of that. Now, on pain of $156,000 in fines, I removed the offending images, and I was happy to do so because that's the law. But essentially, these are laws that are designed to curb or prevent, revenge porn, with people putting up pictures of their former spouses or girlfriends or whatever. And of course, in my case, or in relation to what I was publishing on my... It was news. It was news. It was in the public interest that people understood exactly what all this was. But in any way, nonetheless, I got caught up in this Australian drag net. And those pictures, I've had to obviously delete. At the same time, she complained to Facebook about me, and I got kicked off Facebook altogether. I had more than 30,000 followers from my Grub Sheet Facebook page. She complained to Metta, the owners of Facebook, and I was kicked off. So fortunately, I had my website, which I'd sort of deactivated to some extent because there's more than half a million Facebook accounts in Fiji. So that was the way to get the mass audience. Yeah. It's how everything is communicated in Fiji is using Facebook. Yeah. Well, I'm on Facebook now. I'm gone. Now, this person has actually done me quite a bit of damage, but of course, it's rebounded on her because the allegations that I had made, which were first made by a guy called Victor Lyle, who's a journalist and an academic at Oxford University in Britain, have been found to have been true by the ruling party's disciplinary committee. And of course, there's a certain irony about this, and it speaks volumes for the Fijian media, I guess the Pacific media generally, but it took a guy who lives 16,000 kilometers away from Fiji in Oxford, England, to break the story. And little old me sitting in Sydney, you know, doing what I do. But it's because the mainstream media in Fiji completely ignored this story and told the People's Alliance, a disciplinary committee established that it was proven. They were running the lines that this was AI. Well, in fact, yes, there were running the line that this was fake and generated by AI, which was Linda Tamburia's version of what had happened. But worse than that, they were actually manipulating the news. The Fiji Times, which is the traditional newspaper of record in Fiji since 1869, was running the line that I had sort of falsely sort of put up these images, and particularly honing in on one image in particular that they reported was old. And made a big song and dance about how I'd been reported by Linda Tamburia to the Fiji police. Now, the Fiji police have conducted an investigation into me. That's my understanding. But of course, now that the allegations have been proven, I mean, Linda Tamburia is obviously exposed to the prospect of, you know, prosecution for wasting police time. So it's going to be interesting to see to see what happens. But of course, we're all just waiting to see what the Prime Minister, Siddhi Venir and Bukka, is going to do. Now, he seems to be totally and unfully in a state of seizure in decision. You know, he just doesn't know, he doesn't seem to know what to do. Now, which has led to all sources speculation. In the Bunker metaphorically. Yeah, but she may be blackmailing him, yeah, because there was a very senior person in the government told me, or a person close to the top of the government told me a few days ago that she and her lover boy, Aseria and Draundra, were planning a motion of no confidence in the parliament, which would bring down the government and hand and hand power back to the Fiji, the former Fiji First government. You know, this is this is the Frank Bani Marama and I as Said Kayum's party. Now, whether or not that's true, we, you know, we haven't, you know, obviously we can't establish, but something is preventing Siddhi Venir and Bukka from making the hard decision to sack her as a minister. Yeah, I mean, I could play devil's advocate here a little bit Graham and say, look, he's got a one seat majority. If he's already got that sort of kind of disappeared with one minister being sacked who would, you know, could withdraw the vote from the whip if he decided to do that. If he sacks a second minister, then he really is at risk of the government collapsing, which would then create a constitutional crisis because there isn't enough support there for Fiji First to form a government unless the Bhim and Prasad party actually swaps around and goes goes with Fiji First. But that would be a terrible dilemma for the Prime Minister to sit there contemplating the end of his government barely a year after it's been elected. Well, yes, it's 14 months that he's been in power. Well, doubtless, that's foremost in his mind, you know, the risk to the government as a whole. And I can understand that. But then he also has to wear the scenario that I outlined at the start of the program interview that sort of, you know, that essentially the government's moral compass is pointing somewhere in the direction of the South Pole downwards. And that, you know, that sort of it doesn't matter that, you know, that this stuff has happened. I mean, he's told the weekend media in Fiji that he was going to make his