Transcript
MALAKAI KOLOAMATANGI: The direction to buy the helicopters, it was a pretty major issue, considering the cost of the helicopters and the impact it would have had on Tokelau. I think it was a mjaor step to take and civil servants were not responsible for that. It should come from the Tokelauan adminstration and it is such a big purchase that, surely, if you make the decision to buy the helicopters then of course it will show somewhere when the accounting comes around. So it is too big to be decided by two civil servants and too big to hide.
DON WISEMAN: Well civil servants are not going to be writing the cheques and clearly cheques were signed and the helicopters were bought. This story came to light after Murray McCully apparently through a tantrum when he found out about it and it's almost the politicians in Tokelau panicked after that.
MK: New Zealand is responsible of course for Tokelau and invests a lot of funds in Tokelau and the former foreign minister would have seen Tokelau as a specialo responsibility. Probably he wanted to know what was going on. He wanted to follow everything that Tokelau was doing and I think that Toklauan politicians and Tokelauan leaders must haave, as you say, panicked, but I think the issue here is not only about how this was done but also the necessity to provide some form of sector transportation for Tokelauans. Air transportation would be very well received and would help trade, it would help tourism. So there was a need there. I think it was the way this was done.
DW: In terms of this transport, New Zealand has spend a lot of money and it appears that a lot of this has been wasted, because there is a lot of criticism that the current boat, the Mataliki is not the best boat for them, that they are going to need a second boat - I think a second one is being built - and it is still a two day or a day a a half trip to Apia, so definitely flying in has to be the way around it and it can be done, I understand.
MK: Yes it can be done. The ferry service of course is very welcome but air transportation would have been better, either use helicopters, or maybe a sea place or something and that would improve things dramatically. I think the link to Samoa and so on I think will be really good for Tokelau. So I think New Zealand has to bit the bullet here and look seriously at how it can help Tokelau to overcome the deficit of the distance, from major isalnds, which is Samoa, it provides the gateway to and from Tokelau.
DW: New Zealand has spent tens of millions of dollars on transport to and from Tokelau over the last ten years or so, but to do this it is going to need to provide a wholel lot more isn't it? But it's got to bite the bullet - these people are New Zealand citizens after all.
MK: They are and I am afraid that this is the consequence of colonialism. We are seeing it not only in Tokelau, we are see it in Europe, in France with its former African colonies. New Zealand has tried to do its best to encourage Tokelau to go it alone but of course there are problems in Tokelau, not only the economic ones but as we see in this saga, there is a political issue as well with management. New Zealand unfortunately has a responsibility as the country that is responible for Tokelau. That's just the way it things are and New Zealand just has to take leadership but also the leaders in Tokelau have to come to the table as well and make that this doesn't happen again. because after all said and done it is the New Zealand taxpayers who funding the investment in the aid to Tokelau. But there need to be better structures in place to ensure that it doesn't happen again.
DW: In terms of these better structures - now financing for Tokelau comes out of the foreign aid budget but how can that be if it's part of New Zealand? It should be in Internal Affairs.
MK: Yeah of course that's where it should be. The administrator of Tokelau perhaps should not be sitting in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, should be sitting somewhere elsxe. You get the same structure when France makes transfers to its French territories in French Polynesia. They are halfway around the world in the Pacific but they are part of France. So New Zealand has to actually decide how to do this properly.
