Andrew Levula speaks to FPR's Lanieta Tukana about his new article, examining whether Fiji's closest partnership risks becoming its deepest dependency. Australia and Fiji have signed the Vuvale Union, a framework agreement spanning security, the economy and people-to-people ties — and one of the sharpest questions in Pacific development is whether agreements like it build self-reliance or erode it. They discuss what a dependency trap looks like in practice for a small island state, why the agreement's full text remains unpublished despite cabinet approval, the migration of more than 15,000 Fijians in the past 15 months, and what genuinely indigenous-led development would require for Fiji to grow on its own terms.