SMALL PARLIAMENTS: COOK ISLANDS
The streets of Rarotonga, the main island of the Cook Islands.
New Zealand—maybe about 50,000 or 60,000 of them. We like to say we have 18,000 people living in the Cook Islands, because the rest of them are in Australia. And so while it is a very good arrangement, it also has a downside. We cannot offer Cook Islanders that live overseas to come back and support the country, because we do not have the money to pay them. They get more money being overseas. In 2015, we will be celebrating 50 years of self-governing in the Cook Islands. Parliament has a Prime Minister
plus 24 members of Parliament. There are 15 islands in total – 12 of which are inhabited, and represented
in Parliament. The Prime Minister is the leader of the ruling party, which is currently the Cook Islands’ Party (CIP). Each of those islands are so far away from the main island. I come from one of the far north islands and it takes me four hours to get to Parliament, and costs $NZD1,300 one way. So when you begin to think later about engaging with the community, those are some of the challenges for a very small country. It may be small in numbers of people, but there are very big challenges divided by the Pacific Ocean. In order to achieve a stable government in the Cook Islands, it was thought that party-hopping
legislation would fix all the problems and stabilize the Government. However there were problems with this, and legislation was put in place to fix it. It has not however really fixed
the problem because with a majority CIP, and with the Opposition Democratic Party, we do not know where a Member legally fits. One of the problems that I have had to deal with in Parliament is: “Point of Order, Speaker. I am a Democratic Member”. And I respond, “well, I did not know what to say, actually, to be honest. It is not clear. What is he? He sits there, but he voted from here”. Although the constitution of
the Cook Islands that was made by New Zealand in 1964 spells out the three governance areas of Judiciary, Parliament, and the Executive, people do not know what that means in practical terms. So what does this mean for
Parliament to be an entity with its own powers? It is not very clear. What I have found is because things are done a certain way year after year, people just tend to do things without really questioning “is this the right thing to do?” We encounter difficulties in the
separation of powers, in that we are instructed on how we will function, but still have to “provide the best you can,
The Parliamentarian | 2014: Issue One | 29
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