April 30 2003

By Michael Field

 - Yes, it is true, there is a place that is clean and pleasant, hardly any crime, nobody bothers to lock their home or car, the food is fresh and plentiful and the people are dreamy, relaxed and beautiful.

They drive slowly on empty roads and for entertainment they are given to watching tropical sunsets playing the guitar

The problem is that the people have left.

Niue, one of the world’s least known states, now realises that their independence won from New Zealand in 1974 may have to be surrendered. Fewer than 1,800 people now live on the island; the other 20,000 Niueans live in New Zealand.

Controversially the Niuean Government of Premier Young Vivian, 67, now wants to knock down the dozens of abandoned homes around the island. Many Niueans in New Zealand speak darkly of spirits of family ancestors guarding the homes still.

Niue -- called by its people “the rock” -- is the kind of island trivial pursuit quizzes are made of: knowing it is the world largest emerging atoll is the bonus answer. It is a single island of 260 square kilometres (104 square miles), 2,200 kilometres (1,364 miles) north of here, placing it more or less equidistance from Samoa to the north and Tonga to the south.

While it is 69 kilometres (50 miles) round, it has fewer than about 10 metres (30 feet) of beach as most of the island rises 30 metres (100 feet) straight out of the deep Pacific. Not only does it guarantee awesome vistas for everybody on the top, its rugged limestone cliffs off fantastic deep caves and fishing like nobody else has.

Its two-shop capital, Alofi, sits atop the cliff with the Fale Fono or Parliament perched over the edge. If debate is dull politicians can look out on passing humpback whales.

Its pre-history is a mystery; its people are presumed to be Tongans and Samoans who sailed the Pacific widely before Europeans showed up. Its name, Niue, means “here are coconuts”. The otherwise sensible Captain James Cook was the first white man to show up in 1774 and he named it “Savage Island”, seemingly after a local biffed a spear (and too this day Niueans are pretty deft at this art) at him.

Niue reluctantly became a British protectorate in 1900 and was irritated a year later when London gave it to Wellington as a reward for New Zealand‘s contribution to the Anglo-Boer War.

The relationship reached is nadir in 1954 when, in New Zealand’s only political assassination, Hector Larsen, the nominal colonial governor was hacked to death by locals who objected to his ways with local boys.

Independence of a kind -- its title is “self-governing in free association with New Zealand” -- was quietly won in 1974 with its citizens retaining New Zealand citizenship. Consequently, most of its people moved here.

Recently the population stabilised around the 2,000 mark, mainly as a result of appalling airline services through Tonga that meant small unreliable propeller aircraft. But last year Samoa’s Polynesian Airlines Boeing 737 began calling by weekly and while a handful of adventurous tourists went in the last of the locals have begun going out.

The Niue Weekly News in its latest issue says discussion on re-integration of Niue with New Zealand is being informally discussed, although they say it is a sensitive issue.

Unnamed people in Niue and Auckland “say the depopulation situation on Niue is now at crisis point“, the News says.

New Zealand diplomatic sources say it is seen as inevitable that Niue will cease to be independent, and will return to the fold.

The previous government of Premier Sonny Lakatani -- a former sergeant in the New Zealand Army -- created a crisis when he gave a German-Panamanian company the exclusive rights to set up a tax haven operation on the island. When international monetary organisations tried to close it up, the pressure went on Wellington

Some might argue the question of independence is academic: Niue is taking over New Zealand. One of the highest profile public servants in the current SARS climate in New Zealand is the director of health -- a Niuean, Doctor Colin Tukuitonga.

But a leading opposition politician in Niue, O'Love Jacobsen, told the Weekly News that the Niue economy is noticeably depressed and more people are leaving each week. She said many ideas had been tried to draw people back to Niue, but nothing had worked.

“But right now, to expect the few of us that are here to all rush out and start planting vanilla or this, that and the other thing is unrealistic," she said.

Sitting in a cold Wellington winter and dreaming of returning to a tropical house, someday, is a powerful attraction.

The latest issue of the Listener magazine in New Zealand says Niue is a “uniquely local contradiction” in the modern world.

“Beside the fact that there are no bugs or animals than can harm you, there is almost no crime,” writer Charles Cooper relates.

“And no destitution, prostitution, graffiti, drugs, traffic lights and, joy of joys, no US fast-food joints.”

No a bad place to take over again really.

Copyright: Michael Field