This is United Apparel, a modern clothing factory in suburban Suva, where the operation's efficient, the machinery high-tech. Fiji might be a developing country, but this is no Third World sweatshop.
But look a bit closer and you notice the empty workplaces - a sign that this is a company, and an industry, in deep trouble. Company founder Ramesh Solanki says he's being forced to sack workers and more job losses are likely.

RAMESH SOLANKI, COMPANY FOUNDER: The garment business is in decline and we had to lay off gradually during this last six months almost 400 workers. During our peak, we employed 1,400 workers. So, the garment industry is in decline.

The industry is propped up by tariff-free access to Australia, but that advantage is coming to an end. And if Australia signs a free trade deal with China, the jobs of these workers, and another 12,000 like them, are likely to disappear overnight.
That weighs on the minds of workers like Shameer Ali. He's paid little more than AUS $1 per hour, but it's a job he's desperate to keep. After work, I catch up with Shameer in his makeshift squat across the road from the factory.

SHAMEER ALI: Come this way. Our sitting room.

By Australian standards, it's a hovel, but here there's pride of ownership.

SHAMEER ALI: That's my room.

REPORTER: Is this where you sleep?

SHAMEER ALI: Yeah.

Also living here are two of Shameer's siblings and his elderly parents, all supported on his dollar-per-hour.

REPORTER: Who sleeps up there?

Fiji has no welfare system. The job at the clothing factory separates Shameer and his family from absolute poverty.

SHAMEER ALI, (Translation): If we have work it helps us, if we don't have work, there's no money.

With no work and no welfare, some Fijians are considering a new way to escape poverty - travelling overseas to become guest workers. Evidence of just how desperate some have become can be found in this cramped Suva office.
These men have come here to Meridian Services to apply for guest worker jobs in the Middle East. Despite media reports suggesting that they're being ripped off, many have borrowed the substantial $150 application fee.
Spread around this room, are the individual files of thousands upon thousands of applicants. The men processing them aren't being paid, they're volunteers, hoping their work will advance them in the queue to Kuwait.

REPORTER: So got a lot of applications here?

VOLUNTEER: Yeah. See, we're trying to screen all the files one by one and then we file them away, the ones that are ready to go out to Kuwait and whichever Arabian country.

REPORTER: How many applications?

VOLUNTEER: There's about 20,000 plus of them.

Outside the offices, hopeful applicants come to scan the list to see if their name has come up. But it could be a long wait.
So far Meridian Services has a contract to supply a maximum of 2,000 workers over the next two years to the Kuwait-based operations of American company Public Warehouse. That leaves something like 18,000 applicants in limbo, their passports accumulating in packing cases while they wonder what's become of their application fees, now totalling more than $2.5 million.
Meridian CEO Jim Lolohea was overseas, whereabouts unknown, when I visited. So it was left to Meridian's human resources manager to explain the company's finances.

KALEPI ABARIGA, MERIDIAN SERVICES: It wouldn't be right for you to say that we make money from application fees because when they come, they want a refund, we give them a full refund.

REPORTER: Yeah, how does Meridian make money then if not from the application fees and not from Public Warehouse?

KALEPI ABARIGA: I think the god that we serve is providing for us.

REPORTER: Sorry?

KALEPI ABARIGA: The god that we serve is providing for us.

REPORTER: Yeah, it's a company though, it makes money. How does it make money?

KALEPI ABARIGA: I wouldn't be able to divulge any further on that.

REPORTER: Why not?

KALEPI ABARIGA: It's company policy.

These are photographs sent back from some of those who have made it to Kuwait. Amongst them are images of convoys running the gauntlet into Iraq, the Fijians steering the trucks that Americans and Europeans now find too risky to drive.

KALEPI ABARIGA: As far as we've been told, every time you cross the border from Kuwait into Iraq there's a risk allowance of US$950. So every time you cross the border you're entitled to the money.

REPORTER: It's a lot of money for a Fijian.

KALEPI ABARIGA: It's a lot of money for a Fijian, especially for someone from the village who's just spent half of his life planting cassava and dalo.

