*If one citizen receives only the general benefits available to everyone, while another receives those same benefits plus lease income, resource compensation, royalty payments, and communal grants, is the overall distribution of public and economic benefits still equitable?
The dispute over compensation payments to Mataqali Nabukarabe for the Nasarava Water Catchment in Vanua Levu raises a question that Fiji's political leaders seem increasingly reluctant to answer: Where does this end?
According to public reports, the mataqali negotiated a compensation package exceeding $1.4 million for the use of the Nasarava water source. More than $600,000 has already been paid, with the balance still outstanding.
The dispute has now escalated to threats that the water supply serving thousands of residents in Labasa could be disrupted unless the remaining payments are made. The Minister for Lands, Filimoni Vosarogo, has urged patience and assured the landowners that payment will eventually be completed.
But the real issue is not whether government should honour a lawful agreement.
It should. The real issue is what Fiji has become. Increasingly, the country resembles a resource-rent state in which every river, water source, forestry operation, quarry, tourism development, road project and infrastructure investment becomes another opportunity for compensation claims funded by the public purse.
And the public purse is not an abstract concept.
It consists of money contributed by every taxpayer in Fiji.
The shopkeeper in Labasa.
The market vendor in Suva.
The cane farmer in Ba.
The Indo-Fijian businessman in Nadi.
The Chinese entrepreneur in Lautoka.
The Rotuman teacher.
The part-European civil servant.
The ordinary wage earner who pays VAT every time they buy a loaf of bread.
Yet one group - the iTaukei - increasingly appears twice in the queue. First, as beneficiaries of compensation payments, lease revenues, royalty streams and resource-owner settlements.
Second, as beneficiaries of the same government programmes available to everyone else.
This is where the public debate becomes uncomfortable.
When a mataqali receives hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in compensation, are its members also eligible for government grants, educational assistance programmes, per-child payments, provincial subsidies, communal development funds, agricultural assistance schemes, scholarship programmes and other taxpayer-funded initiatives?
The answer, generally, is yes.
Legally, there is nothing wrong with that.
But politically and economically, it raises an important question.
Has Fiji ever conducted a serious national accounting exercise to determine the cumulative value of all benefits flowing through the system?
* How much comes from lease money?
* How much from compensation?
* How much from royalty payments?
* How much from provincial grants?
* How much from communal development funding?
* How much from special assistance channelled through traditional institutions?
* How much from general taxpayer-funded programmes?
No government has ever produced a comprehensive balance sheet.
Consequently, taxpayers are repeatedly asked to fund new compensation packages without ever being shown the wider picture.
The same lack of transparency applies to the payments themselves.
When $1.4 million is paid to a mataqali, where exactly does the money go?
* How much reaches ordinary members?
* How much is invested?
* How much is retained?
* How much improves education, housing, healthcare or local business development?
* How much is publicly accounted for?
These are not anti-iTaukei questions.
They are accountability questions.
They would be asked of any institution receiving substantial sums derived from public funds.
Yet anyone who raises them is often accused of questioning indigenous rights rather than seeking transparency.
No one disputes that resource owners deserve fair compensation.
The issue is whether Fiji has created a system in which compensation has become an ever-expanding entitlement with no obvious limiting principle.
Today it is a water catchment.
Tomorrow it may be another river.
The next day another road reserve.
The following week another public utility.
Eventually the question ceases to be whether compensation is justified and becomes whether the nation can continue to afford an endless series of settlements financed by taxpayers who are themselves excluded from the benefits.
Particularly absent from this discussion are the thousands of non-iTaukei families who have lived in Fiji for generations.
Many have been in Fiji for over a century.
They built businesses. They developed towns. They established farms. They staffed schools and hospitals. They paid taxes. They created employment. They contributed to the economic development of provinces where they have lived for four or five generations.
Take the case of Tailevu. I have watched with growing alarm how, in the name of indigenous rights and provincial entitlement, many non-iTaukei families who helped build the province are increasingly treated as historical footnotes.