decision based on the ministerial code of conduct. Well, it's leading people to say, well, has the has the ministerial code of conduct being rewritten to allow sort of illicit sex and drug use on these trips? And I don't think we've actually said yet, because I was it was all in the realms of sort of, you know, hypothetical when we were talking at the start of the interview, all of this took place in room 233 of the Windsor Hotel in Melbourne, you know, the venerable and very stately Windsor Hotel in Melbourne. During a parliamentary delegation visit to the invitation of the Victorian Parliament back in August last year. So, you know, I don't know what's in the water in Melbourne. But yes, and you've raised a very important point. How did Linda Tambuia get access to weed, which is what she was calling it, marijuana, in Melbourne? You know, did she acquire it locally? Did she take it in there? Because at the start of all of this, there were reports unconfirmed that, you know, she had said to somebody, or he had said to somebody, haven't you heard of the diplomatic bag? Well, that raises all sorts of extremely grave questions about the integrity of security systems and diplomatic misbehavior and all sorts of things. Yeah. It's also, look, I just find the whole thing so flabbergasted. You know, I've been a journalist for sort of half a century, you know, last year, and I'm just gobsmacked by the whole damn thing. Well, that's the thing though, isn't it, Graham? Is that the slur that Linda Tambuia has put on you is the same slur that Frank Bynie Marimer and the former Attorney General would say that you were just a blogger sitting in your shorts in Sydney making stuff up. But you're not a blogger, are you? I mean, I've even had that allegation put to me by someone who's very close to Ram Booker, to the current prime minister. He said, I need to talk to you about what this blogger in Sydney is doing. I said, do you mean Graham Davis? And he said, yes, that's his name. I said, he's no blogger. He's an award-winning journalist and a Fiji born in Fiji, a Fijian citizen. And he is very concerned about the country of his birth as MI. And you can't call me a blogger, either. I'm a recognized journalist. That's one awards, not as prestigious as your awards, but awards nonetheless. And that's a smear that they put on you to try and dismiss the seriousness of the allegations. It's something you and perhaps Victor Lyle have made up, but you haven't made it up. You've got the documents, you've got the copies of everything and it's news. Well, here's the irony, Cam. I first got fed the images, the total, the titties, the whole thing, last October. And I was on good terms with Linda Tamburia back then. So I wrote to her saying, look, I have been sent images of you that clearly must be artificial. And just letting you know that this has happened. And I feel very sorry because this is very inappropriate. And let's hope these misogynists get their comeuppance. And I thought at the time it was very odd that she sent me just back, sent me back a one line message saying, you know, thank you for your blessing, Graham. No indignation or claim then that the images were fake. Oh, yes, it's outright. And I thought that was terrible. And yeah, exactly. None of that. Because she knew that was real. Yeah, exactly. And of course, I, you know, I sort of find that quite astonishing, really. I mean, we do have a history in that before the last election, she asked me to be her personal PR advisor, because I had been, you know, for six years under the Biden-Mirama government, you know, the Biden-Mirama government's principal comms advisor. And so she wanted me to, to work for her with a view, an explicit view, to becoming, eventually becoming Prime Minister. So she is seeing the prize of the Prime Minister, which she craves. And she had been really one of the two front runners to succeed. I said, even her own book, or the other being a guy called Mahnoor Kamikamita, she's seeing all of that sort of evaporate before her eyes. So she's fighting like an alley cat to keep her job quite clearly. But the problem for her is that public opinion has turned on her. You know, the social media has. Once the truth gets out, the public opinion changes. But it kind of reminds me, I mean, looking at the Fiji media and their missing in action, their behavior suggests that this is a case, you know, like the famous paraphrased quote that uses what somebody does not want you to print, and all the rest is advertising. And this is a classic case of that. We've got some news here that in Australia or New Zealand or Canada or the UK, indeed in the United States would cost a minister or a senior government official their job. And all you've got really is, you know, the traditional Fijian whispering that the coconut wireless is affectionately called spreading information faster than the news media can because they're not even trying to spread information. Well, that's it. And the other thing, as you know, there's all these very complex, familiar family relationships in Fiji. You know, a lot of people are related to each other, you know, and