Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown, left, and Foreign Affairs Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters in Rarotonga. 8 February 2024 Photo: RNZ Pacific / Eleisha Foon
The Cook Islands has backed down from its controversial passport proposal after New Zealand warned it was "willing to punish Cook Islanders", its prime minister, Mark Brown, says.
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.
A proposal to give citizen its own passports - rather than the current New Zealand ones - 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.
However, Brown's proposal announced last year was shot down by Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who had previously said that the Cook Islands government needed to "be careful what you wish for" because a new passport would threaten Rarotonga's constitutional ties with Aotearoa.
"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," Brown told Cook Islands News in an exclusive interview on Wednesday.
"The passport has to be off. We'll look at other ways to be able to recognise our own nationality as Cook Islanders," he said.
He said Cook Islands will be looking an identity card "as something that's more acceptable to New Zealand for our representation and our recognition as Cook Islanders".
Brown is travelling to China at the end of this month where he is expected to discuss and potentially sign an agreement on closer cooperation with Beijing.
Peters told Morning Report on Friday no one was challenging the right of the Cook Islands people to determine their own destination.
But Peters said neither New Zealand nor the Cook Island people know what is in that agreement between the Cook Islands and China.
"The reality is we've been not told what the nature of the arrangements that they seek in Beijing might be," he told Morning Report.
"And instead of the arrangements being organised and in the public before they go, it is being said that he will announce it...when it's completed. Well, there's your answer to your question."
Peters said the issue is not with the Cook Islands seeking a new pathway to economic growth, but rather the process for how that is achieved.
Peter said New Zealand have exercised every opportunity to engage with the Cook Islands, and that will be incontestable when the facts are known.
"When things happen that we have no idea about, then our duty is to ensure being accountable to the New Zealand people and New Zealand taxpayer and the New Zealand parliament that we are informed of it and that we, make our people aware of what we're doing," he said.
Peter said New Zealand is determined to ensure their relationship with the Cook Islands continues in the same fashion it was first agreed upon.
It also comes after a proposal by the Realm country to create its own separate passport, a move Peters said blindsided "very concerned" Cook Islands citizens.
"To do that, then your relationship with New Zealand has to be changed, and that will require us to consult with all the Cook Island people in the Cook Islands and living abroad as well.
"It's our constitutional requirement for that to happen. It's what we would do as a country ourselves on such a major issue.
"And now, of course, it's waved into a new economical, political, or otherwise arrangement that details, shape, and framework we have no idea of with, China. But that wasn't where it started from."
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