The Cook Islands is part of the realm of New Zealand - with New Zealand responsible for the Cook Islands’ foreign policy and national defence.
Cook Islanders are New Zealand citizens, with the rights and responsibilities that come with that.
The Cabinet must decide today how to deal with the Cook Islands crisis.
Make no mistake: Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown’s dealings with China are clearly about secession from the realm of New Zealand. That is not in New Zealand’s interests, any more than Taranakisuddenly signing treaties with Australia or deciding it wanted to be part of New South Wales would be.
Brown’s moves with China are clearly outside his legal obligations to New Zealand, which has clear and recognised rights with respect to Cook Islands’ foreign policy and national defence under our 2001 Joint Centenary Declaration. Moreover, Cook Islanders, including Brown, are New Zealand citizens, with the rights and responsibilities that come with that.
New Zealand asserting its authority over Brown’s renegade government would not be a foreign invasion of the Cook Islands, like, say, the United States taking military action against Canada, Mexico, Greenland or Panama.
It would be more like Denmark taking action against a rogue Prime Minister of Greenland dealing secretly and illegally with a great power in violation of its agreements with Copenhagen.
It is no good Brown claiming his Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and other agreements he is about to sign with China are not about foreign affairs or defence, but about economic development.
Most alarmingly, suggestions that Brown’s agreements with China might include it building a new sea-port or other major infrastructure for the Cook Islands recall Beijing’s similarly claimed charity towards Sri Lanka. The “port” it built in Colombo now more resembles a Chinese naval base, designed to check India to its south.
According to New Zealand’s last major defence review, in 2023 under Labour: “A primary Defence goal will be to prevent states that do not share New Zealand’s interests and values from establishing or normalising a military or paramilitary presence in our region. Such a development would fundamentally alter the regional strategic balance, threaten the freedom of action of New Zealand and our security partners, and undermine regional stability.”
That surely remains the National-Act-NZ First Government’s position. The Cabinet must act in some way before China can claim to have an interest in what happens in the Cook Islands.
Cancelling or cutting aid to the Cook Islands would simply make things much worse. Brown would merely shrug and say China will replace it tenfold, which it would.
Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown speaks during a livestream on Facebook on the weekend.
Ironically, increasing our aid by a similar amount could be a better option, but we cannot easily afford that and it would reward Brown’s bad behaviour, encouraging more of it.
But his illegal moves cannot stand.
There is a relatively recent precedent for a New Zealand Prime Minister ordering the SAS to secure our interests in the South Pacific, when David Lange ordered the SAS to invade Fiji in 1987 and secure New Zealand’s interests after the first Fijian coup.
Shockingly, the military refused to follow Lange’s order, partly because it doubted it could succeed but also – unspoken – because Fiji was undoubtedly a fully sovereign country.
The Cook Islands is not. It is part of the realm of New Zealand, in which New Zealand has recognised legitimate interests, and which the New Zealand military has constitutional responsibilities to defend.
It would be a relatively straightforward military operation for our SAS to secure all key Government buildings in the Cook Islands’ capital, Avarua, which is not much bigger than, say, Whangamata.
If, despite its work in Afghanistan, the SAS said it could not complete such a mission within our own realm were Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to order it, that would raise its own questions.
At the very least, as with Lange in 1987, Luxon has an obligation as Prime Minister to seek advice on military options.
More challengingly, he may have an obligation to New Zealand as a sovereign country and to New Zealand citizens – not least those in the Cook Islands – to follow through with it, if penalising the Cook Islands financially is accepted as almost the worst thing New Zealand could do while its rogue Prime Minister is being wined and dined in Beijing.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this opinion column overstated the degree of New Zealand’s rights and responsibilities with respect to the Cook Islands under the 2001 Joint Centenary Declaration and it has been amended to more clearly align with that declaration.