It sounded like a lot of money to 57-year-old Keni Raduadua, but he didn't get to see any of it. He went to Kuwait in January and died shortly afterwards, apparently of natural causes.
Months later, his widow still hasn't seen any of his wages or an insurance payout promised by Meridian.

SULIANA RADUADUA: They've been telling us about all this and we're still waiting. But we'll wait. When his time comes, I think He will provide - the good Lord will provide everything what we need because we are praying for this every day and we are hoping that only the good Lord will provide everything for us, our family and my children.

Suliana Raduadua has lost her house and now lives with one of her children. The Fijian Government has launched an investigation into Meridian Services. It's deeply concerned the company is ripping off naive Fijians desperate to work overseas.
Yet Labour minister Kenneth Zinck, who has led the push to investigate Meridian, still wants Fijians to be able to work overseas as guest workers, provided the jobs are genuine.

KENNETH ZINCK, LABOUR MINISTER: We have 17,000 school leavers per annum. There's only 5,000 jobs available. Therefore we have a gap of about 12,000 people per annum who don't have jobs and going overseas to work is an answer to the unemployment problem that we have.

A number of Pacific leaders, including Fijian Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, would like to see Australia open its doors to guest workers from the region.

LAISENIA QARASE, FIJIAN PRIME MINISTER: I would support it very strongly. In fact, Fiji has been discussing the issue with both governments - the Government of Australia and the Government of New Zealand. If we can have an organised scheme to enable our workers - unskilled mainly - to come in and work for a while then return to Fiji.

So when Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone addressed the National Press Club in Canberra earlier this year, I went along, knowing the guest worker proposal also had the support of Australian farmers and sections of the Canberra bureaucracy. I wanted to know what the minister thought of the idea.

REPORTER: Is there any room in Australia for the concept of guest workers?

The answer she gave fuelled a flurry of speculative stories from the Canberra press gallery.

AMANDA VANSTONE: I'm very, very interested in this. One of the parliamentary committees has recommended looking at this as a sort of combined assistance to rural communities and a foreign aid sort of issue. So I'm looking at the degree to which we can do that.

Australia's foreign aid program was put under the microscope following the collapse of the Solomon Islands into lawlessness two years ago. Australia was forced to intervene, its troops leading the stabilisation force. The ongoing effort is expected to last more than a decade and cost Australian taxpayers more than a billion dollars.
Some argue that allowing Pacific Islanders to work for limited amounts of time in Australia would help stabilise regional countries, a cost-effective delivery of aid that could help avoid the massive costs of Solomons-like rescue packages.

PAUL O’CALLAGHAN: These are genuinely fragile states.

Paul O'Callaghan, a former Australian high commissioner to Samoa, now represents Australia's international aid agencies. He says the Solomons are not alone. Youth unemployment throughout the Pacific is at a crisis state.

PAUL O’CALLAGHAN: You have many young people who have no sense of hope for the future. They have a genuine sense of hopelessness. You're talking about, in some of the small island states, large numbers of people who could well go off the rails long term. And this is the next generation that can really make a big difference to building community.

The collapse in the Solomon Islands galvanised John Howard. He arrived at a summit of Pacific leaders in Auckland later that year brandishing a new get-tough attitude towards the region.

PRIME MINISTER JOHN HOWARD: Well, our very clear message is that we want to help, but a condition of that help has to be rooting out corruption.

Central to the Prime Minister's new approach was imposing an Australian, Greg Urwin, as Secretary-General of the Pacific Island Forum, the region's principal international body. Formerly the position was reserved for a Pacific Islander. After considerable resistance from some smaller countries, Urwin was elected.
Move forward two years and I find Greg Urwin at Suva airport, heading off for a stint of shuttle diplomacy.

REPORTER: Where are you off to today?

GREG URWIN: To the Micronesian members of the forum. That's Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.