you find this all the time. And of course, there's a huge and massive complex web of relationships of the use scratch my back, I'll scratch your back. So in the case of the Fiji Times, the oldest newspaper in Fiji, it has been demonstrably supportive of Linda Tambuya in that it's completely ignored the story or twisted it. And even now, when the disciplinary committee has found against her is giving it very half hearted coverage, whereas to its credit, the Fiji son, which was always accused of being rabidly pro Frank Bani Marama during the Fiji first years has started to take up the cudgels and sort of do its job as the watchdog. And in fact, for the second time in a week today, the Fiji son has an editorial calling on the prime minister to finally make a decision in relation to Linda Tambuya's, you know, hold over the Ministry of Women and Children. But of course, it said last week that she was a straight faced liar and called for her removal and the prime minister did nothing about that. Now, the difference between the mainstream media and especially the two newspapers in Sydney and Victor Lal and me offshore is kind of, you know, with our websites is that, of course, you know, their traditional newspapers, which are passed from person to person, so that the circulation figures of those papers don't don't reflect the actual readership because as soon as somebody stops reading the paper, it's handed to the next person. So it's extremely critical that the mainstream media and countries like Fiji do their jobs properly. And the irony of all of this is that the new government came into power in December 2022, promising to, well, they did, they lifted the, what was always called the draconian media laws of the previous government. And there is total media freedom in Fiji, ostensibly, but total media freedom in Fiji has been replaced by this appalling self-censorship. Or, you know, I mean, many suspects. I've seen it in person because, you know, in the 2014 election, I came up to cover that. And I went to a few of the meetings, particularly at the Fiji elections office, where there would be about 20 journalists there, mostly locals, and that opened it up for questioning. And there would be a stony silence. Nobody would say anything that was up to me to ask some difficult questions, which, of course, I've got scowly looks from Mohamed Sunim. How surprising that Cam Slater would ask a difficult question. You know, and I got scowly looks, you know, from Mohamed Sunim. And he decided that I was going to be the enemy from then on. Yeah, this is the former supervisor of elections, it's now before the courts. Yes, on corruption charges. And corruption charges, yeah. Cam, you've also been instrumental in this particular saga. Because you gave it fresh life, you know, the allegations against Linda Chambuia and Assyria Andrundra by reporting it yourself. And, you know, the Fijian diaspora in New Zealand is significant. And, of course, there was quite a lot of comment on my own website from people in the comment section saying, wow, Cam Slater's onto it. Well, they're not going to get away with this now, because Cam Slater's onto it. Yeah, he's totally fearless and all of that. So it has played a part. Well, he did force the hand of Radio New Zealand because they've run two stories about this. The first one, which was, you could generously say it was sympathetic to Linda Chambuia's position. Then I ran an article which revealed, referencing their article, which revealed far more detail. And then all of a sudden, in the second article that Radio New Zealand ran, they were now asking you for comment and rebalancing the equation. Well, the critical thing, the critical thing was that the disciplinary committee of the ruling party reported, and they reported that the allegations against her had been proven, yeah, or that they'd found the allegations against her proven. Of course, that transformed the attitude of the international media, which had been very skeptical about the claims that Victor Lyle and I were making. And of course, it's completely changed everything. But you know the old saying, truth will out. And it was never going to be viable for them to keep a lid on such a blatant exercise in misconduct. And I mean, on foreign soil, in a luxury hotel in room 233, where Victor Lyle was able to establish that the photographs of the carpet in the leaked messages matched exactly the carpets in the Windsor Hotel. And you know, hotel staff confirming that she was in that particular room, it was always going to come out. And, you know, to some extent, it's a lesson for the locals, which has already been learned in New Zealand. You know, I mean, I've been a comms advisor for a big American crowd. And, you know, you fess up, you don't try to cover up because in the end, it's going to come out and it's going to get a lot worse, which it has. Well, it has got worse. And whilst lurid sexual indiscretions are grist to the mill for most media, this government in Fiji is beset by a plethora of issues and scandals. And we covered that somewhat in our last discussion that we had, particularly around the illegal