Winston is doing the right thing with the Cooks

Radio NZ reports:

A geopolitical analyst says Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should have stepped in to fix New Zealand’s diplomatic spat with Cook Islands, as Foreign Minister Winston Peters is making things worse.

The latest development in the breakdown between the two nations has seen New Zealand pause an additional $11 million in funding to the Cook Islands. That brings the total amount of funding paused to $29.8m over two years.

I disagree. Rewarding what the Cooks PM has done by backing down would be a mistake.

The New Zealand government believed it should have been consulted over the agreements while Brown disagreed. Cook Islands is a realm country of New Zealand, which means it governs its own affairs, but New Zealand provides some assistance with foreign affairs, disaster relief and defence.

Geoffrey Miller, an analyst at the Democracy Project, said Brown and Peters seem completely at-odds with each other, and Peters’ approach was not working.

“He’s not solving it – it’s just getting worse,” he said.

“And Winston Peter’s only solution, it seems, is to escalate further. And that’s when I think the prime minister needs to come in.”

I take the opposite view. We should escalate even further.

Part of being in the Realm of New Zealand gets you the high benefit of automatic NZ citizenship. If the Cooks Islands PM wants to do secret deals with China behind our back, then they should understand that they can’t remain in the Realm of New Zealand.

I’d grant the Cook Islands full independence from New Zealand. Then they can cosy up all they want to China and become a funded micro-state of China. Maybe they can even negotiate Chinese citizenship for all their residents. But possibly that won’t be quite as attractive as NZ citizenship.