Transcript
DAVE RAND: Many of these people like myself were leaning towards their own little place in the sun for their retirement years and spent ten, fifteen years paying off promissory notes to developers on small parcels of land so to be imposed with a building restriction that is, for one, impossible to comply with in the time frame especially given that Cyclone Winston that came and just wrecked everything in the middle of it but not answering any of our questions. The amount of trust was just lost that we had in the government. So when our effort began, the Fiji Landowners Association and our crowd-funding went public, suddenly there's been a response from the government, so that yes, okay if you want to ask us questions, it's going to cost you a thousand dollars and the full disclosure of your financials and we thought they were just sizing up the prize at that point. And it's now devolved into this frontier of fear.
BEN ROBINSON-DRAWBRIDGE: Fostering fear but fostering fines. If you don't begin construction on your land by the end of the year, you're going to be billed for it.
DR: Fear here is being used as a tool because as you look at the timeline it's easy to discern that there's another motive far more sinister than what would appear on the surface and that was to artificially crash a real estate market and then get people to conduct a fire sale which is going on now. Places are being sold for a fraction of the value they were ten years ago from people who are just frightened and don't know what to do, you know, it's like a stock market crash in a sense and lo and behold the people that are scooping up these properties in this firesale are mostly Chinese and local Fijians, or Chinese going through local Fijians to avoid any circumstances going forward. The law in itself is retrospective which is forbidden in the modern world. I've portrayed it as just modern day piracy being alive and well in the South Pacific. You know, you fly a flag on a ship that misguides or misleads people and then at the last minute you change it and they all panic. The Fijian people, this is not reflective on them, this is reflective on a couple of individuals in government who have lost sight of their power.
BRD: When you bought your land on Fiji, how much for and what do you think it's worth now?
DR: I paid $US 80,000 for two acres and I've seen properties like mine listed for 15 percent of that value, flying out the door just trying to get anything for it. And I see a lot of people just sticking their heads in the sand. They just don't know what to do. I think they're hoping our group has some success. I think they're hoping that maybe they hang in there as these fines begin to escalate. The fine schedule is also a component of the tool of fear that's being used in this compromise. It's ten percent of what you paid for the land every six months until you build the structure worth $FJ 250,000 which is ridiculous. Some of these people have a quarter acre. They'd have to build a high-rise on the beach to meet these criteria. So it's obviously designed to intimidate fear and get you to just sell and leave, so it can be scooped up for a song. I'm prepared to take a total loss. I feel personally whatever I've got to lose has possibly been lost but unfortunately the powers that be have far more to lose . We're hoping to let them realise that by our activity and by shining a light on this because you know light is the best sanitiser. We have the opposition party in Fiji now coming on board, the youth societies in Fiji now coming on board, we've got government officials contacting me privately, wanting to stay anonymous that are in our camp so there's a groundswell. We're going to be recommending a boycott on travel to Fiji because once the state sponsors this type of fear and aggression, it creates like an open season on anyone who's there as a foreigner and it makes it unsafe for them to travel or free to roam so to speak, so short-term it might be a little harmful, long-term we think this is a real benefit to Fiji and that's going to be our stance going forward.
