Hon. Agni Deo Singh, Minister of Employment Productivity and Industrial Relations,
Mr. Christian Viegelahn, Officer in Charge, ILO Office for Pacific Island Countries
Distinguished Guests, Ladies and gentlemen.
Bula Vinaka, a very good morning and a huge welcome to our paradise of Fiji — especially for first time visitors and of course to our very welcome “regulars” from the Pacific and for whom Fiji is like a second home — welcome back!
I want to record my immense appreciation to the International Labor Organisation for this invitation, and for organizing this capacity building initiative in the area of effective evidence-based policies and strategies to promote decent work.
Such programs provide an important opportunity for policy makers, practitioners, academia, civil society organisations and other stakeholders to share knowledge, best practice and promote the use of evidence and data in policy making while facilitating and enhancing tripartite dialogue.
Ladies and gentlemen, as someone who had a career of 28 years as an academic, researching, publishing, teaching and advising Pacific Governments on economic policies, evidence-based policy making is critically important.
Therefore naturally, robust quantitative and qualititative indicators as well as projected trends have always been the basis for decision making.
Of course there is that wonderful maxim that says “not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts”. That maxim perhaps gave rise to some groundbreaking approaches to economics where gross national happiness or well-being became markers of economic development, rather than GDP.
Of course, in our own Pacific neighborhood, we had trailblazers from our Melanesian wantoks in Vanuatu who launched their “Melanesian Wellbeing Indicators” initiative in 2010, led by the Vanuatu National Statistics Office (VNSO) — soon after Bhutan kick-started it.
Just days ago, our “vuvale” (or family) partners in Australia released a report titled “Measuring What Matters” and a dashboard to measure indicators because of deficiencies in effective monitoring of fundamental national issues.
The Government of Australia had made progress on life expectancy, reducing resource use, diversity, incomes and employment.
But they found that measures to effectively gauge issues of chronic health conditions, national security, biodiversity and fiscal sustainability had all declined.
The Australian Treasury report notes that 13 percent Australians reported mental health problems, and half the population has one or more chronic health conditions.
Naturally, such policy shifts in thinking AND COUNTING approaches is making our Coalition Government also ponder deeply — because the Australian economy is strong and its most recent budget announcement was a surplus budget.
Why is this relevant to what you as experts will deliberate on? It is highly relevant in the context of what I said little while ago – not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
There are very real opportunities for all of you to ensure that evidence-based policy is based on solid numbers, facts and even anecdotes.
I would also encourage you to remember the hard lessons we all learned from COVID-19 and explore early warning alerts in your evidence-based strategies that can help mitigate risks and future-proof policies as best as possible.
After all, policy changes are costly and not conducive to investor confidence, when certainty is not guaranteed. And we in Fiji fully understand the dire consequences of haphazard policy making and implementation,.
Who Should Do The Counting?
If there is anything you can learn from our experience, it is to never allow your independent institutions for evidentiary national data gathering and analysis to be gutted and manipulated to suit political agenda.
Such was is our sorry experience with our national Bureau of Statistics and the Office of the Auditor General, amongst other institutions, whose independence were almost neutralised by our previous Government.
It is a sad an sorry legacy left behind by those who didn’t give a damn to evidence based policy making and led us almost to the brink of economic disaster.
And this has resulted in the Coalition Government allocating more taxpayer funds to re-build these core institutions so that they can honestly and without any interference provide us with the portrait of the nation – which is the good, the bad and the ugly.
Governments must be able to get unfiltered truth in real time so that if and when new and emerging issues arise, we can mitigate risks and re-align our policy and legislative approaches as quickly as possible.
To give you one example, one issue that the Coalition Government is having to contend with — and my dear colleague the Hon Minister Hon Agni can tell you more about — is skills shortages in key areas such as construction, nursing, and specialist fields like telecommunications engineers, aviation safety regulators among others.
This issue is multi-faceted. Pacific Island nations like ours will always grapple with brain drain and the attraction of better remuneration and education, healthcare and lifestyle abroad, as we have experienced for more than 3 decades.
But the Fiji experience was gravely worsened by mismatched policies such as: –
The previous government, without any consultation, introduced a education curriculum that was more akin to social engineering, where pass marks were heavily scaled forcing more tertiary instiution enrolments.
But there was lower or no employment at the other end of the spectrum, forcing students and their parents or guardians to default on loan repayments to the:
State that were taken to pay for their tertiary education.
Our national workforce planning capability was not in step with tertiary education opportunities and unemployment statistics.
Our technical and vocational facilities were set up and then suddenly disbanded, forcing unemployment of staff and creating huge uncertainty for students.
Our forced retirement age policy, unfair pension fund contributions and unilateral contracting of public servants with unreasonable contract terms heaped with subjective performance management
All this had a cascading effect leading to lack of morale, low productivity (that was convenientlty un-measured) and quite simply disjointed polices, chaos and confusion.
Thankfully, the Coalition Government is fully determined to roll-back all the policy incompetence that the nation had to endure for the past 16 years. And this has already started with the repeal in Parliament of draconian and regressive legislation that completely disregarded evidence based policy making for the betterment of all our people.
The last 16 years of our nation’s history was all about short-term gain, which has left us with long-term pain. But as a kind and caring Coalition Government, we are and will at all times show compassion and empathy.
We have started evidence based policy making in terms of :-
fixing our education system without penalising our students and writing off $650 million of student debt, ensuring there is value for money in the restoration of our infrastructure like water supply, rebuilding our public health and medical delivery services that were left in a state of decay initiating plans to uplift our people from poverty but at the same-time increasing welfare payments increasing VAT to pay for the ills of the past but maintaining zero-rating on basic food an essential items including prescription medication, and lowering duty on widely consumed meat products and canned fish
Now, in terms of those who can aid you in your evidence gathering or data collection, do not be afraid of your own experts in the Trade Unions, NGOs, community-based groups, industry leaders as well as the media. They can help you count for your evidence-based planning strategies.
I appreciate that while it may seem daunting, but your taxpayers are very likely talking to them more regularly then they are talking to you as bureaucrats, researchers and academics. They are excellent “sentinels” of early warnings or alerts that can guide your evidence-based policy work.
Our Coalition Government, as promised, has restored tripartite arrangements that we used to have prior to 2006.
We fully understand that the rights of workers must be respected through Tripartism between employees, emoloyers and the Government. This is just the start of ensuring decent work. Much more has to be and will be done. It will take time but it will be evidence-based.
In closing, I hope that some of what I have shared today will see us learn from each other in a frank and honest manner.
Further, I do hope it will set the scene for your very important discussions during the week.
I wish you all the best and an enjoyable stay while you are in Fiji and I especially look forward to hearing about new evidence-based policy methods and actual policies in our region soon — because, make no mistake I am a keen follower of regional policy approaches.
Vinaka vakalevu and Dhanyavad.