Niue wants more from New Zealand

Updated September 29, 2008 11:43:50

Just three months into his term as Premier of Niue Toke Talagi says more needs to be done by New Zealand for his tiny island nation. Mr Talagi says some projects set out in the 2004 Halavaka Agreement implemented in the wake of cyclone Heta's devastation still have not been implemented. He says more needs to be done to encourage tourism to help boost the economy. The Premier is also the newly appointment chair of the Pacific Islands Forum.

Presenter:Geraldine Coutts
Speaker:Niue Premier and Chair of the Pacific Islands Forum Toke Talagi .

TALAGI: Clearly it's been a very busy time and the additional responsibilities with respect to the forum is creating some interesting times as far as I'm concerned. Our expectations with respect to Niue is basically to build Niue's economy up as quickly as possibly, using assistance from New Zealand initially and any of the countries that are prepared to provide assistance to us.

The difficulty we have had up until now with the assistance from New Zealand, which is based on an agreement signed in 2004, which we call Halavaka Agreement has not been as forthcoming as we would have liked, and therefore there have been delays in the execution of some of the projects that we would have liked to have done over the past three years. For example, tourism, two million dollars was earmarked for tourism development in 2004-2005 and nothing has happened since. So those are the things that we would like to seek clarification and a way forward with the New Zealand officials, as well as the New Zealand Government and then we'll take whatever we need to do from that point.

I feel that it's extremely important that we establish Niue's economy on a sound footing, especially in relation to tourism and fishing, as well as nunu.

COUTTS: Mr Talagi, we know that population is an issue for Niue and there have been different carrots dangled for people. I mean portable superannuation I think a long time ago, seven or eight years ago was introduced and other schemes have also been introduced. What can you do about Niue's population, which stands somewhere between 1,000 and 1500.

TALAGI: I don't believe in fact that we can do anything other than to do what may be happening in regions around New Zealand and that is to provide incentive and investment opportunities for people to enable them to view Niue as a place for investment for themselves, investment in terms of seeking jobs, seeking investment opportunities, facilities and so on, as well as investing their time here with the children, with the health and medication services that we have.

It isn't easy as we all know, but we also note with interest, and I note with interest that in 2004, when we visited New Zealand, they had at that time established what they called regional projects, which allowed them to develop the regions. Now one of the outcomes of that has been the fact that, for example, in the west coast of New Zealand, a lot of tourism development has taken place and the population has started to go back to the West Coast. So we're looking at something like that. You can't just talk to people and ask them to come back to Niue. You have got to give them opportunities, which are similar in many respects to the opportunity they would have in New Zealand. And I would suspect that in fact that the opportunities Niue would be better because the lifestyles are better.

COUTTS: And but what tourism opportunities are there on Niue that can be developed?

TALAGI: Accommodation as well as services, tours and so on. There are opportunities there. We're looking at building up to about 200 rooms, extra rooms for the island and we are looking at building tourism numbers up to 10,000 a year. That should be sufficient for people to make a reasonable living from, even if they are building as some of them have done now, three to five units at a time.