appointment of some senior government officials. Trundling through the courts in Fiji and systematically the government is losing the cases. Well, no, that's the whole point. It's not trundling through the courts. They're going to refer it to the Supreme Court, but there's been no sort of timetable for doing that. So that we have an acting DPP who's illegally appointed because the Constitution bars anyone having been found guilty of professional misconduct from holding the job. We have a judge in the court of appeal who is illegally appointed because he too has been found guilty of professional misconduct. And the government takes absolutely no notice of it. What about the Attorney General? Is there any questions over his appointment? Well, not so much his appointment, but he is now embroiled in a scandal, which is just really broken in the last 48 hours or so. And that is that he's being accused of fraud and false pretenses in relation to a case that he handled when he was in private practice before he became Attorney General in which somebody is claiming that he mishandled a divorce. And the effect of that has been that there's been an act of bigamy conducted in which somebody who's already married has married somebody else in the United States. Now, the Fiji police are investigating that. And of course, we all know how the police prosecution services and the government's prosecution service works. The police will give a docket to the illegal acting director of public prosecution who has been appointed by the Attorney General, who will then make a decision on the likelihood of the charges sticking and whether it's in the public interest in relation to the very person who has appointed him to the job. So what do you think is going to happen there? You know, it's just this sort of web of interrelated parties stretching each other's back, which leads to the perception that what we're looking at, well, you know, it's a saying that's used and everyone thinks it's derogatory. But when you look at what's going on, you have to say that a banana republic is exactly the situation we're looking at here. Well, look, it's worse than that because a lot of Fijians just have this terrible sense of betrayal that they'd had enough of the Bani Marama regime for the 16 years, you know, as part of that dictatorship, part of it, a democracy. And the first years of Bani Marama's rule, a lot of optimism about the country, you know, him having leveled the playing field. We both thought there was some optimism, the Fiji was growing, we were seeing development happening, we were seeing roads being repaired, you're seeing kids going to school, the schooling becoming free. Well, the first free education in the country's history was provided by Frank Bani Marama. A lot of positive things that you and I both thought was a refreshing change from the coup culture, albeit having been done by someone who had conducted a coup. But it was a coup for the right reasons. And then somehow they just lost their way. And we went back into the endemic and systemic corruption issues that is plaguing Fijian politics and Fijian society. Well, in the way of these things, it happens in sort of fully fledged democracies like New Zealand and Australia, you know, political parties get into power, they're there for too long, they get used to being there. They don't want to surrender the reins of power. So they start doing things which are anti-democratic. That's what happened with Fiji first. People were ready for a change. Rambuka, Sidhivani Rambuka, who, as you know, was the architect, well, he carried out the coups of 1987, which started the whole coup cycles in Fiji. But he protested that the leopard had changed its spots. He went around and humbled himself before various communities were saying the right things and, you know, you have to kind of accept a redemption story. You have to accept that somebody has reformed and changed and the leopards changed their spots. But he hasn't really, has he? No, he hasn't. And in fact, one of the worst facets of the new government is that they are so overtly racist. I mean, people get upset when I say there's workplace ethnic cleansing taking place, but there's no other word to describe a situation in which Indo-Fijians, you know, the minority and other races are being systematically purged and replaced by each other. And that includes white people. I mean, there's a woman called Elizabeth Rice, who was the Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions, who's British but has family ties to New Zealand, who was sacked by the illegal acting DPP and was told that it was because she was white and that he wanted an E-Tarque to replace her. I mean, she's suing the state for unfair dismissal on racial grounds. Yeah. But, you know, this is the absolute pits, really, that the racism that pervaded Fiji or took Fiji by the throat in 1987, when Rambuca staged his coups to establish the supremacy of the E-Tarque has reared its ugly head again, you know, three decades later, spearheaded by the same guy. Yeah. Well, what's interesting, Graham, is that as the last discussion we had was shared