The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. It is greener where you water it. Water your own backyard and have the most attractive green grass that others will pay to travel to. Focus on what you are good at and get better at it. Do not focus on trying to be average on what you suck at. Ruta Mave writes.

What we are good at as a nation is tourism. We are looking to make half a billion dollars from tourism. We could make it better by being more ecofriendly and environment focused. We could offer high quality, not high quantity tourism as a win-win for all.

What we suck at is making money off high dollar environmental sales where we have the upper advantage but after negotiations, are left holding a bill of debt not sales. Like the purse seine fishing scandal. 

We have the largest marae moana protected area left in the world and we the people didn’t want to sell. But Ben Ponia initialled the deal, then Henry Puna behind closed doors signed with European Union purse seiners who had the worst reputation a deal - for them. Eight years for nine million total. Nine per year would still have been a rip off.

They got to ravage our oceans and strip it bare, of every living thing they could catch legally or illegally to the tune of 16 cents per kilo. We the owners, the guardians, of our ocean pay 25 to 40 dollars per kilo for our own fish, caught fresh by our own fisherman, in our own water, with little carbon foot print. 

That is the ‘deal’ struck by two men who can look out over the golf course or black rock, while we get to look at cans of tuna for four dollars per 185grams because that is all we can afford. One kilo of canned tuna is 22 dollars, either way we have been screwed into paying through our noses because our eyes remain wide shut.

Once again there were marches petitions protests from the people, against this travesty happening, and still it happened.  How can one man who was stood down from public office on full pay due to investigations pending and another man who made more airline flights than Elvis made records, be allowed to get away with blatant non-transparent acts of sabotage against the voter’s voices on purse seining?  How did they do it? They sold you a song, a get rich song and you bought it hook line and sinker. 

Well, the crooners are back. Different singers, singing the same get rich song this time from seabed mining. Interestingly, those most Christian, are joining the choir singing praises to God for the riches he has bestowed upon us. Somehow a get rich quick scheme doesn’t sound like something God intended.  It may well be he hid the rich knowledge of life creation in the depth of the sea in small non-descript nodules so no one would bother them and they would be able to create and maintain the very life we call our own.

Christians do not want to go there, regarding the evolution of life but, if they are indeed made by God and put in the ocean by God, then there must be a reason God put them in the deepest depths of the ocean and not on the land surface where we live and breathe and can easily get our greedy hands upon them.

I sat in the mineral mining symposium on Thursday. I listened to the speaker’s information and someone ask them where is Jesus in their life?  I heard about culture sensitivity and I heard 400 million dollars. I also heard short-term reality for Palau might be 280 dollars with three thousand dollars long term total. I heard Niue would get one dollar. I may be speaking out of context but I bet our government will only talk about the hundreds of millions without highlighting the costs and who gets what at the end of the day.

Government is pushing this campaign through at a fast rate passing reviews every year since 2019. Policies like health, education remain on hold.

Government promised we would get rich from purse seine fishing, lies.  Someone or two probably did - but it wasn’t us.

Someone must be in bed with someone to want to keep pushing this seabed mining through despite the public asking for more proof the mining money will come to the people who live and pay taxes in the Cook Islands.

How many times must the government lie to the people, before they rise up and say you are lying to the people? The answer is blowing in the wind.

November is officially cyclone season and there is a wind coming.