Mike Williams: Money we give Cooks is excellent investment

Mike Williams

A short holiday in the Cook Islands last week was an overdue chance to do next to nothing in a lovely place, to reflect on one of the most interesting years in a long time.

There are 20,000 Cook Islanders still living at home and about 80 per cent of these live on the biggest island – Rarotonga - where I spent a few days.

In the last census, 62,000 people resident in New Zealand identified as Cook Islanders and all Cook Islanders are New Zealand citizens who can come and go as they see fit.

The Cook Islands was effectively a New Zealand colony and would qualify as one of Heather Du Plessis Allan's "leeches" as the country has been a long-term beneficiary of New Zealand's aid to the Pacific and is scheduled to receive $42 million of the $1000m of New Zealand taxpayer money we'll allocate in aid to the Pacific next year.

The Cook Islands were settled from Tahiti around the sixth century AD and are another result of the stunningly brilliant race of Māori navigators who reached such far corners of the Pacific as Hawaii, Easter Island (Rapa Nui), the Marquesas, New Zealand, Tonga, Nuie and Samoa.

Cook Islanders speak a language which is so similar to Māori that conversation is possible without translators, and the Cook Islanders refer to themselves as Māori.

As with all of the Pacific Islands, contact with Europeans beginning in 1733 was a disaster with diseases for which the Pacifica people had no resistance ravaging populations while European religions worked to destroy established social arrangements.

New Zealand granted a kind of independence to the Cook Islands in 1965 and this small but delightful country has flourished with New Zealand (and other) aid to the point that the locals are now being forced to resist a United Nations effort to reclassify their country as no longer qualifying for some kinds of aid.

To put our aid into context, it adds up to fewer than 50 ordinary Auckland houses a year and a lot of it ends up in the hands of Air New Zealand, the major player in the booming tourism market, 51 per cent of which you and I as taxpayers own.

I saw no sign of lavish spending by the Cook Islands Government – their Parliament used to be a modest hotel and resembles a collection of the pre-fabs used as classrooms when I taught at Pakuranga College in the 1980s and their sole patrol vessel, which seeks to protect the large and rich Cook Islands fishing grounds, was a gift from Australia.

Most of the money we send to the Cook Islands goes into health and education spending which would seem like a good investment given the fact that these people are actually fellow citizens.

If you feel a need to get some value from New Zealand's aid investment, plan a holiday in Rarotonga. There are good deals on flights, accommodation to suit any budget, truly great food, an excellent climate and friendly people. What else do you need?

You just have to like a country that has a law against building anything higher than a coconut tree and doesn't make you wear a helmet when you're on a bike. Go there.

My absence coincided with the first anniversary of the Jacinda Ardern Government.

With a media diet of Australian and American news via CNN and the ABC on Rarotonga, New Zealand seemed by contrast a delightfully peaceful and well-run country from that distance.

Returning to see Auckland sprouting with more construction cranes than any time in its history, the New Zealand new car market setting new records, unemployment at very low levels and airports crammed with visitors, it should be obvious that the country's prospering under the new Government.

That's not what you'd think if your only view of New Zealand was the ANZ Business Confidence survey which turned dramatically negative the minute the new Government was formed last year and only in the last month began (slowly!) to turn around.

Perhaps the 1500-odd respondents to this survey should follow my lead and have look at just how New Zealand's going from a distance.

This is pretty well exactly what the International Credit Ratings Agency, Moody's does on a regular basis from its perch in Boston, Massachusetts.

Moody's awarded New Zealand a rare Triple A credit rating on September 21 and we joined a select club that includes only Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland.

Moody's says this rating "reflects its (New Zealand's) very strong institutions and policy effectiveness".

With this ringing endorsement of Finance Minister Grant Robertson's economic policies and management, it's hard to resist the conclusion that the ANZ's business panel is nothing better than a pack of rusted-on Tories.

• Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is CEO of the NZ Howard League and a former Labour Party president. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today.