On his trip, the Secretary-General will consult leaders on the blueprint for reform he's been developed. It's known as the Pacific Plan. And guess what? The draft plan calls for the free movement of labour amongst the 14 island nations and temporary access for workers into Australia and New Zealand - in other words, guest workers. It may not be the plan's most important proposal, but it's the one that's grabbed the attention of Pacific leaders.

GREG URWIN: As discussion about the Pacific plan and some of the other things that we've got in train proceeds this, as a general issue, it comes up more and more frequently and it does seem to me that it's an issue that will need to be thrashed out.

REPORTER: So it's something that Pacific leaders are saying has to be included in any sort of overarching plan?

GREG URWIN: A number of them are starting to say that it's a priority for them, yes.

LAISENIA QARASE: In the Pacific plan, we are talking about good governance and security. As far as I'm concerned, you can have good governance and security if the citizens of the country are living a reasonable standard of living.
Once you take that away, then you have very fertile grounds for instability, for the practice of bad governance and insecurity all round.

And yet, despite Amanda Vanstone's initial enthusiasm and despite the support of farmers and aid groups, Pacific Islanders will not be able to come to Australia as guest workers.
10 days after Senator Vanstone's press club comments fuelled speculation, Peter Costello stopped it dead.

PETER COSTELLO: Look, in some countries where there are labour shortages they have guest workers, don't they? Singapore does, the Middle East does. I don't think Australia would agree to that. I don't think it's part of the Australian ethos, I don't think it's consistent with our culture and I don't think it would be acceptable.

Cabinet has now endorsed Peter Costello's position - there will be no guest workers from the Pacific, at least not this year.
That left the Government faced with another problem - how could farmers get enough labour to harvest their fruit crop? The solution was to allow working holiday makers from a select group of wealthy countries - backpackers in other words - to extend their visas from one year to two years.

BOB SERCOMBE, LABOUR'S PACIFIC AFFAIRS SPOKESMAN: I just think it's typical of their arrogance in relation to the Pacific.

Labor's Pacific Affairs spokesman, Bob Sercombe, says the Government has missed an opportunity to help its neighbours.

BOB SERCOMBE: The Government appears to be much more interested in opportunities for young people from rich countries in North America and in Europe than in building - taking an opportunity to build stronger links between Australia and Pacific Island countries.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone declined to be interviewed for this program.

AMANDA VANSTONE: If ministers are permitted regrets, it's that I answered a question at a press club.

At a press conference announcing the backpacker decision, the minister suggested the use of the term 'guest worker' at the press club, while accurate, was later taken out of context in newspaper articles. And besides, she says her support for a guest worker scheme had always been conditional.

AMANDA VANSTONE: I highlighted, however, what needed to be ensured before you could go ahead with that sort of thing, namely that people would return and that they would be paid proper Australian wages and conditions, that there was appropriate housing... And I don't at this point think it's possible to resolve those issues, so we won't be looking at that.

BOB SERCOMBE: If it's good enough for young people from Canada to come out as guest workers, in effect, under the working holiday visa program, if it's good enough for young people from Germany to come out and do this sort of work, why not have a trial to see whether, on a very limited basis, certainly at the outset, Pacific Islanders are also given an opportunity.

In fact, there may be no need for a trial because, for the last 20 years or so, something very much like one has been quietly under way here in the tobacco fields of Victoria's Ovens Valley. Farmers here are dependent on itinerant workers to get their crop off during late summer and autumn.

REPORTER: Looks like hard work to me.

WORKER: No, it's easy, tobacco, rather than picking fruits.

REPORTER: You get to sit down on the job.

WORKER: Yeah.

This is a mixed team. Of the seven workers on the harvesting machine, four are on short-term visas from Fiji. On the top deck of the machine I find Raj, stacking the crop. Like the other workers, he's paid Australian award wages.

REPORTER: Good money?

RAJ: Yeah, good money.

REPORTER: How does it compare to Fiji?

RAJ: Fiji, in one week we get $70-$80 a week. Here we get more than that.

REPORTER: How much?

RAJ: $100 a day.

REPORTER: So when you go back to Fiji, how much money do you take with you?

RAJ: $4,000 to $5,000.

