Its not often Tata Crocombe (resort owner) and I have agreed but I found his latest opinion piece in the Cook Islands News sobering and thoughtful with some clear statements on where our country is at and what we need to do now, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.

I’m sure he like many both on this side of Moana nui o kiva and at home will welcome the news that the borders will in fact open on the 13 th of January with bookings filling as we speak. Tata spelled out that tourism makes up 85 per cent of GDP, and in fact, basically funds the government – something I always knew, but maybe never fully appreciated.

He went on to say that every teacher in Rakahanga, nurse in Mangaia, police officer in Aitutaki and every single politician is paid for by taxes earned from tourism and the private sector.

The sobering part of that statement is with little if any income from tourism over the past nearly two years, the government has had to borrow or delve into our deep contingency funds to pay for today by borrowing from tomorrow.

Tomorrows health sector, tomorrows education and in fact the future of our country, our young ones, those still at school or who haven’t even started school to hold up the needs of today – that is another sobering thought. He put it simply when he said the current Government borrowings are against the future earnings of the tourism industry and that the Government is now spending money that the Cook Islands tourism industry has not yet earned.

Interestingly a response in the paper this week to Tata’s letter, from one of those tourists who suffer from a deep and engrained sense of entitlement – ready to tell us Cook Islanders that we should not forget just how much the New Zealand tax payer has done for our little Paradise. I might remind the writer that we have been a constitutional realm country of New Zealand since about 1903 and with that relationship, and evident by our New Zealand passports and citizenship, we are in fact entitled to the rights and privileges of every other New Zealand citizen – be it the right of access to enter or leave, or the right to a vaccine.

In his amnesia he also seems to have forgotten or maybe he just didn’t take the time to find out, while sipping his pina coladas on our beautiful beaches, that the Cook Islands and its people prior to Covid spent on average $200 million a year on New Zealand products from New Zealand suppliers, injecting that money into the New Zealand economy. Or maybe he forgot that one of the largest bills to the Cook Islands taxpayer being the Air New Zealand underwrite prior to Covid was $12 million per year, into the pocket of a New Zealand company and New Zealand economy. I could go on about the 80,000 plus Cook Islanders that live and work and also contribute to the tax income of New Zealand, but I think I have made my point.

I do loathe it when potential tourists say they will take their dollars and go spend it somewhere else because this little colony of the Cook Islands has usurped itself just a little too much and maybe needs to remember who they should be thankful to and why.

History will show that from the time of our being a New Zealand colony and then a constitutional partner in free association, we have more than adequately pulled our weigh, be it 500 men for World War I, men for World War II, the filling of factory floors in the 1950s and 1970s, or the three Cook Islands Members of Parliament with one being a Cabinet Minister.

What is actually insulting, is when we stand up for what we believe in or in the defence of our country to be told by letter writers that they will take their money elsewhere and that we should remember our place. So with the announced freedom day the tourism sector has been asking for on January 13 th , we will welcome planes full of families and tourists. I do hope between now and then our disgruntled tourist takes this opportunity to check his attitude or maybe he can sip his next Pina Colada on a beach watching the sun set somewhere further north instead.