Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown is delighted that returning tourists are helping to restore the Covid-damaged economy but he gets a little prickly at one thing.
The suggestion that his country should be denied the chance to mine its own resources to reduce its dependency on tourism clearly rankles.
Two weeks ago he welcomed a ship to the Cooks to explore the harvesting of cobalt-rich nodules from the seabed in its EEZ. At the same time, Pacific friends Fiji, Samoa and Palau were gathering for a UN oceans conference in Portugal where they called for a moratorium on such mining.
"I think it is all very well to call for that but countries like us, we look to our ocean not just for our protection but for our future prosperity," Brown says in an interview with the Herald.
"And if they are asking for a moratorium which denies our people the right to lift themselves out of poverty and into prosperity, they need to really consider what they are asking for.
"What we are asking for is that sovereign nations have the right to make use of the resources within our jurisdictions as best we can."
The vessel is one of three exploration licences the Government has granted for the nodules in what would be a world first.
Brown says it could four to five years to know whether mining could be done with acceptable environmental safeguards.
If so, it could create a sovereign wealth fund for the Cooks and provide cobalt in high demand for batteries as the world seeks to cut its reliance on fossil fuels.
Opposition to such seabed mining is likely to make it onto the agenda of the Pacific Islands Forum in Fiji next week.
"But we will certainly have our own voice as well," says Brown.
He said the Cooks would look to mirror itself on countries such as Norway that used its oil resources and protected the environment.
"It would be transformative for the country."
"We're a country that is 99.99 per cent ocean. We are not in the ocean; we are the ocean. That's our country. So anything that we do within our ocean, our people are very, very clear. We are not going to do anything that is going to damage or hurt our ocean or the environment in our deep sea."
The role of China in the Pacific in the wake of its security pact with the Solomon Islands and proposed pact with Pacific countries is also expected to be a major topic at the forum.
"Yes we are at the centre of an area that geo politics is starting to take a great interest in and of course Pacific countries, with this increased attention, have some greater leverage," said Brown.
He had watched the response to the Solomons pact with interest.
"I think there is, in a lot of cases, especially for new Pacific leaders, a sense of a patronising attitude that we shouldn't be dealing with countries like China – in a sense, almost like saying we don't know what we are doing.
"That sort of attitude just doesn't fly anymore with Pacific leaders.
"We've been independent entities now for a number of decades now but in reality, the sense of independence, the sense of worth of our region is really coming to the fore."
But in terms of a proposed security pact – proposed by Foreign Minister Wang Yi in May – Brown said countries would be very careful about it "bearing in mind that many of the Pacific countries already have very strong links from a security perspective with our traditional donors of Australia, New Zealand, the US and in some cases the UK."
But people tended to forget that China had been in the region for a long time. It had had diplomatic relations with Fiji, Samoa and Tonga for 48 years and with the Cook Islands for 25 years.
The Cooks is holding its four-yearly general election next month, the first election Brown has fought as Prime Minister.
He took over in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis when Henry Puna resigned to contest the role as secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum but he has retained the Finance portfolio.
The economy's GDP fell by 25 per cent when the borders were closed and like every other country it went heavily into debt – cushioned by grants from New Zealand and help with vaccines.
In his 12th Budget, delivered this year, Brown said development partners including Australia, China and Japan had provided $103 million and singled out New Zealand for another $50 million in Budget support, $40 million in capital investment, and $700,000 for vaccines and RATs.
The Cooks Covid record has been impressive.
The border began to re-open in January, and Omicron arrived in February but 99 per cent of eligible Cook Islanders had been vaccinated. So far there have been 5774 cases (10 at present), no hospitalisations and just one death. Pre-departure tests ended in May and the next step, says Brown, will be to look again at the vaccination requirements and declarations.
As part of the election, voters will also be asked to participate in a referendum on medicinal cannabis.
They will be asked: "Should we review our cannabis laws to allow for research and medicinal use?"
If the answer was yes, it was possible it could lead to discussion about local production.
"It is a very broad-based question that we've asked," he said.
"If it's a yes, we should review our laws, then it leads on to other areas of discussion around economic viability of production, around how easily are we going to make it available to people who need to use it, where are we going to access it from and so forth."
It is not proving to be a contentious election issue.
Decriminalisation of homosexuality has been contentious in the Cooks with some churches – it is a crime for men, not women, but the law is not enforced.
Brown said a review of the Crime Act 1969 would be redrafted after the election in which there would be no mention made of homosexuality as a crime.
Unlike some politicians*, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown knows exactly where he was during the 1981 Springbok tour and what side he was on.
He was in his seventh form year at the rugby-mad school of Gisborne Boys' High and was very keen to go to the game, the first of the tour. But the school forbade it because of the potential trouble brewing.
Most of his schooling was at Tereora College in the Cooks but it did not have a seventh form and senior students were sent to regional New Zealand boarding schools such as Gisborne, New Plymouth and Nelson.
Brown was born in Wellington in 1962 while his father was posted there from the Cooks as part of the Islands Affairs office but was sent back to the Cooks to be raised by his grandparents, as happened often with the first grandchild.
Brown's grandfather, an agent for AB Donald's merchant, had been one of 13 children raised in Mangaia by a Scots father and a Mangaian mother. Brown's Scots great grandfather, the son of a Scottish sea captain, had previously sailed to Tahiti where he had married a local and had six children before having his Cooks family.
After Brown's grandfather died, he was sent to live with an uncle in Auckland for three years where he went to Epsom Normal School and then returned to the Cooks.
After high school, he spent some time studying in Auckland and on the Gold Coast of Australia selling property and time shares. He returned to the Cooks in 1991 and joined the public service, and worked up to head of agriculture.
He studied long distance and got his MBA through Massey and the University of the South Pacific, ran his own property management company and ran a fish and chip shop in the house his grandparents had lived in, which is now the Chamber of Commerce.
Brown was elected to Parliament in 2010 for the Cook Islands Party and has been Finance Minister for 12 years. He has been Prime Minister since October 2020 when Puna stepped down to seek the job as secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum.
He and his wife, Daphne, have a son and a daughter and one granddaughter.
* Former NZ Prime Minister John Key famously could not recall his position on the Springbok Tour.
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