• The Executive Chair and members of the Board of the Fiji National Sports Commission
• The IOC Members in Fiji
• President and members of the Board of FASANOC
• Presidents and representatives of our National Sporting Organisations

Ni sa yadra vinaka, Namaste, Salaam aleikum and Bula vinaka to you all!

It seems a very long time since I spoke to you all this time last year – and what an inspiring 12 months it has been! There is no doubt that our gold medal win in Rio de Janeiro has catapulted Fiji up the rankings internationally not only in rugby, but also in the consciousness of many sports-loving fans across the world. This is an aspect of the power of sport – showing that a small Pacific Island is able to do what many powerhouses in sport do on a regular basis – a real David and Goliath story. But the major difference is that our team was doing it more for national pride than for financial reward for indeed, we do

not pay the same salaries as many other countries do. In Britain, albeit at after Brexit prices, the cost of a gold medal is estimated at F$10,3m. Our medal cost F$5,5m across all sports, $4,5m of which was spent in 2016.

However, there is another major difference and that is the amount of planning that goes into preparation for major events such as world championships, Commonwealth, Olympic and Paralympic Games. Your colleagues in other countries work closely with Government authorities to put resources into a 4 year plan. This includes sports science, medicine and technology support but it also includes close monitoring of results. If the predicted results are not achieved, cuts are made – there is no second chance.

We are far from that approach but it is an approach that we do need to adopt. The main focus of this Conference is about planning and I encourage you to take this message on board. We need to plan much better – our athletes deserve it and the Fijian public demands it. The results in some sports, despite increased funding, have not improved. As part of the planning process, you need to assess what is going right and what needs to be changed.

Of course, working in the area of elite sport, international competition, is comparatively easy. It is the more difficult work that needs to be done in the area of development and this, too, needs to be planned. I know that you will say that you do not have the resources and that you do not have access to the schools. So let me share with you my vision for sport in Fiji.

My Ministry will, this financial year, review the national sports policy. This will form the basis of legislation which will follow. There are many aspects

which the policy will cover and I encourage you to give your opinions in the process. Together with partners, we will be seeking input from NSOs, those working at schools and communities over 6 weeks from the beginning of January 2017. It is important that we have as wide a consultative process as possible. Separate legislation is being prepared for anti-doping to ensure we meet our commitments to the UNESCO International Convention and the World Anti-Doping Code and, again, this will go out for public comment.

In Parliament earlier this year, I spoke about professionalising sport. This means that we need to be able to provide a professional standard of support to our athletes at all levels – administration, coaching, technical officials, volunteers. There may not be a lot of money in sport and we rely on volunteers still but that does not mean that we cannot provide a professional level of service.

Firstly, my Ministry is working closely with the Ministries of Education, Health, Women and Children and Poverty Alleviation to encourage the development of physical education in the schools. The Ministry of Education, with support from UNESCO, is developing “quality physical education”. It is critically important that we use PE to help our young children develop skills, hand-eye coordination, balance as well as to help their physiques develop. We hope that this will be encouraged in primary schools and sport and competition likely to happen in the secondary schools. It will take some time to reach this situation as we may need to consider creating PE teachers who are not necessarily PEMAC teachers. I hope that PE will become an examinable subject in the curriculum but that is a decision for my colleague, the Honorable Minister for Education, to take. We all know the benefits of

physical activity in physical and mental wellbeing and in teaching our children about rules, teamwork and winning and losing with humility. These are all good lessons for life.

With the promotion of PE, which we hope will happen, we are also working to address the promise made by this Government that all Fijians will learn to swim. The Ministry of Health, with cooperation of the 3 Ministries mentioned, we hope soon to announce a new initiative with the support of Oceania and Fiji Swimming. But more of that at the appropriate time. Similarly, we hope to announce another initiative, led by my Ministry with the same 3 Ministries, the Sports Commission and organisations for sport for persons with disabilities, which will help to promote PE for learners with disabilities. This is in line with this Government’s commitment to leaving no-one behind.

In other areas, the Cabinet has approved 30 June next year as “National Sports and Wellness Day”. This has been done in recognition of the need for us all to make a sustained intervention to address our challenges in non-communicable diseases, particularly obesity. Together with improving PE in the schools, we also need to improve the health of our communities. My Ministry will be making contact with all NSOs, FASANOC, the Sports Commission and other Ministries to ensure that we work together to get the message and example out to all our communities that physical activity is a daily habit we need to implement. As the Ministry of Health reminds us, physical activity is one part of the equation and we need to address our diet. We want to reach out to all communities and activate them. I call on all of you to contribute to this initiative.

This, I believe, will help us to address the underselling of sport. We have an amputation being done every 8 hours. One in 5 adolescents is obese in Fiji. More children are being diagnosed with one NCD or another earlier in their short lives. In 2011, NCDs accounted for 40% of all healthcare costs. This is all preventable if people get more active and eat better. So if we all work together to get more people active, this will help increase the number of children playing sport, increase the number of talented athletes coming through your planned talent identification processes, reduce the strain on the health budget and hopefully increase awareness of the impact sport can have on our society.

