Vale Sir Tom Davis
When Radio Australia's Bruce Hill first started out in Pacific journalism in 1993, he was told that there was one subject above all others that Pacific island people were interested in, and which he should always pay attention to - the deaths of great men. Sir Tom Davis was one.

When people who have been towering Pacific leaders in their time eventually leave this world, their lives and achievements are invariably celebrated and held up as an example for others to follow.

Usually their stature is compared negatively to the current generation of leaders and phrases like "we shall not see their like again" are employed.

Often there is some truth to this.

Leaders like Tonga's Queen Salote, Samoan head of state Malietoa Tanumafili, or Fiji's Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna are sometimes celebrated even more in death than they were in life.

And sometimes their true worth was not recognised until it was too late.

That's the accusation which has been hurled at the current Democratic Party dominated Cook Islands government in the wake of the death of former prime minister Sir Tom Davis.

Sir Tom was one of the most interesting and challenging figures of the founding generation of post colonial era Pacific political leaders.

In many ways he seemed to exemplify in his personal life the Pacific region's growing sense of independence.

He was the first Cook Islander to qualify as a medical doctor, and later became the fist local to head a government department, becoming chief medical officer.

The days of white faces running everything is the islands were coming to a close, and it was Pacific graduates like Sir Tom Davis who paved the way for that happen.

He went on to significant achievements in medicine outside the Pacific as well, getting an advanced degree from Harvard University and later joining the US space program and working on the effects of extreme cold on the human body.

Returning home to Rarotonga, Sir Tom founded the Democratic Party, and was prime minister of Cook Islands for nearly nine years.

As well as his achievements in the wider world of medicine and politics, Sir Tom was always in touch with his traditional Polynesian cultural roots, maintaining a practical interest in the reviving of voyaging canoes and preserving traditional navigational techniques.

Not many prime ministers could diagnose an illness and prescribe a cure, while also carving an ocean-going canoe - but Sir Tom Davis could.

He wasn't necessarily easy to deal with, as several regional leaders could attest to.

Also, he didn't always get on with people easily, and this may have led to what's become the biggest scandal surrounding his death - they way Sir Tom was treated in his later years.

The brutal fact is that he died in poverty, and had to keep working as a doctor right up to the end.

The man was 90, had made huge contributions to his country, and yet he died without receiving what even his opponents feel was due recognition.

It was his political rival, former prime minister Sir Geoffrey Henry, who blew the whistle on this, saying that he could not bite his tongue and stay silent while people eulogised Sir Tom Davis in death, while remaining guilty, as he put it, or shamefully neglecting him in his old age.

I asked Sir Geoffrey why this was, when I had always been lectured by Pacific island people about the wonderful care and respect that older people are treated with.

He told me not to believe it, and that there are several elder statesmen, not just in Cook islands but around the Pacific, who face what ought to be their golden years with little or no financial support.

Sir Tom Davis, who researched the effects of extreme cold on the human body, probably knew about the tales that some Eskimo tribes in the artic are said to set their elders adrift on an ice floe to freeze to death once they can no longer contribute.

The Pacific really ought to treat its former leaders with more warmth.

< back