My own maternal grandfather and his brother introduced one of the first bus services into rural Tailevu in the 1960s. Their buses connected villages from Verata to Vugalei with markets and commercial centres, enabling villagers to travel, trade and sell produce. They invested capital, took risks and helped connect communities long before government services reached many of these areas.
Yet history records a darker reality.
During the 1987 coups and again during the 2000 coup, many non-iTaukei families in Tailevu became victims rather than partners in the provincial story they had helped build.
Businesses were disrupted. Properties were attacked. Livestock and produce were stolen. Families were intimidated. Some were beaten.
During the George Speight coup, some of my own maternal family members hid in the bush for days to avoid roaming mobs and the complete breakdown of law and order in parts of the province.
For those families, the memory of Tailevu is not merely one of contribution.
It is also one of abandonment.
Their labour helped build the province.
Their taxes helped fund the state.
Their businesses helped sustain local economies.
Yet when discussions arise about ownership, compensation and entitlement, they are often nowhere to be seen.
Their contribution is acknowledged only when the tax bill arrives. Unlike resource-owning groups, they possess no communal land rights, no royalty streams, no compensation claims over rivers or catchments, no collective lease distributions and no provincial institutions through which additional public resources may be channelled.
They contribute. They pay. But they rarely appear at the negotiating table.
The Nasarava dispute therefore raises a larger national question.
Are we building a modern democratic state based on equal citizenship and shared obligations?
Or are we creating a permanent compensation economy in which some citizens receive benefits as taxpayers while others receive benefits both as taxpayers and as collective resource owners?
The issue is not whether Mataqali Nabukarabe should receive what was promised.
If a valid agreement exists, it should be honoured.
The issue is whether Fiji is willing to have an honest conversation about who receives what, who pays for it, where the money goes and whether the current model remains economically sustainable.
Water is an essential public service. It is not merely another commodity.
When access to a water source serving thousands of ordinary citizens becomes entangled in compensation disputes, Fiji must ask itself whether the balance between private rights and public interest has shifted too far.
Until that conversation occurs, every new compensation dispute will raise the same unanswered question: Who is really paying, and who is really benefiting?
According to public reports, the mataqali negotiated a compensation package exceeding $1.4 million for the use of the Nasarava water source. More than $600,000 has already been paid, with the balance still outstanding.
The dispute has now escalated to threats that the water supply serving thousands of residents in Labasa could be disrupted unless the remaining payments are made. The Minister for Lands, Filimoni Vosarogo, has urged patience and assured the landowners that payment will eventually be completed.
But the real issue is not whether government should honour a lawful agreement.
It should. The real issue is what Fiji has become. Increasingly, the country resembles a resource-rent state in which every river, water source, forestry operation, quarry, tourism development, road project and infrastructure investment becomes another opportunity for compensation claims funded by the public purse.
And the public purse is not an abstract concept.
It consists of money contributed by every taxpayer in Fiji.
The shopkeeper in Labasa.
The market vendor in Suva.
The cane farmer in Ba.
The Indo-Fijian businessman in Nadi.
The Chinese entrepreneur in Lautoka.
The Rotuman teacher.
The part-European civil servant.
The ordinary wage earner who pays VAT every time they buy a loaf of bread.
Yet one group - the iTaukei - increasingly appears twice in the queue. First, as beneficiaries of compensation payments, lease revenues, royalty streams and resource-owner settlements.
Second, as beneficiaries of the same government programmes available to everyone else.
This is where the public debate becomes uncomfortable.
When a mataqali receives hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in compensation, are its members also eligible for government grants, educational assistance programmes, per-child payments, provincial subsidies, communal development funds, agricultural assistance schemes, scholarship programmes and other taxpayer-funded initiatives?
The answer, generally, is yes.
Legally, there is nothing wrong with that.
But politically and economically, it raises an important question.
Has Fiji ever conducted a serious national accounting exercise to determine the cumulative value of all benefits flowing through the system?