These workers are lucky - they circumvent the ban on guest workers by coming in on a 3-month training visa. That doesn't prevent them from picking tobacco for 10 hours a day. In Fiji, they work as contractors for British American Tobacco. The company supports their visa applications because the workers pick up valuable knowledge and experience from Australia's more highly developed industry.

REPORTER: And you have friends in Fiji who would like to come and work out here if they could?

RAJ: Yeah, but it's very hard to come and work here. The Australian Embassy doesn't allow them to come and work here.

But while the workers like the money and British American likes the experience they gain, for Australian farmers like Allan McGuffie, it's the reliable labour that's the important thing.

ALLAN McGUFFIE: You don't realise how much of a contribution they make until the year they didn't come here. The year they weren't here, there was about, between 20 and 30 come most years. That really put pressure on all the other smaller farms because all the large farms took those workers away and those people really struggled that year and I honestly believe that my brother and I wouldn't grow as large a tobacco crop if we didn't have that continuity of worker so we can get that harvest off the way we like to take it off and when we like to take it off.

Colin McCormack is another tobacco farmer, he's also President of the Northern Victorian Horticulture Council and on the board of the Victorian Farmers' Federation.

COLIN McCORMACK: We don't want cheap labour - I want to stress that too, that we want a bigger pool of workers that can start early in the morning and do some of the harder work that some of our people who are possibly on the dole are not prepared to do.

Colin tells me that many fruit growers are now largely dependent on foreign labour in the form of backpackers. He'd like to see more Fijians able to work in Australia.

COLIN McCORMACK: The Fijians have been coming here now for approximately 16 years and they're well liked in town and they come in and do their shopping and everybody gets to know them and they're extremely good workers. And in all that period of time when they come out, we've had none of them want to stay. They make their $5,000 or $6,000, which they can save up and they can take back to Fiji and at least do something with it in Fiji and they also take back their skills.

This is the Sigatoka Valley on Fiji's big island, Viti Levu. It's the home of the country's tobacco industry. And here I find a brand new house, the house Raj has built with the money he's earned picking tobacco in Australia. Raj is still in Victoria when I visit, but his wife Umlesh is home. She and their two children are delighted with the DVD I recorded with Raj in Victoria. Afterwards, Umlesh tells me of their plans.

UMLESH: Raj goes to Australia, he gets the money, he gets... a lot of money from there. It's good he go and work there because that money helps us like when he comes back, we use to give that money for our children's education. We will keep the money in the bank, like my daughter will go to class 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, so that money can help in her education for buying books, school fees.

Later this year, John Howard will meet with Pacific leaders at the annual Pacific Island Forum. He'll need to explain why, when it comes to importing unskilled workers, his government prefers European backpackers to unemployed Pacific Islanders.

LAISENIA QARASE: I think there has to be give and take in the preparation of plan. Australia and New Zealand will be asking those things from us and in return we will be asking things from them. So somewhere along the line there has to be a balance struck.

Labor's Bob Sercombe warns that three decades after the end of the white Australia policy, there's now a perception emerging in the Pacific that this country is again discriminating on the basis of rate.

BOB SERCOMBE: I have had suggestions of that type put to me, yes, and, whilst I'm an opposition member of parliament, I'm also an Australian, so I defend Australia when those sorts of comments are made. But I think the Government needs to do more to address that perception, because that perception is there.

And Greg Urwin, the man John Howard backed so vigorously to become the Pacific's top official, believes sooner or later issues of labour mobility will need to be addressed.

GREG URWIN: In a very considerable period of contemplating Australian policy in respect of the Pacific, my own personal view has always been that sooner or later you arrive at this set of issues. And I think that, as I said earlier, one way or another, it's going to have to be contemplated in detail.

The economies of the Pacific are fragile. The Solomon Islands and Nauru have demonstrated that Pacific countries can collapse, politically and financially. And both have demonstrated that when they do, it's Australia that's left to pick up the pieces. Yet, at least for now, Pacific guest workers won't be playing a role in Australia's attempts to stabilise the region.