Mark Brown, Cook Islands prime minister, left, and Winston Peters, foreign affairs minister in Rarotonga, February 2024. (Photo: RNZ Pacific/Eleisha Foon)
New Zealand’s aid freeze to the Cook Islands exposes the fragile foundations of Pacific sovereignty and a widening trust gap between the two countries, writes law lecturer Sione Tekiteki.
The freezing of nearly $20 million in aid to the Cook Islands by foreign affairs minister Winston Peters marks more than a diplomatic disagreement. It also exposes the fragile foundations of Pacific sovereignty and the widening trust gap between “Realm” partners.
At the heart of the dispute is the Cook Islands’ decision to sign a strategic partnership with China, a move Wellington claims breaches the consultation obligation under a 2001 agreement between the two countries. But that agreement — the Joint Centenary Declaration, which marked 100 years since the Cook Islands became part of the Realm of New Zealand — isn’t a legal treaty. It’s a political understanding, framed within the broader relationship of free association.
But behind this language of consultation and national interest is a question that rarely gets raised: When New Zealand makes its own strategic decisions, does it consult the Cook Islands?
For decades, New Zealand — alongside its partners in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (Australia, the US, the UK, and Canada) — has been quietly surveilling Pacific states. In 2015, for example, documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that New Zealand’s signals intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), has been conducting surveillance on Pacific nations, including Fiji, Sāmoa, Solomon Islands, French Polynesia and Tonga, and sharing that data with its Five Eyes allies.
At the time, it was argued that New Zealand has a right to spy on Pacific nations, which it has been doing for decades, because “corruption, self-interest, and idiocy stalks their capitals.”
While the Waihopai spy domes — long symbolic of New Zealand’s intelligence gathering — were dismantled in 2022, GCSB operations continue through other means: New Zealand remains fully engaged in intelligence-sharing and surveillance as part of Five Eyes.
Surveillance of Pacific nations isn’t conducted solely by our so-called traditional allies — the Pacific is watched by everyone, including China. It’s debatable whether Pacific leaders are ever fully informed about what’s being collected and shared under these highly classified arrangements.
And whatever happens with the agreement in the future, it’s clear that the Cooks will continue to be surveilled by New Zealand. As the director-general of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service said in the aftermath of the signing of the Cook Islands-China agreement: “The Cook Islands is developing deeper relationships with other parties. This will necessitate an even stronger focus from my agency on national security risks.”
New Zealand was aware of the pending Cook Islands-China agreement and even sent intelligence officials to advise the Cook Islands’ prime minister, Mark Brown. This suggests that the issue here isn’t simply about consultation — it’s also about defiance.
As geopolitical competition heats up across the Pacific, so too does the race to strengthen security, intelligence and surveillance capabilities. Everyone claims the moral high ground, but few act with transparency or genuine openness. That’s why “consultation” has become such a sensitive term. It’s driven less by mutual respect and more by strategic insecurity.
And yet, the Cook Islands, in seeking to diversify its relationships, is being scolded for failing to consult. Under the principles of free association, both New Zealand and the Cook Islands are expected to consult each other on foreign affairs, defence and security issues — especially when one party’s actions may affect the other.
But in practice, the expectation is one-sided. Does New Zealand consult the Cook Islands on its own sensitive security arrangements, such as Five Eyes intelligence sharing, cyber-surveillance activities, or strategic dialogues with AUKUS (Australia, UK, US) or QUAD (a security group involving the US, Japan, Australia, and India)? It’s doubtful — unless it’s in New Zealand’s interests.
If what the Cook Islands does affects New Zealand, then surely what New Zealand does affects the Cook Islands. But the reality is that one side retains the upper hand.
New Zealand behaves less like a partner and more like a strategic guardian from whom the Cook Islands must seek permission. This power imbalance speaks to a deeper truth: Pacific nations are often treated as never fully “sovereign” actors because their choices are already highly constrained.
This is the bind facing Cook Islands PM Mark Brown. He may be ready to test the limits of strategic autonomy, but his people may not be willing to follow, especially when New Zealand starts waving its aces: First, it was passports, and now it’s aid.
These are powerful levers. They underpin social protections and access to jobs, healthcare, education, and migration opportunities for thousands of Cook Islanders. When those benefits are put at risk, the backlash is swift. We saw this after the China deal was signed, with protests and a vote of no confidence in the Cook Islands parliament. The outcry wasn’t just about the agreement. It was what people feared they might lose.
The fear reflects external pressure, yes. But it also reveals something internal: a deep sense of dependency, shaped over generations. It’s why the requirement to “consult” functions less as a shared duty and more as a tool of conditional sovereignty. It’s a reminder of who ultimately holds the stronger hand.
Yes, China’s actions in the Pacific are a cause for concern. But it’s not just China. New Zealand, along with our so-called traditional partners, has backed exclusive security groupings like AUKUS, QUAD and the Partners in the Blue Pacific, often without meaningful Pacific participation.
This isn’t only about western double standards or China’s assertiveness.
Pacific governments are not passive victims. They are attempting to assert agency, to renegotiate the terms of engagement, and to exercise their right to choose in the face of intensifying climate, economic, social and strategic pressures.
But Pacific sovereignty is often rehearsed in rhetoric rather than realised in practice. When the Cook Islands signed an agreement with Beijing, it did so knowing the risk. That the risk eventuated so quickly is telling.
This isn’t the first time in 2025 that New Zealand has leveraged its aid. Earlier this year, it made similar threats to Kiribati after a diplomatic snub involving a missed meeting between Winston Peters and President Maamau.
New Zealand appears to be calculating that a harder line is justified in the current geopolitical climate. But in doing so, it risks losing something valuable: the moral authority it once had as a trusted partner, highly respected in the region for its low-key diplomacy.