widely in Fiji, and I received heaps of comments and emails from people saying, thank you, Cam, for standing up for a minority in Fiji, the European Fijians, of which you and I are both, but we're Fijians nonetheless. And people like us are marginalised on a daily basis. And it's accepted because, well, you know, it's okay when racism is from brown people towards white people, it seems. And they feel voiceless and powerless. I mean, this is, you know, I mean, I've also been criticized for calling this the new white man's burden, that tens of thousands of E-Tarque are living in Australia and New Zealand and, you know, benefiting from social security and all those kind of things, sending money back to their families. Yeah. There's no discussion in Australia and New Zealand, along the lines that is occurring in Fiji, that these people are what the E-Tarque called Wulangi, which means visitors. Yeah. We don't say, oh, you're a merely a visitor in Australia and New Zealand, and you don't really belong. You know, you need to go back to where you came from. We're getting that in New Zealand now. We're getting particularly militant activists, Maori, that are talking about settler mentality, colonial mentality, visitor mentality. We're getting that in New Zealand now. Obviously, Europeans are a majority in New Zealand, as they are in Australia. In Fiji, Europeans are a minority, but you and I are not Wulangi, right? No, well, I don't regard myself as Wulangi. If I'm born in Fiji, and I'm a Fijian national citizen of Fiji, or the Fiji passport and all that kind of thing, I should have the right to belong in the same way as when they come to Australia and, you know, ostensibly New Zealand. They have a right to belong. Nobody in Australia says, you know… It's a birthright. It's where you are. Yeah, exactly. It's just appalling. And this racism that is crept into the place has all sorts of implications long term for social and economic stability, because what's happening in camp, and it's to be expected, is that a lot of people from the minorities, and particularly Indo-Fijians, have decided that they've given up on Fiji, and there's a mass exit of that country. I mean, after 1987, when Rambuka did his coups, tens of thousands of the country's best and brightest just fled. Yeah? Yeah. You know, if Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Britain, anywhere which would take them, the same thing is happening again. And of course, it's exacerbated by the labor shortages in Australia and New Zealand and other countries where these people, for the first time in their lives, can get reasonably easy access to countries like Australia and New Zealand. And of course, you know, they're offered salaries that the average Fijian can only dream of. So we had official statistics not so long ago that 50,000 people had left Fiji in two years. Yeah, out of a population of under a million. That's a lot. That's right. That's right. Well, in fact, and then somebody very senior in the government, let it be known that the actual figure was 80,000 over that two-year period. Wow. And it had gone to the stage recently where 13,000 had left in a single month alone. So this is causing suddenly, you know, belatedly, a lot of concern in Fiji, because suddenly they're realizing that they're losing their teachers, they're losing their doctors, they're losing their nurses, they're losing their plumbers, they're losing their carpenters, they're losing their electricians. Anybody whose skills are in demand in Australia is taking a one-way ticket and walking out the door. I guess on the positive side, if you can call it that, is that the remittance industry is getting bigger. And that then for listeners in New Zealand, the remittance is what Fijian citizens do when they are earning big bucks in New Zealand or Australia or anywhere else in the world, is they send a large and significant part of their income back to Fiji as a remittance. And it's actually almost as big as tourism. Well, it is. It's the second biggest industry after tourism, a billion dollars a year. But essentially, I mean, I also get criticized by saying that this is a nation living on charity. This is a beggar nation, because if you're dependent on the tourists for your biggest industry, and these are predominantly, it must be said, white people coming there to sort of enjoy the sunshine and the strumming of guitars and singing, and undoubtedly a vibrant, fantastic culture. Yeah, the Italki culture is fantastic. I mean, Italki people are lovely people. Nobody sings better than Fijians. No, exactly. But essentially, when you're dependent on the outsiders for your main economic mainstay, that is in a sense sort of like, you know, you're not producing anything that anybody wants. You're just allowing people to come and have a look at you and enjoy your culture. I mean, that is a form of sort of subservience. But if you're then dependent on foreign aid, and of course, Fiji is a massive recipient of foreign aid, Australia, New Zealand, the European Union as one of the biggest. And then there's homemade, the remittances we're talking about. And then the