John Hayes - A closet Colonialist?

Part 3

In his speech to the NZ Institute of International Affairs John Hayes made a number of assertions but perhaps the one that has got up the nose of many Cook Islanders is the assertion that “self-government in free association with New Zealand” is a model that has failed. He gave the following as supportive of his assertion and I will deal with them solely from the Cook Islands point of view.
He claimed that 90% of Cook Islanders live overseas, have voted with their feet and have thereby expressed their disgruntled view of governance at home. The model has created “inefficient, uneconomic and wasteful governance”. The political and bureaucratic elite “maximise their incomes by constant travelling rather than focusing on issues at home”. He claimed that we passed a law prohibiting publication of the travel costs of Parliamentarians which is quite untrue.
He claimed that for too long “public servants used aid funds to build bureaucracy” which again is untrue in the Cook Islands as NZ aid towards the public sector has always been for a downsizing review. He maintained that we spend too much time and spending “servicing the needs of international organisations”, a claim which those in the know will admit as being largely true and we need to go no further than the Ministry of Environment Services. Then he concluded by saying that the people of the Cook Islands, Niue and the Tokelaus “are choking on the trappings of pseudo-sovereignty which benefit a very few.”
These are damning and damaging accusations sufficient to raise accusations of interference in the internal affairs of other countries. However, some of them do have a ring of embarrassing truth especially in respect of travelling by Parliamentarians. Given the incredibly embarrassing facts emerging from the current controversy surrounding the travels of New Zealand Parliamentarians, some of whom are colleagues of his, John Hayes may well be wishing he made no mention of the matter in his speech to the Institute.
The performance of our Demo Government, especially since 2004 and more particularly during the last three years, has given some truth to the accusations by John Hayes. When Wall Street financially collapsed and the consequential world-wide recession was predicted it was completely ignored by our Government and when Parliament approved a $3 million stimulus package, government dawdled over it not knowing what to do with it! – and we continued to drift aimlessly!
In the meantime while Ministers were travelling, and so they should, some of the meetings they attended had little relevance to the economic advancement of the country.
John Hayes was in Aitutaki recently, heard about one Minister who had run up in the thousands unaccounted allowances, possibly heard it at the Fishing Club and reported same to the Institute of International Affairs.
It is interesting that government has made no official response to John Hayes comments. In the case of New Zealand, Chris Carter, Labour Foreign Affairs Spokesman, is the only one who has hit out. No one else has picked up the cudgels on behalf of ourselves, Niue and the Tokelaus.
Hayes also claimed that our system of Parliamentary representation is warped but I totally disagree with him but, then, that is a subject matter for another time.
It is when he claimed that self-government in the Cook Islands is a failed experiment, that is when I am in disagreement with him. Let’s look at this issue.
We became self-governing in 1965. The budget was 820,000 pounds, (at today’s conversion, about, $2 million), 99% of which was NZ grant. Today, our budget has reached $139, 000,000 with not a penny from NZ – a dramatic increase in internal revenue. All of NZ aid, as of 2006, is put into a development budget that includes assistance from other donor partners and is not part of the operational budget.
In 1965 the private sector was a few shops, CITC, AB Donald, Watson’s, Island Merchant, Ingram’s and one or two others. The biggest private enterprise was government. Today we have one of the most comprehensive, progressive and sophisticated private enterprise sector in the Pacific with a total gross turnover of $543,000,000 in 2008. From VAT alone the nation now derives (2008) $55.6 million and from Income Tax, $43 million.
The tourism industry was non-existent in 1965. It now contributes 45% to the GDP of our country. In 1965 we were getting a plane a fortnight approximately. Today we are getting a plane everyday of the week, sometimes two a day. In fact, the current position shows that we have no less than 17 flights weekly. Then we had ships out of NZ arriving about once over two to three months. Now we have ships turning around every 21 days with two to three ships per month.
Take a quiet drive along the back roads of Rarotonga. There are now more and better houses built along those by-ways than there were in the whole of Rarotonga in 1965! In 2008, 128 building permits were approved of a total value of $23 million. In 1965 water, electricity and phones were found only in expatriate houses with a few local exceptions. Today these same services are in every house in Rarotonga. Tar-sealed roads – that’s a real story on its own, but they do exist now for the general public!
In 1965 you knew who owned this car, that truck and that there motor bike because there were so few of them. Only a handful of locals counted as owners. Between 2000 and 2008 13,957 new vehicles were registered, an average of 1,551 a year!!
Between 2000 and 2008 our imports from New Zealand alone was a total of $771,084,000, an average per year of $85,676,000. New Zealand aid over this same period averaged approximately $6 million dollars.
We, jointly with New Zealand, enjoy one of the best education and health services in the Pacific. We have several Cook Islanders with distinguished academic achievements, 35 have just graduated with an MBA this year with a similar number due to graduate in 2010. We have the lowest infant death per 1000 and one of the highest longevity indices.
We have a GDP per capita in current prices of $13,648 and median income of $16,723 both of which rank with the highest in the Pacific. We have formal diplomatic relations with over 50 countries, attend regional and international fora and speak for ourselves in our own right and the Cook Islands has long been respected at these meetings.
Our’s is a political devolution experiment which with the co-operation of New Zealand and the very large pool of goodwill which exists between the two countries has astounded international lawyers for its conception and now for the fact that it has not collapsed! It has been misunderstood by many, including NZ Ministers and MFAT officials, watched closely by others and is now being seen as a progressive and useful model for former colonialists and island states. The 2001 Anniversary Declaration confirms this.
No, Mr John Hayes, I respectfully disagree with you. The self-government in free association with NZ model has been, in the case of the Cook Islands, a remarkable success unquestionably because we are independent, is a sovereign nation and is therefore able to drive its own destiny.
What now needs to be attended to seriously is the assertion by John Hayes that “The core issue is that we [NZ] need to ensure that incomes and the level of core services in the Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau is (sic) is as good as in New Zealand.” This is really looking to the future. We all need to pick up the challenge.

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