By Rashneel Kumar, Cook Islands News
New Zealand passport holders only need to wait five years to apply for permeant residency under the current rules while all nationals with other citizenship need to wait a minimum of 10 years. Photo: RNZ Pacific
Exclusive - Cook Islands has dropped the controversial passport proposal, Prime Minister Mark Brown confirmed Wednesday, local time, after discussions to convince New Zealand that it would not affect their constitutional relationship fell flat.
In an exclusive interview with Cook Islands News, Brown said the proposed Cook Islands passport was "off the table", after New Zealand "bared its teeth" over the initiative.
The passport proposal was one of the two major initiatives planned by the Cook Islands government to celebrate the country's 60th year of self-governance this year.
Brown said one was a national honours system for Cook Islanders and the other was a national passport that identifies one as a Cook Islander "not to be used as a travel document or anything like that".
However, the New Zealand government drew a "red line", even though the Cook Islands government saw "no impediments" to their issuing an "identity passport" for Cook Islanders.
Brown said that NZ's opinion was that it could not be done without affecting the countries' constitutional relationship, however "we believe it can be done and it doesn't affect our relationship".
Cook Islands operates in free association with New Zealand. The country governs its own affairs but New Zealand provides assistance with foreign affairs (upon request), disaster relief and defence.
On Tuesday, 1News Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver reported that, according to a NZ government spokesperson, if Cook Islands went ahead with its proposal, "New Zealand will change its passport regime and any Cook Islanders who applies for a Cook Islands passport will be seen as renouncing the New Zealand one".
PM Brown said: "I was quite shocked when I saw that. So to me it was obvious that what we had claimed that we didn't have any legal impediment to have our passport in place was accurate because it would take New Zealand to change its laws to impact us."
"So that's now a position for us where we don't want to jeopardise our people and the safety and security of Cook Islanders. We will now put this onto the back burner."
When asked for further clarification, Brown said: "I would say that it's off the table at the moment for us."
"New Zealand has bared its teeth. New Zealand government has said that they are willing to go to change the law in New Zealand to punish Cook Islanders. So we're not going to have that.
"The passport has to be off. We'll look at other ways to be able to recognise our own nationality as Cook Islanders.
"We may be looking at something like an identity card as something that's more acceptable to New Zealand for our representation and our recognition as Cook Islanders."
Cook Islands has been in discussions with New Zealand since July of last year regarding a national passport that "recognises our identity", while also ensuring that it addresses NZ's concerns.
"Basically, for us to use it identifying ourselves as Cook Islanders. So, this went to a working group to have a look and see what we could do, have a look at some of the legalities, what legislative requirements might be needed," Brown explained.
The working group looked at it against the backdrop of Cook Islands' constitutional relationship with New Zealand and "didn't see any impediments to us being able to issue an identity passport for Cook Islanders".
PM Brown said the Cook Islands passport proposal was initially discussed with New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters in July of last year, followed by discussions with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, and then again with both of them in November of last year.
He explained NZ's opinion was that it cannot be done without affecting the countries constitutional relationship.
"We came back and said 'Well we believe it can be done and it doesn't affect our relationship'. It would allow us to maintain our free association and New Zealand citizenship but elevate our Cook Island status at the same time.
"We agreed at that point to continue the discussions amongst our officials, to address their concerns and to look at where our justifications came from."
The officials from the two countries met in Rarotonga to discuss this further "and essentially it was from New Zealand a red line, you can't do it".
Brown said NZ was receptive to the idea of an ID card rather than a passport.
Relationship with NZ
Meanwhile, Brown refuted claims that the Cook Islands' relationship with New Zealand had broken down or was on the rocks, saying "it's been very good".
"The relationship with Prime Minister Luxon, with Winston Peters, who in past years with previous governments has been a real friend to the Cook Islanders, particularly with the pension and portability that we resolved a number of years ago. So I think that claim that although we had disagreement over a couple of issues, our relationship remains very strong and we value our relationship with New Zealand."
Brown said the Cook Islands contributes "greatly to the New Zealand economy", with over $200 million in annual purchases of goods and services.
"Recent treasury reports that we've also received also show that our diaspora contributes significantly to the New Zealand economy to the tune of probably more than $200 million a year as well," he said.
"So this misconception that we are reliant or dependent on New Zealand, it's not true, it's not one way. This is a relationship where both of us benefit and in fact New Zealand receives a lot more money through their economy from us than we do from them."
