A paramount traditional leader of the Lau group of islands in Fiji is calling on the Australian government to allow visa-free travel for Fijians visiting Australia and immediate domestic university tuition rates for Fijians.
Ratu Tevita Uluilakeba Mara, who goes by the traditional titles of Gone Turaga Bale na Tui Nayau, Sau ni Vanua ko Lau, and Tui Lau, said while he appreciated the expended ‘Vuvale Union’ announced in Suva last month, he believed a level playing field was needed to make the ‘vuvale’ (family) real.
Fijians should be allowed to have visa stamped on arrival in Australia, he said, similar to arrangements for Australians travelling into Fiji.
The Suva announcement in July, included that Fijians may apply to stay for up to four months on tourist visa, business travellers become eligible for five-year multiple-entry visas, and Fijian students will study at Australian universities on domestic fee arrangements from 2029.
Ratu Tevita, the son of Fiji’s first prime minister, made the comments following his short visit to Australia last week.
He visited Australia as part of Fiji’s Great Council of Chiefs (GCC) delegation to the Garma Festival at Gulkula in northeast Arnhem Land, at the invitation of the Yothu Yindi Foundation and the Australian government.
He was able to meet with members of the Lau diaspora in Sydney.
“I say this as a guest who was received in Australia with real warmth, and as a friend of that country,” he said in a statement.
“Vuvale means family. In our custom, family does not apply at the door. An Australian steps off the aircraft in Nadi and is welcomed without a form; a Fijian must still apply to enter Australia.
“I thank the Australian Government for what has been agreed on the length of our stay. It was a generous step, and it was noticed. But the last part of the journey is the door itself.
“When a Fijian may travel to Australia as an Australian travels to Fiji, then vuvale will mean the same thing on both sides of the water.”
He also welcomed the commitment on university fees for Fijian students, but questioned the date that initiative will come into effect.
“I welcome what has been agreed for our students, and I thank Australia for it,” he said.
“My question is the date. Why 2029? Every year between now and then is another year of our families paying international fees they cannot afford.”
He wants Australia to review the decision, noting that Fijian workers were now inputting into the economy and have provided more manpower to their workforce, by recruiting trained personnel in different fields from Fiji.
He said more than 5000 Fijians were working in Australia under the PALM scheme in late 2025, recruited through the Fiji’s National Employment Centre into horticulture, meat processing and aged care, are sending home an estimated FJ$145.5 million in the year to June 2025.
“Our workers are picking Australian fruit, standing in Australian meat works and caring for elderly Australians – this season, and every season,” he said.
“Fiji trains a nurse, a teacher, a tradesman, paid for by his own family and by the Fijian taxpayer, and within a few years Australia has the benefit of them, fully qualified, at no cost to itself.
“We are already sending Australia our best, and much of what they earn comes home to villages like mine. If our people are good enough to hold up Australian farms and Australian hospitals today, then our children are good enough to sit
in Australian lecture theatres at an Australian’s fee today. Not in three years’ time.”
Lau think tank
Meanwhile, Ratu Tevita said the Lau province has determined it would now take its future into its hands, with the setting up of the Lau Economic Think Tank Group, which was approved at the Bose Vanua o Lau (Lau Provincial Council) meeting in Suva.
He said they will seek the assistance of members of their province living abroad to invest in projets and initiatives that will help the province grow economically
The think tank includes a number of prominent Lauans who have served in different fields, both locally and regionally, and they have been tasked with preparing proposals on the coconut industry, fisheries and tourism, under a ‘One Island One Product’.
“We are not coming to Suva with our hands out,” he said.
“We will bring proposals a bank can read and a ministry can act on, and we will ask our own people abroad to invest alongside Government.
“What we ask is modest, and I would not take a metre of road from anywhere else to get it. What we ask is that our province and our people are valued equally with every other.”
Ratu Tevita said they would carry the same case to the GCC, and looked forward to working with government and with every other province on the development of the maritime islands.
Maritime needs
The Lau Think Tank set up also comes into play at a time the Lau province believes maritime islands are suffering with lack of investment in infrastructure.
He said while the Fiji government’s 2026-2027 Budget’s programme of investment in roads, airports, water, sanitation and energy across Vanua Levu and Taveuni was needed and welcomed, he was hoping alot more could have also been done for the maritime islands.
“I welcome every road built in Vanua Levu and Taveuni, and I support them fully. What I ask for is fairness,” Ratu Tevita said.
“There are islands in my province where a mother carrying a baby must be handed out of a small boat into the swell, because there is nowhere to land. We are not asking for anything grand, we are asking for somewhere to put our feet down.
“And let no one hear this as one province speaking against another. Lau wants nothing that belongs to Vanua Levu, or to Kadavu, or Rotuma, or the villages in the highlands of Viti Levu, or the settlements of the cane belt. Their case is ours.
“This country is not a small table with too many hands reaching for it. We are one people – iTaukei, Indo-Fijian, Rotuman, and everyone else who calls these islands home, and a nation is measured by how it treats those who live furthest from its capital.”
The Lau group includes 57 islands, surrounded by some 114,000 square kilometres of ocean.
