Letters for Friday October 29, 2021

Dear Editor,

A great opinion piece Tata Crocombe (‘Government needs to act now’, Cook Islands News, October 27).

It sometimes appears to be too easy for decision-makers to forget the economic impacts of border closures.

You are right, the worst impact on the economy will be associated with population decline. That is the biggest threat facing the Cook Islands now.

Sally Wyatt

(Cook Islands News website)

Simple solution is open the gates, let people in – why not anyone’s money is good money? But control how, when, why they enter. Fully vaxxed and negative test results to and from, get a plan in place and open, simple.

I heard New Zealand will open travel bubbles with Samoa, Vanuatu, Tonga by Christmas, pending the new system. The Cooks should already be open now.

Why not introduce a quarantine system for short term guests i.e. visitors restricted access until day three negative test return, why something simple takes so long to figure out?

Mr Tata (Crocombe) is a man of business, he deserves to be listened and helped in his bid to reopen the borders.

Steve Seipolt

(Cook Islands News website)

I along with many other prospective tourists reading this are gobsmacked by your article Mr Crocombe. Your over inflated sense of entitlement in regard to what you think you and your country are owed by the NZ government and people in regard to tourism is outrageous to say the least.

Let me remind you that 98 per cent of your population would not be vaccinated at all if it were not for the kindness of the NZ government and taxpayers providing the vaccine free of charge to your country at substantial cost to NZ. Also the millions in aid given freely to help the Cook Islands continue to stay safe while many, many New Zealanders suffer through cold winters living in their cars because they can’t afford a home or to feed their poor children, and they say charity starts at home!

It is not fair that you seem to blame New Zealand and Australia for the state that the Cook Islands now finds itself in because your government has failed to put money into your health system to enable Rarotonga to cope with the likes of Covid or that you have put all of your eggs in the tourism basket. How can any of that be our countries fault? It’s not like we haven’t given the Cooks many millions of dollars over the years to help towards this and I’m sure Australia has done so to.

It is nothing short of insulting that you would seek to blame our countries for the situation you now find yourselves in and if you think that the average NZ tourist who is already looking at paying double the airfare to fly to the Cook Islands that they were pre Covid is going to want to pay another $240-280 per person to run around the countryside getting a pre departure Covid test done 72 hours before travel when a great deal of us are travelling from areas that haven’t seen Covid for over 19 months, you are sorely mistaken.

We will just choose to spend our tourist dollars elsewhere I’m afraid. We are fully vaccinated just like most of you and coming from a Covid free area, that should be enough!

Greg Hansen

(Cook Islands News website)