Brown discusses CI depopulation

Wearing his internal affairs minister hat on Saturday morning, Mark Brown addressed a roomful of Pacific journalists on the oft-discussed issue of depopulation in the Cook Islands.

He traced the depopulation trend to the 1950s exodus of Cook Islanders searching for opportunities in New Zealand’s freezer works and forestry industries, and followed it through the early 70s, when the construction of the international airport prompted another wave of outward migration.

That Cook Islanders can so easily access the job markets of New Zealand and Australia makes the Cook Islands particularly vulnerable to depopulation. But while it threatens to handicap the country’s economy, the linkage to the New Zealand labour market is too valuable to forego.

”One of the things we have to understand is thatthe workplace for the Cook Islands is not just the Cook Islands, it’s the region,“ Brown said.

”For us, because of our access to countries like Australia and New Zealand, we have to accept the fact that people will move where the opportunities are and make sure we structure our strategies for employment (and) economic development with that understanding. We have to accept that and appreciate it.“

The result is that the population of the northern group (1100) has dropped by half since 1996 (2500), and of the southern group by a third.

The challenge for government, then, is to give Cook Islanders – who can easily work in New Zealand (minimum wage $13.50) or Australia (minimum wage AU$17) – incentives to stay and work at home.

The employment gap left by emigrants is being filled by workers from the Philippines and Fiji. Brown estimated about 3000 foreign workers are currently employed in the Cook Islands, and said that those workers tend to send remittances to their home islands and countries.

The result is that the Cook Islands has a ‘negative remittances’ economy.

To mitigate the destructive impact of depopulation, government has to carefully manage transportation – ”We can get a barge, we can get a boat, we can subsidise the cost of a regular shipping service to ensure every fortnight there’s a boat travelling around the islands“ – and related infrastructure like airports and harbours on Rarotonga and particularly the outer islands. It also has to invest in energy, which for businesses is second only to wages in terms of expenses.