Legitimate shock at what the Cook Islands are doing by signing a deal with China is not colonialism, it is the reaction from our Constitutional arrangements with the Cooks.
The genuine anger from New Zealand is being framed as colonialism trying to strangle Cook Island independence which is ludicrous.
We have been propping up the Cooks and we give them New Zealand citizenship on top of the aid, if our Pacific Neighbours want to trade in their whanau links with us in New Zealand and all the goodwill that brings for a despotic Communist Authoritarian regime who will over run them and rob them of their economic sovereignty and mana, they are welcome to it!
If Cook Islands wish to leave Realm of NZ for China – let them! But don’t pretend by signing this deal with China that the current arrangement can remain.
The Cooks are either an independent state doing what they want with China or they are part of the Realm of NZ and all the constitutional obligations that comes with that.
If they want to break faith with us and the freedom we guarantee in favour of authoritarian Chinese power, knock yourself out.
Revoke the Realm relationship, agree in good faith to allow all those Cook Islanders currently in NZ to remain as citizens and allow the Cooks to do what they want with China.
Good Luck. They will devour you.
If that is the bed the Cook Islands really want to make for themselves, let them!
To quote Mike Hosking, ‘Happy Days’.
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So what do you imagine will happen with the refugees?
Luxon’s response has been weak and far too diplomatic. Helen Clark would have had the SIS over there by now.
Certainly, the Cook Islanders have been given New Zealand citizenship. What alternative was there, given that the Cook Islands had been incorporated into the Colony of New Zealand in 1901? Cook Islanders as New Zealand subjects yet with none of the rights of a citizen?
Peter Thiel was also given New Zealand citizenship for no reason at all except that he works hand-in-glove with the SIS and GCSB. Does that grant of citizenship to Peter Thiel and others like him mean that the Realm of New Zealand has the right to determine US foreign policy, or to send the SAS into Washington to put things right?
Certainly, New Zealand has given aid to the Cook Islanders. So have some of our marae – $7000 contributed to an agricultural project for example. Our assistance probably exceeds that of the Realm of New Zealand on a per capita basis. Yet we are not arrogantly claiming to be “propping up” the Cook Islands, and none of us are saying that whanau links give us the right to determine the political direction of the Cook Islands government, or to restrain it from collaborating with other entities.
There is a double standard here. The Realm gives citizenship to rogue Americans who are deliberately bringing harm to our people. It spends millions supporting the war plans of NATO in Europe and the Asia-Pacific area and never demands to be “consulted” by the US, UK or Australia. It simply does what it is told. Now it thinks that it in turn can make the Cook Islanders do what they are told. Think again, Mike Hosking.
The “genuine anger” of the Realm is misplaced. The Cook Islanders are not our enemy. Frankly, the Realm of New Zealand is our enemy, and it is now set on making itself the enemy of the Cook Islands as well, not to mention Kiribati and any other island nation which wants to stand a little bit apart from the Anglo-American imperial system.
most clear comment we will get on this subject .Why does NZ think it can tell the Cooks what to think and do .Yes we throw them a few crumbs and pretend we are looking out for them ,but the real truth is we have been exploiting them for cheap labour for 100 years .They come to live here thinking it is the golden country when in fact they end up living in poverty and doing all the shit jobs that no one else wants to do for the minimum wage .
Well put Geoff. The attitude to the Cooks in this piece is neo colonialism pure and simple. Do as we say…how many NZers have ever been consulted on 5 Eyes matters or international trade agreements?
The reality is that in the era of climate disaster and sea level rise we all need to co-operate together in this part of the world but Australia and NZ have not made it easy for various South Pacific Islands over many decades. Dawn raids when no longer needed for cheap labour in 70s. Exploitative horticultural jobs, first to be discarded when manufacturing was abandoned in the 80s and 90s, it is not that we have done great favours for our Pacific neighbours.
I can’t help wondering what both NZ Aotearoa and the Cooks want from each other? If we want some form of geopolitical sphere of influence in our Pacifika neighbours we might need to address the issue of the price of keeping China and others out. To date we seem to have primarily treated the Pacific as a pool of casual low cost labour.
Yeah! Thanks Geoff a bit of alternate realism thanks again. Sick of white colonial POV permeating everything.
The Cook Islands must be aware of the tactics China has already used as part of the ‘Belt and Road’ ( Sri Lanka, Pakistan, African countries).
Over promise but under deliver. Fiji and Democratic Republic of Congo eagerly accepted cheap road construction by the Chinese firms. They got what they paid for, in that the roads quickly deteriorate and need repair.
Indebtedness; offer generous loans that struggling economies cannot repay then take assets such as the port of Hambantota.
How do they get nations to agree to such exploitation?
They do not get nations, in terms of the populations, to agree to these exploitative measures. They know enough about capitalism to just buy the people in power – Brown in the Cook Islands, Key and Shipley here, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
Lenin: ” We will not have to hang the capitalists. They will hang themselves and we will sell them the rope.’
Incidentally, if you really want to see an Asian person completely fly into a fury, tell a member of the Chinese Communist Party that China is now imitating the Imperial powers and colonists of the nineteenth century.
In the shrieking that follows they will tell you your mother is a whore, that COVID and SARS were introduced to China by the CIA, that poor countries are proud to call China friend, That New Zealand and Australia are lackeys of the USA( Okay I have to give them that one), that foreigners are obese, sexual perverts and smell bad and the Chinese climbed Mount Everest before Ed Hillary and Norgay Tenzing.
They do not actually address the issue at hand.
In Chinese this is ‘Defending the Empty City’. Make a lot of noise to conceal the fact that you have no argument to offer.
‘China is looked upon favourably by citizens of African and Latin American countries in particular.’ These research polls being organised by governments who owe their future to Chinese patronage.
‘Furthermore, the whanau (genetic) links between the Cooks and China are definitely stronger than those between Cook Islanders and NZ Pakeha. ‘
Said genetic links being Austronesian and including the inhabitants Of Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Maldives, Seychelles and Madagascar.
BUT STRONGEST WITH THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF THE FREE AND INDEPENDENT NATION OF TAIWAN!
Seems to be Mark Browns ‘baby’….the majority of voters in the Cooks want to stick with NZ.Helen Clark called their bluff in her term.
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