third industry is, of course, the military. Well, that's right. And the military sells itself, as you know, to the United Nations as peacekeepers. And of course, some of this is being eroded by the conduct of this government, because Fiji has deliberately taken a stand at the United Nations and has become one of the few countries other than the United States to give absolutely unqualified support for Israel. And yet at the same time, it has troops in the Middle East, keeping the peace between the two sides there. And of course, there's a very great deal of fear and apprehension that we've just made ourselves a target in the Middle East. And for what? Yeah, for a fight that we don't have any skin in. And that's something that's happened under this government, which is very unfortunate. So what are people saying, you know, across the verno, sitting around the carver bowl with the Bilo in hand? What are they saying to each other about where things are at? As you said, 14 or 15 months after the government has changed. I do get a bit of feedback on this, and in particular from emails and comments that are left in the comment section of my blog. And at first, there was a sort of fair degree of amusement about Linda Tambuia on a serial and drawn drawer and the sex and drug scandal in room 233. People would joke around the carver bowl, say, Oh, bro, this is a really brutal mix. And everybody would, you know, would sort of erupt in pills of laughter. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Or sort of a, you know, I had such such a good time last night, I could barely walk today, you know. So yeah, so that was the initial reaction of the amusement to some extent. But since certainly since the disciplinary committee of the PAP has reported, there is a lot of anger. Yeah, because people feel they've been they've been deceived. I mean, on the 9th of September last year, the Prime Minister issued an official statement saying, this is, you know, I've called these guys in, they say it's not true. I've accepted it. Therefore, move on and stop spreading the rumors, right? So they weren't really true. Oh, exactly. But you know, so everyone goes away because there was a there's certainly a lot more respect for the national leader in these societies than than we're used to in Australia and New Zealand, because, you know, we're advanced democracies and there's a certain amount of cynicism about these guys. Yeah, and derision and what have you. So now that people are finding out that it's true, there's quite a lot of, well, shock and anger. And you only have to go to my website. If I could just give a little plug, www.grubsheet.com.au. And if you have a look in the comments section of that, you'll see the level of shock and anger, which is erupted really, I mean, in a way that we've never seen before. That's what brings governments down is when people feel they've been betrayed, they've been lied to by the Prime Minister because he has, then trust is a fleeting thing. You've either got it or you haven't. And if you haven't got it, it's very hard to win back, if not impossible to win back one step. Well, that's very, yes, it's very easy to lose. And this is, I mean, I, you know, I've been warning that the government is losing the trust of the people. And there's two consequences of this. I mean, you know, and I do have some professional experience in this kind of thing. There's two consequences. There'll either be a leadership challenge because people will say he wasn't able to make the hard calls that were necessary. And for our political survival, he has to go, or they stumble sort of, you know, in a moral vacuum all the way to the next election and get decimated. And as you know, in democracies, things can change very quickly. So the fact that, and this is very important for New Zealanders to remember, PG first is still, you know, the former government is still the biggest block in the parliament. Yeah. The only reason why Rambuca is Prime Minister is that he was able to cobble together a coalition with the National Federation Party and another pro sort of Itake Party called Sudelpa. And by the power of just one vote, one vote on the floor of the parliament, he won against Bailama and Kayum. And yet they behave as if they've had a massive landslide. I mean, it's unlikely that Sudelpa would entertain a coalition with Fiji first, but well, no, not necessarily. He could though, couldn't it? No, not necessarily can. The head of Sudelpa is the father-in-law of Ayah Said Kayum, the number two in the Bani Marama government. Yeah. So we were talking about family connections. Yeah. I mean, I mean, people in politics, mate, you know, the people do what is ultimately in their own interests. Well, they're venal. They're venal politicians. And venal is a fantastic word for it, because that's exactly what it is. Yeah. They'll do anything. They'll bloody well do anything. And, you know, we've seen it repeatedly in our professional lives. I guess that, yeah, I mean, exactly. But I guess that the final thing, we've covered all these scandals. We've covered the illegal appointments. We've covered the, you