The Cook Islands

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30287, 13 November 1963, Page 16

The Cook Islands

There can be no quarrel with the Government’s intention to speed the political advancement of the Cook Islands by planning internal self-goverment for the group by 1965 provided equally close attention is paid to economic development. An expert committee on constitutional development, which recently visited the islands, recommended a constitution providing for full self-government, continued association with New Zealand under a common head of State, the Queen, and common citizenship, that of New Zealand. The New Zealand Government would be responsible for the islands’ external relations and a link with the New Zealand Parliament would be established. The report, which broadly accepts the expressed wishes of the Cook Islands Legislative Assembly, has been unanimously adopted by the Assembly in Rarotonga. Legislation to bring the constitutional proposals into force will be enacted during the next session of Parliament. Clearly, the people of the islands desire to manage their own affairs while retaining their rights as New Zealand citizens; and the Government deserves credit for assisting their political advancement. But without comparable economic advancement in the islands, constitutional progress will be meaningless; and economic progress will be much more difficult to achieve.

The group comprises 15 islands spread over 850,000

square miles of ocean, with a land area of 90 square miles and a population of fewer than 19,000. Some of the larger islands are reasonably fertile, but others are not, and they lack significant mineral resources. Even the sympathetic mainland market of New Zealand is distant and limited; and well-inten-tioned efforts to ease the islanders’ economic plight have failed to provide much more than a mere subsistence standard of living, in spite of a New Zealand subsidy of £ 750,000 a year. In these circumstances, excellent medical care and an education system that gives the Maori children of the islands the same opportunities as New Zealand children are not enough to prevent emigration to New Zealand, which only aggravates the islands’ social and economic problems. Self-government alone will not break this vicious circle; but allied with worth-while projects for local development, it may help to arouse the enthusiasm and confidence that have been lacking in the past. Even so, New Zealand could not, even if it wished, evade the responsibility of attempting to establish a viable economy, remote though this possibility may seem after the failure of recent agricultural schemes. The latest developments show, however, that the Government is sincere in its desire to develop the islands politically and economically, to make them a worth-while home for their people.