* How much comes from lease money?
* How much from compensation?
* How much from royalty payments?
* How much from provincial grants?
* How much from communal development funding?
* How much from special assistance channelled through traditional institutions?
* How much from general taxpayer-funded programmes?
No government has ever produced a comprehensive balance sheet.
Consequently, taxpayers are repeatedly asked to fund new compensation packages without ever being shown the wider picture.
The same lack of transparency applies to the payments themselves.
When $1.4 million is paid to a mataqali, where exactly does the money go?
* How much reaches ordinary members?
* How much is invested?
* How much is retained?
* How much improves education, housing, healthcare or local business development?
* How much is publicly accounted for?
These are not anti-iTaukei questions.
They are accountability questions.
They would be asked of any institution receiving substantial sums derived from public funds.
Yet anyone who raises them is often accused of questioning indigenous rights rather than seeking transparency.
No one disputes that resource owners deserve fair compensation.
The issue is whether Fiji has created a system in which compensation has become an ever-expanding entitlement with no obvious limiting principle.
Today it is a water catchment.
Tomorrow it may be another river.
The next day another road reserve.
The following week another public utility.
Eventually the question ceases to be whether compensation is justified and becomes whether the nation can continue to afford an endless series of settlements financed by taxpayers who are themselves excluded from the benefits.
Particularly absent from this discussion are the thousands of non-iTaukei families who have lived in Fiji for generations.
Many have been in Fiji for over a century.
They built businesses. They developed towns. They established farms. They staffed schools and hospitals. They paid taxes. They created employment. They contributed to the economic development of provinces where they have lived for four or five generations.
Take the case of Tailevu. I have watched with growing alarm how, in the name of indigenous rights and provincial entitlement, many non-iTaukei families who helped build the province are increasingly treated as historical footnotes.
My own maternal grandfather and his brother introduced one of the first bus services into rural Tailevu in the 1960s. Their buses connected villages from Verata to Vugalei with markets and commercial centres, enabling villagers to travel, trade and sell produce. They invested capital, took risks and helped connect communities long before government services reached many of these areas.
Yet history records a darker reality.
During the 1987 coups and again during the 2000 coup, many non-iTaukei families in Tailevu became victims rather than partners in the provincial story they had helped build.
Businesses were disrupted. Properties were attacked. Livestock and produce were stolen. Families were intimidated. Some were beaten.
During the George Speight coup, some of my own maternal family members hid in the bush for days to avoid roaming mobs and the complete breakdown of law and order in parts of the province.
For those families, the memory of Tailevu is not merely one of contribution.
It is also one of abandonment.
Their labour helped build the province.
Their taxes helped fund the state.
Their businesses helped sustain local economies.
Yet when discussions arise about ownership, compensation and entitlement, they are often nowhere to be seen.
Their contribution is acknowledged only when the tax bill arrives. Unlike resource-owning groups, they possess no communal land rights, no royalty streams, no compensation claims over rivers or catchments, no collective lease distributions and no provincial institutions through which additional public resources may be channelled.
They contribute. They pay. But they rarely appear at the negotiating table.
The Nasarava dispute therefore raises a larger national question.
Are we building a modern democratic state based on equal citizenship and shared obligations?
Or are we creating a permanent compensation economy in which some citizens receive benefits as taxpayers while others receive benefits both as taxpayers and as collective resource owners?
The issue is not whether Mataqali Nabukarabe should receive what was promised.
If a valid agreement exists, it should be honoured.
The issue is whether Fiji is willing to have an honest conversation about who receives what, who pays for it, where the money goes and whether the current model remains economically sustainable.
Water is an essential public service. It is not merely another commodity.
When access to a water source serving thousands of ordinary citizens becomes entangled in compensation disputes, Fiji must ask itself whether the balance between private rights and public interest has shifted too far.
Until that conversation occurs, every new compensation dispute will raise the same unanswered question: Who is really paying, and who is really benefiting?
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