Today, the Pacific is crowded with surveillance, public showings of assertiveness, and entrenched dependency. China courts Pacific nations with bilateral deals, and traditional partners respond with conditional aid and diplomatic pressure. Pacific governments try to assert themselves, making choices in their best interests, only to be reminded of their place. And each player insists that they’re just defending their own interests, leaving little room for mutual trust.
Until the region confronts the deeper questions of power, surveillance, and what genuine consultation really means, Pacific sovereignty will remain a performance: carefully managed, externally monitored, and shaped by the expectation of others.
Sione Tekiteki is a senior law lecturer at AUT and a former director at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat.
Sione Tekiteki is a senior lecturer at the Auckland University of Technology Law School. He was previously the director of governance and engagement at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat. He has over 20 years of experience in the Pacific, in the fields of international relations and regional governance.
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Fa’afetai lava Sione!
A great article on a matter of significant constitutional interest.
Although (as you point out) not a legal treaty, the Joint Centenary Declaration nonetheless marked an important juncture in the Cook Islands’ evolution towards full independence (sovereignty) from Aotearoa NZ.
The Declaration explicity refers to:
· the Cook Islands and New Zealand as “two countries” (six mentions);
· both as “equal states independent in the conduct of their own affairs”;
· “the Cook Islands (interacting) with the international community as a sovereign and independent state”;
· “the… Cook Islands (possessing) the capacity to enter into treaties and other international agreements in its own right with
governments and regional and international organisations.”;
· the Cook Islands government having “full legal and executive competence in respect of its own defence and security”;
and
· New Zealand’s constitutional role being to assist the Cook Islands “on the delegated authority, and as an agent or
facilitator at the specific request of, the Cook Islands” in matters of its foreign affairs, defence and security “and not (as) a
qualification of Cook Islands’ statehood” (abridged).
If the Declaration did not mean that the Cook Islands was now a sovereign, independent state responsible for conducting all of its own affairs, including foreign affairs and defence arrangements, then the Declaration has served only to create constitutional confusion and uncertainty – which is now manifest.
The Declaration was punctuated with references to consultation between the Cook Islands and New Zealand. But there was nothing in it that explicitly bound the Cook Islands to consult with, and, by implication, to get New Zealand’s prior approval to the conduct of its own foreign affairs and defence arrangements. Nor, of course, is “getting permission” what “consultation” means.
That the Cook Islands apparently did not “consult” NZ at all before Mark Brown’s visit to Beijing to sign the agreements with China that he did is one thing.
But neither, as you have rightly pointed out, has NZ kept its end of the agreement to consult the Cook Islands on the range of matters that NZ undertook in the Declaration to do so.
Either the Cook Islands is constitutionally what the Joint Centennial Declaration, signed by the then Cook Islands and NZ Prime Ministers, said it is – or it is not.
It might be helpful if the NZ government could perhaps spit out some clarification on this apparent impasse created in significant measure by the Declaration that it co-signed.
Wherever things head from here, it seems unlikely that relations between the Cook Islands and New Zealand will be eased back into the relatively untroubled waters where they were previously moored. For one thing, the Cook Islands government has now given the 2001 Declaration its sea legs.
It also seems unlikely that the Cook Islands will find it possible to be a sovereign, independent state while remaining within the Realm of New Zealand. That is something the Cook Islands and New Zealand governments might have given themselves greater pause to think about before they drew up and signed the Joint Centennial Declaration.
This patriachal and patronising act by NZ of withholding the Cook Islands’ “pocket money” cannot do other than to underscore an ongoing if not widening rift between what the Declaration describes as “the two States”.
For nor is it likely that the agreements signed between China and the Cook Islands can now be unsigned.
Nigel Allardyce
Malo aupito for your thoughtful reflections, Sione.
“But in doing so, it risks losing something valuable: the moral authority it once had as a trusted partner, highly respected in the region for its low-key diplomacy.”
Oiaue/Aue! I felt saddened by NZ’s crude use of its aid power. Perhaps I was naive. I hoped NZ would continue to find a solution adopting the Pacific way/myth of low key talanoa in private hui/fono…
‘ofa atu, Ma’ake
Malo aupito, Sione! NZ’s attitude to Pacific Island Countries, especially members of PIF, is so 19th century, and we need to speak up and stand up for ourselves and remind Wellington we are no longer beholden to that Pakeha colonial control!
Clearly the relationship between New Zealand and the Cook Islands is not an equal partnership as it should be. The reasons why New Zealand is not prepared to enter into a relationship based on mutual respect and equality are obvious.
First, because New Zealand subscribes to the bully theory of international relations, whereby the larger powers dictate to smaller states. To give credit, New Zealand takes a very consistent position on the bully principle. It cringes before the UK, US and even Australia, then tries to stand over smaller states like Kiribati and the Cook Islands.
Second, because we have this constitutional monstrosity called the Realm of New Zealand which brings New Zealand under the sway of the UK, and, in its turn, the Cook Islands under New Zealand.
The only way forward is for the abolition of the Realm, the restoration of rangatiratanga and mana motuhake in Aotearoa, and the confirmation of mutually respectful relationships between Aotearoa and the Pacific Island states.
For the Cooks, the key complicating factor in the relationship is the large Cook Islands community in New Zealand. That community is in effect held hostage by Wellington, a fact which no Cook Islands government can afford to ignore. Under the principles of rangatiratanga the Cook Islanders in New Zealand would be entitled to their own representation in Te Whakaminenga and thereby would become a source of strength and unity among peoples rather than a means by which Wellington can exert leverage over Avarua. But so long as the colonialist regime continues to exist in New Zealand, relations with the Pacific Island states will be subject to tension.