High Cost of Giving

Oranges to NZ Cook Is. Grants, £103,000; Maui Pomare, £55,000

OUR great - grandfathers who believed, with reason, that colonies were assets, would see little sense in the way these affairs are managed to-day. In the South Pacific it costs the taxpayers of Australia and New Zealand millions to keep their territories financially afloat, but, fortunately, most tax payers seem not to know about it.

Australia spends millions annually in Papua and New Guinea where before the war they got along with an annual grant to Papua of £30,000 or £40,000.

New Zealand is in much the same boat. It was revealed in Parliament, in Wellington, recently, that where as before the war the Cook Group cost NZ about £17,000 annually on grants and subsidies, last year education alone in the Group cost £43,000; Health, £46,000; and Public Works, £37,000. The Cook Islands grant for 1950-51 is £103,899.

Last year, says a report to NZ Parliament the islands (presumably still referring to the Cook Islands only) imported £473,000 worth of goods and exported £228,759 worth.

The Government apparently makes up the difference between income and expenditure.

The only benefit the New Zealand taxpayer gets from the ownership of the Cook Group is an inadequate supply of what must be the most expensive oranges in the world.

Apart from the grants quoted above, it cost the Government last year £55,109 to keep their ship Maui Pomare on the NZ-Cook Is. run in order that oranges could be brought to the Dominion. In 1949-50, Maui Pomare’s loss was £29,000 and in 1948-49, £52,000.

It was expected, by the NZ Gov ernment and others, that the intro duction of the USS Co.’s new Tofua would release Matua for the Cook Islands fruit trade, but this is not to be (see elsewhere this issue).