For the first time since Fiji’s 2006 coup, the annual Australia-Fiji Business Forum was held in Australia earlier this week.
The event at the Brisbane Convention Centre was jointly opened by Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs, Matt Thistlethwaite, and Fiji’s Foreign Minister, Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, and attended by over 100 business leaders.
If the venue indicated a softening in Australia’s hardline stance towards Fiji (previously Fijian government officials have struggled to obtain Australian visas), the feeling was not mutual.
Foreign Minister Kubuabola used to occasion to criticise Australia’s asylum-seeker deal with its Melanesian neighbour Papua New Guinea.
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