On the Record — Episode 1

Andrew Levula speaks to FPR's Lanieta Tukana about his FPR piece, examining whether Fiji's closest partnership risks becoming its deepest dependency.Australia and Fiji have signed the Vuvale Union, a framework agreement spanning security, the economy and people-to-people ties, and one of the sharpest questions in Pacific development is whether agreements like it build self-reliance or erode it. In this episode, Associate Professor Andrew Levula speaks to Fiji Political Review about The Vuvale Union and the Dependency Trap. They discuss what a dependency trap looks like in practice for a small island state, why the agreement's full text remains unpublished despite cabinet approval, the migration of more than 15,000 Fijians in the past 15 months and what genuinely indigenous-led development would require for Fiji to grow on its own terms.