Fiji and Australia are working together to build Pacific resilience to traditional and non-traditional security threats.
Highlighting this as Fiji and Australia today collaborated on the Pacific Defence Air Program under the Vuvale Partnership, Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration, Pio Tikoduadua said the arrival of the Royal Australian Airforce C27-J Spartan will address the growing threats of extreme weather and the worrying trends in illicit narcotics.
He said Australia’s deployment of a Royal Australian Airforce C-27 provides a valuable building block to tackle these threats- and to build a safer nation and Pacific region.
“As this is the first rotation to Fiji, we must first work on effective national coordination. We live in an age where we cannot work as individuals, and no single agency has all the answers.”
“Our people depend on us in Government to work with national purpose- this is the Pacific way,” he concluded.
A Joint Air Tasking Unit has been established to coordinate requests from Ministries for the rotational flights for movement of supplies and personnel, search and rescue and humanitarian missions within Fiji.
The Australian Airforce team will be deployed to Fiji on an ongoing basis for two out of every eight weeks.
