TVNZ gagged

Press Freedom

By Lisa Williams

If the whole exercise was planned as a publicity stunt, they couldn’t have timed it better. Cook Islands Immigration chief Tutai Toru issued a directive to TVNZ Assignment reporter Rod Vaughn during their April visit that the cameras were to stop filming for the rest of the teams stay.

The reason? No work permit had been issued authorising the film crew to carry out their work in the Cooks.

The four crew led by producer Daine Shanahan had been working on a story about the Cook Islands economy for six days before receiving the short letter on their last day of filming, so it mattered less to their work than the problems with getting the Prime Minister on camera.

TVNZ’s head of News and Current Affairs, Sean Brown, was a little less amused. “I think it’s a very convenient action in the end to say ‘hey, you don’t have the paperwork for this,” Mr Brown told a reporter.

He said it was very unusual for any country to ask a visiting journalist to get a work permit, but Toru says TVNZ should be well aware of the Cooks Immigration requirements.

A team from the same station came to Rarotonga for filming back in the early 80s, and were told by the then Immigration minister Sir Thomas Davies that if they didn’t switch from visitors visas to work permits they would have to leave.

“I think they are well aware of our pol icy,” says Toru.

“The point here is that in the passport their visas clearly state that they’re not to do anything while they’re here.”

As it was, the TVNZ crews arrival and subsequent work in the Cook Islands was no big secret. Both Shanahan and Vaughn say they had written to the Prime Minister from New Zealand and requested an interview. The answer they got back was sorry, too busy.

Then, in a surprise announcement to Parliament a week just days before the team arrived, the Prime Minister accused Rod Vaughn and TVNZ of being a front for a CIA plot to subvert government.

He explained that while he could have blocked them from entering the country, he wouldn’t - because there was nothing that the team could find that would enable the plot to succeed.

The public announcements about the team should have been the clue to Immigration authorities that someone was coming, but when they did arrive, the TVNZ crew were issued with visitors stamps in the passports, valid for 31 days.

The problem, Tom says, is media and other professionals who come into the country on visitors permits, do their work, and leave without the authorities being aware of anything.

He says the Cook Islands Entry, Residency and Departure Act clearly make it illegal for any person to “engage in the commercial enterprise” while here on a visitors permit. It’s the monitoring of the whole exercise that demands some honesty from people here for work rea sons, he says.

“The point here is that in the passport their visas clearly state that they’re not to do anything while they are here!’

Which means another government body, the Cook Islands Tourist Authority, has been happily assisting media repre sentatives, travel writers and documentary crews and all kinds of pro fessionals here on visitors permits to promote the Cooks as a holiday destina tions - and break the law.

From a tourism point of view, the paperwork involved in processing work permits doesn’t sound too promising especially with CITA director Chris Wong expecting another TVNZ crew doing a travel feature for “Open Home” to film at the end of last month. In the last 12 months, Wong puts a conservative guesstimate on about 60 media visitors to the Cooks who’ve come to the Tourist

Authority for guidance. Half that number came through in the last four months.

The people who come here working to promote the Cooks are a modern day sign that the Immigration restrictions on work permits are just not holding up, admits Toru. He says a revamped Immigration Act is being set up for tabling in Parliament come 1996 - mainly to “keep up with the times and the num ber of people coming into the country”.

At the moment the law dictates that anyone who hits the workbooks rather than the beach on a visitors permit can be prosecuted. That’s not good PR, but it’s a problem that’s gone on for years without some decisive tackling.

For tourism, the travel writers and crews that come to the Cooks are a bonus for the industry, which gives these media people the best treatment it can in terms of something they can write about.

“It raises the issue of whether or not we want them to come here without any requirement, because they come and see the destination for what it is and they go and write about it,” says Chris Wong.

“And I must say all the articles have been positive about the destination - you can’t force them into anything; they say it how they want to say it.”

Will enforcing the work permit rule affect the media coverage in travel maga zines? Yes, says Wong.

“These people’s interests are solely tourism-oriented - they are featuring hol iday programs and they’re not about to get involved in any political issues.”

But while the Immigration Department continues to come under flak on the local front for not giving the same kind of scrutiny to overseas insurance sales reps, officials, VIPs and anyone that’s also nipped through on a visitors permit, the Media poses the best example of abuse of the system, says Toru - even though he denies making an example of the TVNZ team.

And while he maintains the Prime Minister had nothing to do with his letter to Rod Vaughn and the TVNZ crew, his final comment is a telling one: “We can’t allow anyone to come into the country and write something nasty about the place.” ■