With what I hope will be the expansion of sport in Fiji, there comes increased responsibilities. There is no doubt that we need to have in place safeguarding policies to protect the vulnerable in our society. We have, unfortunately, too many instances of abuse, physical and emotional, of children. We need to act against this in the appropriate way - by reporting it. But first, we need an agreed code of conduct, perhaps enforced through the proposed legislation, for all involved in sport.

In this way, by ensuring that we are working together and that all are welcome to participate in sport at whatever level, we will better create inclusive sports which value men and women, those with disabilities and those without, everyone from every walk of life and background. We need to open our doors wider, make more effort to reach out to different communities, find more role models, make necessary adjustments to our programmes and welcome all Fijians into our sport. If we can recruit top athletes from a smaller proportion

of people involved, just think what we can do with more athletes coming in to the system. In order to support this, we will also look to the NSOs to nominate well-known personalities in sport to serve as “ambassadors” to raise awareness of important issues in our communities including gender equality, disability, no violence against women and children, HIV/AIDS.

Some of you have taken advantage of the Sports Commission’s international coaching fund; others have not. Again it is important that we work, we plan, to lift our standards using international expertise. However, you should also plan to have that expertise transferred to our coaches. This has unfortunately not been done in a number of sports in recent years. We cannot simply look at talent identification for athletes – it has to apply to our coaches, technical officials and team managers too. We cannot afford, with our limited resources, to leave things to chance. If we do not do this, we will not be ensuring the full return on the investment made.

I know that you are also thinking that you do not have the financial resources to do what is necessary. As Government, we have said that Government cannot do everything. We have to deal with competing priorities and, as we are now in cyclone season, that is just one example of our national priorities. We need to grow the economy, address income inequality, get more youth and women into the formal economy, ensure food security, improve health, housing and education – the list goes on. This is why it is important that we build a strong case for investing in sport. Much of what I have said is linked to this and my Ministry is working on tabulating the evidence from Fiji and elsewhere.

However, it is not always about money. My Ministry has signed a number of MoUs with other sports Ministries around the world including:

• Cuba
• Vanuatu
• Indonesia
• Melanesian Spearhead Group
• China
• Korea

My Ministry presented to you on this matter last year and I would like to ask you to make contact with our Senior Sports Officer or the Permanent Secretary to indicate where you think you can benefit. On Monday, I leave for China to discuss a detailed plan of action as we move now to ensure we do not leave these agreements to gather dust. They must be tools we use to add value to developing sport and physical activity in our country. In the near future, we will sign an MoU with Japan which is particularly important as we move to the next Olympic and Paralympic Games as well as another with Russia.

We have heard your request for increased financial support through the tax incentive system for sponsorship. My Ministry has begun to discuss this issue with the Fiji Revenue and Customs Authority to find ways to improve the system. Many of you want the threshold reduced; some want the incentive increased from 150% to 200%. We are looking at creative ways to provide attractive incentives to the private sector, particularly for longer term investments, while also being responsible in terms of the overall national

budget. I hope that it will also reduce the dependence of NSOs on Government funding.

Another area where we are focusing is facilities as we cannot increase numbers of participants with nowhere to play. My Ministry is undertaking a facility audit with assistance from the Ministry of Lands, Local Government and the Sports Commission. With this information, we will look at where there is a real need for basic facilities. Some of these facilities will double up as evacuation centres in times of disaster. For the past 5 years, the number of requests that we have not been able to meet is 104. We will investigate these and draw up a realistic budget to address this backlog.

The last issue I wish to address today is good governance. The lack of good governance leads to waste of resources. The International Olympic Committee is addressing good governance with some minimum standards being set through the “basic universal principles of good governance” which require sports to have:

• A vision, mission and strategy
• Structures, regulations and a democratic process
• Competence, integrity and ethical standards
• Accountability, transparency and control
• Solidarity and development
• Athletes’ involvement, participation and care
• Harmonious relations with governments while preserving autonomy

I suspect that the majority of NSOs here today do not have 100% of this in place – and I may be generous in that assessment. There is much work to be done building on the work done by FASANOC and ONOC. As Government which allocates a substantial amount of funding to sport, we have a vested interest in ensuring accountability. The IOC’s Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer said last year:

• Respect of sport’s autonomy by governments is a must
• Sport’s autonomy does not mean that sport is above the Rule of Law
• There is no respect for sport’s autonomy without good governance of sports organisations.

This is very true. The European Commission is also addressing good governance in sport given the recent scandals. Again, as we develop sports legislation, we will work closely with FASANOC to ensure that we find the balance between good governance and autonomy.

We have many challenges ahead of us. There is excitement that awaits us. There is responsibility that we must shoulder. It is by working together and sharing our experiences that we can make progress more quickly. It is also by planning for a 4 year cycle that we can better predict our needs and measure our progress.

Vinaka vakalevu, Dhanyavaad and Shukran and I wish you a successful conference.