know, it's gobsmacking really, the stuff that's going on in Fiji. Do you think there's a risk of another coup, or do you think the army's sitting there wondering what's going on? Well, you know, there was, there were a whole lot of leaked, supposed intelligence reports from the Republic of Fiji military forces over many months criticising the government and saying, you know, they couldn't last. And of course, that fared a whole lot of rumors of a coup. But the current RFMF commander, a guy called major general, raw Johnny Colony Y, has ruled out a coup. And he keeps saying that people should respect democracy and what have you. And he's certainly turning a blind eye to a lot of things which, which people would have expected him to take a stand on. And let me just explain this very quickly. Section 134 of the Constitution gives the Republic of Fiji military forces the duty to protect the well-being of Fiji and the Fijian people and all Fijians. That causes has always been interpreted as having given the military the green light, if anybody's rights are threatened to intervene. Now, when the, when the government first came to power, and they were doing things people were getting upset about, Colony Y issued a public statement saying that he'd made it clear to the government that he'd expected them to respect the Constitution. Well, he's gone very quiet in recent times. And the more the coalition offends, the more silent he seems to become. And so a lot of people are very upset about that. Of course, you know, as far as Australia and New Zealand are concerned, they don't want anything other than adherence to the rule of law. Yeah. And rightly so. Yeah. Nobody wants a coup. But the point is, there is no appreciation at all on the part of the government that with a with a majority of just one seat on the floor of the parliament, it has a very limited mandate. It thinks that the one seat but that just beating Fiji first gives it the right to do whatever it wants. Yeah. And this is, yeah. And this is another insidious thing in Fiji. And it's happening in other Pacific nations as well. The winner takes all attitude, yeah, to politics. Yeah. That you get into power and you screw your opponents. You get all the perks, the flash cars, the overseas travel, all of that and all of the power and and they're reduced to sort of nothing. And then of course, they then conspire and and fight to sort of, you know, dislodge you. And the same thing happens all over again. And so there's none of the sort of, I suppose, what might be called gentlemanly acknowledgement that you've won fair and square. But I know that having won by a very slim margin, I can't sort of just do whatever I want, which I mean, even even somebody like you who's notoriously cynical about sections of the New Zealand body politic, we can see that we're, you know, in Australia and New Zealand, things are pretty civilized and that on that basis, you know what I mean? Exactly. You know, you lose the fight on election, you fight hard, you lost, you take your legs and you go into opposition and you carry on. And New Zealand and Australia are fortunate and we've never had a civil war. We haven't had any sort of insurrection or any sort of nonsense like that. We have a happy transfer of power or an unhappy transfer of power, but a transfer of power peacefully nonetheless. Yeah. And I think this is the tragedy of Fiji. You know, in 1970, when when it gained independence from Britain, it presented itself to the world as as a model for third world nations made up of different ethnicities and religions that, you know, the pursuit of the multiracial ideal and all of that. And it lasted for 17 years under the Right to Circumstance of Mara, the founding prime minister, until, you know, Siddiveni Rambuka came in with the guns and began this vicious cycle of trying to assert indigenous rights. And it's just a tragedy. I mean, you know, the Pope went to Fiji in 1986 saying the then Pope Paul VI saying, you know, Fiji was the way the world should be, you know, a picture of sort of racial harmony, you know, cooperation and all that kind of stuff. All that's been lost. Yeah. And now again, three decades later, we have this exodus of the country's best and brightest who've just given up on Fiji. They're leaving in droves. And of course, it's to Australia and New Zealand's economic benefit. But what are the consequences for us strategically when these countries are weakened? You know, and of course, that raises this horrible specter of people, you know, from outside the region who exploit things like that. And that is what's happening with the Chinese. Yeah. The Chinese influence in the Pacific is, is pernicious. Yeah. The city is very pernicious. Yeah. They're using their bucks or their wine. They're buying power and they're buying influence in ways that if any other country did it, we'd be up in arms and saying, you know, this is not how you conduct yourself for the Chinese. No, exactly. And they know that people won't say anything against them. So they carry on doing it. Yeah. And they don't bribe people with wine, you know, or R&B. They, you know, they