Our man in the last outpost of empire

Tokelau has close ties to NZ, as shown by this treatment of Prime Minister Helen Clark in 2004. Picture / Fotopress

The New Zealand Administrator of Tokelau, Neil Walter, has a 30-year relationship with the remote dependency which could by next week have decided to shed its colonial status and become self-governing.

He also gets terribly seasick.

Voting begins in Samoa tomorrow as Tokelauans there choose whether to opt for self-government 80 years to the day that New Zealand took over the administration of Tokelau from Great Britain.

Voting papers will then be loaded on to the Lady Naomi passenger ferry to be delivered to the three atolls of Tokelau - Atafu, Nukunonu, and Fakaofo - about 500km to the north.

Tokelau, which lies about halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand, has no airport so can only be accessed by ship, the trip taking up to 28 hours.

Mr Walter has now made hundreds of landings on Tokelau atolls and the ocean journeys have been a necessary evil for the man with weak ocean legs.

"I'm not the best sailor."

At times the trips have been not just stomach-churning but hair-raising.

"I was lost at sea for three days in 1977 after we took a substandard boat up for a medical evacuation ... the waves were breaking over the quite small boat. We missed the first two atolls and were finally spotted at night by a radio operator in the northernmost atoll who saw our lights and told us where we were."

In another trip that year Mr Walter was in a group, including his family, which hit bad weather while travelling in a seven metre boat between the atolls.

"We had some pretty difficult moments."

Such a trip is actually prohibited in Tokelau which stopped its people travelling between the atolls, except by ship, after an entire cricket team was lost at sea in the Second World War.

But while the ocean may not be Mr Walter's best friend, he has many strong bonds with the people of Tokelau whom he admires as tough and resilient due to their isolation and fragile environment.

"They keep bouncing back from cyclones like you wouldn't believe."

Mr Walter witnessed one just last year when Cyclone Percy hit Nukunonu straight on. "It was quite something to see the lagoon and sea both come up two or three metres and huge breakers right over the village ... stock, buildings, property and boats were swilling around very much like a scene from the tsunami in Asia."

Mr Walter's interest in Tokelau goes back to the early 1970s when he was assigned to the New Zealand mission to the United Nations in New York which was then dealing with decolonisation questions.

One of the questions concerned Tokelau so each year he would submit a report from the New Zealand Government.

In early 1976 Mr Walter was one of the first group sent by the United Nations to Tokelau at about the time the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade took responsibility for its administration from what was the Department of Island Territories.

The department was disbanded after the changed status of the other three dependent territories of Samoa (gained independence in 1961), the Cook Islands (became self-governing in 1965) and Niue (became self-governing in 1974).

Mr Walter said there was a "sea change in approach" which paved the way forward for Tokelau to be encouraged towards increased self-reliance and the exercising of its rights to self-determination.

In 1978 Mr Walter took up a two-year assignment based in Apia as the head of Tokelau's fledgling public service.

His goal was to boost the people's capacity to run themselves, like providing health, education and shipping services. There was an acceleration in development and improvement to Tokelau's quality of life.

Co-operative stores had been set up and handicraft marketing operations begun.

Mr Walter said Tokelauans also started experimenting with their own systems of governance and developed what was the "modern house of Tokelau" blending the traditional values and systems with contemporary requirements.

"So they have a government structure based very squarely on a traditional source of authority, which is the three village councils."

Because the three distinct atoll groups needed to act collectively on international issues, a national assembly, the general fono, was established to deal with national issues such as external relations, fisheries, and shipping.

In 1980, then back in New Zealand as assistant secretary for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Mr Walter took on the Tokelau Administrator role for one year.

He then left for overseas assignments including ambassador to Japan and Indonesia, and returned to become the Foreign Affairs secretary from 1999 to 2002.

"When I returned I said I was prepared to tackle the job as Administrator once more if wanted and was appointed after consultation with Tokelau." He said Tokelau was progressively more self-reliant and a vote to become self-governing in free association with New Zealand would formalise existing practice.

Now Mr Walter is in the closing months of his three-year appointment and if Tokelau chooses self-government his position becomes redundant and he will earn the title of New Zealand's last colonial governor.

Mr Walter's interest in the country will remain strong. "I think its fair to say that almost everyone who goes there gets captured to some extent by the place.

Then he adds: "In good weather." 

* Angela Gregory will report next week from Tokelau on its historic vote.