Kia Orana Editor, Poor Mark Brown is simply out of touch with reality.

He doesn't realise that he spends a lot of time with one foot on the ground and the other in the air running around begging for financial aid.

Sadly, this hard earned Non-cook Island taxpayer's money is never appreciated. Just a couple of examples below:

1.      Solar systems installed in the Cook Islands were fully funded with grants and the government never thought about saving for the eventual replacement. 'Mark Brown's words". Instead they're now on the hunt for another grant.  What happened to 2 feet on the ground?

2.      $7,000,000.00 of hard working New Zealand taxpayers money given to the Cook Islanders to beautify Avarua waterfront. Seriously?  We're not able to do that ourselves?

Would love to see the breakdown of the expenditure because $7,000,000.00 is a lot of money.

The best the government has done to beautify the waterfront is line it up with tyres and planted terevete complemented with free range weeds.

Terevete has a very short life, needs a lot of water and is totally inferior to our beautiful Tiare Maori.  They even adopted the name terevete for part of the Avarua waterfront.  Avarua is the only word suitable for the area. Thank you very much.

The $2,000,000.00 about to be wasted on celebrating 60 years of learning how to stand on 2 feet need to be injected into the police force, education and health.  Reason is, we're still on one foot. Ignorant Members of Parliament, there’s an election around the corner. Your voters will be waiting with your verdict.

Yours sincerely, Ellena Tavioni.