COOK ISLANDS AFFAIRS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1074, 13 March 1911, Page 4

COOK ISLANDS AFFAIRS.

We continue to receive complaints concerning matters at the Cook Islands, some of them of a nature that call urgently for a strict and impartial inquiry. If will be remembered that last session, in reply to allegations made on the floor of the House, the Hon. J. Carroll, the Minister in charge of the Cook Islands, promised to proceed to ( the Islands himself and inquire into the matters complained of. This proposal was an absurd one. _ The complaints were directed against a Department controlled by Mr. Carroll, and indirectly he cannot escape his share of responsibility should the charges be sustained. To . expect, that any inquiry conducted by the Minister in charge of the Department could be regarded as impartial by those making the charges is to class them as very foolish people indeed. But no one took Mr. Carroll's promise very seriously. It was generally regarded as being a simple and easy means of staving off matters until the end of the session, possibly in tho hope that tho delay would weary those who had been complaining'and that nothing more would be heard , from them. The Minister may have served his immediate purpose, but he is making a very great mistake if he thinks that he has heard the last of the complaints from the Cook Islands. He is equally wrong in thinking that he can shelve the matter by sending down ,a subordinate to hold an_ inquiry 'as he is talking of _ doing. Either he is blind to tho seriousness of the position or he is ignorant of things that it should be his duty as head of the Department to make himself conversant with. It is just as well that he should realise that if h'j : persists in the farce of sending down to Barotonga a Government ofto conduct the promised inquiry it is most unlikely that the principal witnesses will trouble to tender any evidence at all before his delegate. And in case he should think this might prove a very satisfactory way of ending an unpleasant incident he may bo interested to learn that it will not be so ended. We have seen documentary evidence relating to certain happenings at the Islands which, failing the appointment of an impartial commission of inquiry, open to the press, will be placed before Parliament and which we venture, to prophesy will cause no small stir when published. If tho Government are at all sin-, cere in their professed desire to. get to the bottom of. things at the Cook Islands, they must appoint someone to conduct the inquiry who will possess the confidence of the people at the Islands as well as that of the public here. Nit may not be possible to send down a Judge of the Supreme Court, as was done on a previous occasion, but if the ex-Chief Justice, Sir James Prendergast, should be willing to undertake the task, we know of no one better equipped or who would command wider public confidence. Unless we are greatly mistaken, however, tho Acting-Prime Minister already has his instructions as to the course he is to pursue' during the absence of his political chief. We shall probably be treated to a policy of masterly inactivity and the real settlement of the trouble at the Cook Islands will have to stand over until Parliament meets months away. The interests of the Cook Islands residents is a negligible quantity—they are our fellow citizens it is true, but they are voteless.