bribe people with US dollars. Yeah. And there's plenty of stories about all of this. So they're trying to gain a strategic advantage in our region. It's very hard for democratic governments like Australia and New Zealand to sort of quite work out how to deal with it. I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of indecision about how far to, to intervene in these countries to prevent China gaining more influence. But this is a universal truth can. Yeah. If you have weak institutions, if your institutions and particularly the criminal justice system, yeah, the criminal justice system, yeah, the media, whatever, if you have those weak institutions and particularly in relation to the rule of law that are degraded, well, it's the beginning of the end. I mean, we've seen it in Zimbabwe. And I have said before that Fiji has become the Zimbabwe of the South Seas. Because what happened there, as you know, was that, that, you know, Robert McGarvey at one stage was happy to play the multiracial thing and, you know, be friendly to white people. Then he got his war veteran so-called to move on to farms owned by, owned by white, you know, white people. And then, of course, there was an assault on the bureaucracy, and then an assault on the judiciary, so that, you know, no one could be certain of getting a fair trial. No one could be certain of taking civil action against the government and having a judge that would do anything other than award the case to the state. All of that is starting to happen in Fiji and it's deeply, deeply worrying. Yeah, which is why you're writing about it, why I'm covering it on the crunch. I think these are important stories we shouldn't just focus on, you know, like me living in New Zealand or you living in Australia focusing just on Australian politics. Fiji and politics is far more interesting. But you see, this is the thing, at one stage in the 19th century, there was this notion that it wasn't just Australia and New Zealand who are partners in the region, but Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, because of course Fiji was a British parliament with a lot of white settlers and what have you, and there was this notion that the three countries, you know, would form some sort of, you know, association. Well, that's no longer the case. But it's still a very important, you know, Pacific nation in that it's strategically important, but also has a huge amount of civil influence. And it's just a great shame. And of course, the importance of keeping this part of the world, you know, free from the predations of dictatorships and people who don't believe in democracy at all. And in fact, in many instances against us, yeah, because the official Chinese presence in the region has been supplemented by the unofficial Chinese presence of, you know, the Chinese mafia, the triads, and they're active in all of these countries in the Pacific. And so the bad guys show signs of making significant gains. And it's to the detriment of the democracies. And, you know, we see this all over the world, actually, the democracies have never been under so much pressure, whether it's Putin, whether it's Xi Jinping. But it's it's happening on our back door. And at the very place that many Australian and New Zealanders like to go in the depths of winter for their summer holiday, for effectively another summer holiday. That's right. But as they sit their lattes in the cafes of Auckland, Sydney and Melbourne, you know, Wellington, you know, Christchurch or whatever, what's happening in these countries is not the topic of conversation. It hasn't yet intruded into into, you know, the comfy way of life of metropolitan Australians and New Zealanders. But but, you know, it's it is something that we should be worried about. And that probably is a good place to finish up this discussion, which has been fascinating yet again. Well, thanks, Karen, for having me. Like a couple of old Kiwis sitting there, having some gin and tonics at the at the yacht club. No, anyone who's someone who knows that the yacht club's not that salubrious. No, I know. Some would say we're like two old women talking and, you know, I must ourselves over a cup of tea. But anyway, no, it's been it's been a delight, Karen. And thanks very much. Venaka. Yeah, Venaka to you too. Well, that was an amazing exploration of the sorted goings on inside the Ram Bukka government in Fiji. Graham is always impeccable sources. And as he says, it is now all but being confirmed by an investigation from inside the People's Alliance Party. There'll be many twists and turns with this saga, though. So stay tuned, as I'm sure we'll have Graham back on the show soon enough. Let me know your thoughts about my chat with Graham Davis by emailing inbox at realitycheck.radio or text to 2057. Thank you for tuning in to RCR Reality Check Radio. If you like what you're listening to, just like what you're listening to, either way, we want to hear from you. Get in touch with us now. You can text us with your message to 2057. That's 2057 or email us at inbox at realitycheck.radio. We would love to hear from you to connect with us today.