Transcript
HETO PUKA The Tokelau leaders in Council [Council for the Ongoing Government] played their roles in the decision making process and afterwards with the blessing of the General Fono [the parliament of Tokelau] with $NZ10 million for that particular financial year, with the blessings of the Council as well, we moved on and implemented the plan.
DON WISEMAN: Did the Council know that helicopters were going to be bought. I know that there was this Air Services Strategy that had been developed, and people were thinking along these lines, and I know many years ago, when Murray McCully first became foreign minister, he was talking about air services to Tokelau, but at what point was the decision made to buy helicopters and who actually decided we should go and spend $12 million dollars or whatever it was, or $NZ10 million for helicopters.
HP: $10 million was for the capital development programme, but the specific allocation for the interim air service, which included helicopters, was much less than what you are mentioning here.
DON WISEMAN: But from what you say, the decision was made by the Tokelau leaders in Council. They made the decision, but it would seem to me, looking from the outside, that two office workers, two bureaucrats, are essentially being hung out to dry here. Is that how you feel?
HP: It is and this is why we are taking the matter to the High Court, because it is very unfair. We didn't do this for ourselves or for personal reasons. It had been in the pipeline for Tokelau for many, many years and after we secured funding from the General Fono and Council - the Council met and made a decision that we are going to proceed with this interim air service. The timelines were set - by December [2016] we will have the helicopters in Tokelau. When we bought the aircraft I informed the Minister of Finance and Joe kept the Ulu O Tokelau at the time, up to date in terms of the progress. There was no rejection whatsoever from the leaders in terms of they did not approve this. In fact, after we had gone to the General Fono and reported to the General Fono, after we bought the aircraft, that we were on target with these aircraft to be in Tokelau by December. Soon after the General Fono I came here[Auckland] with the Minister of Finance [Siopili Perez - who became the Ulu in 2017 and oversaw the sacking of the workers] and we went to visit the helicopters before the first one was shipped out to Samoa. So we were very surprised by the subsequent reaction from the Tokelau leaders. For them to turn around and say that they did not know this - it's an outright lie.
DW: The end result of it all is that you were initially stood down, then you were sacked and you are taking the government to court and this process is dragging on and on and on. In the meantime of course you are out of work.
HP: It has been difficult to try and engage the court hearing to progress. Difficulty of course is having the High Court of Tokelau sitting here in New Zealand, when we actually have the people back home on Tokelau and really to just have a fair trial and fair hearing of the matter requires some key witnesses in Tokelau to be present. Hence why we seem to think that perhaps the right place for this hearing should be on Tokelau.
DW; Have you put this to anyone, that Tokelau is where the High Court of Tokelau should sit, rather than in Wellington?
HP: We had written up a paper to the General Fono, the last General Fono last month, requesting for Tokelau to facilitate the hearing, in terms of funding, given it's over here. It's not our fault that the High Court of Tokelau is over here. But we certainly want to explore with the government of Tokelau how we can get these court hearings to be on Tokelau.
DW: Do you feel you are being denied justice by the court not being in Tokelau, given that, as you say, a number of witnesses are there in Tokelau and maybe they are not able to come to New Zealand?
HP: Absolutely Don. I am aware that this matter had been raised in some legal and judiciary workshop that was recently held in Tokelau - last month - the fact that people ought to seek justice at the High Court, it is like it is almost defeated, the purpose is almost defeated, prior, because the High Court is here in New Zealand and people just don't have resources to come over here and seek justice. But for Joe and I, our issue is not so much the cost. It's the fact there needs to be justice in this matter, a resolution to bring closure for Joe and I and our families, and also the people of Tokelau back home.
DW: What constitutes closure for you. Do you want your jobs back?
HP: It will be really difficult to rebuild the trust with the leaders of Tokelau after what has happened. Given what has transpired our focus remains on the development of Tokelau. We have expressed our thinking that perhaps we don't really need to go back to the roles we were in, given the accountability and trust relationships between us and the leaders, but we would want to contribute to the development of Tokelau through other roles within the government, or within the villages or here with the government of New Zealand.
DW: Let's just go back to these helicopters, just briefly if we can. In your view how important would it be to have helicopters in Tokelau?
HP: There were many, many discussions, through consultations with the villages and with Council members, especially around the interm air service, because New Zealand had given us the ship and we cannot just go ahead and build airports and forget about the ship. So only two options were there, the helicopters or the seaplanes. The advice we got from technical people - they are not cheap, neither option is cheap, but it would be more cost effective and safer for us to have the helicopters on island. Now, 2015, there was a group of fishermen lost at sea in Nukunonu. And it cost almost $1million dollars for New Zealand and the government of Tokelau to deploy the rescue operation. If we had helicopters on island we could have picked up these fishermen within a couple of hours or so, with a very minimal cost. And besides, every now and then we have medivac operations from Tokelau to Apia. At the moment it's a three to five day turnaround on the boats. If we had the helicopters on the island it can be a three to five hour mission to fly the patient from Tokelau directly to Samoa hospital. It's a big difference. It's cost effective, It's safe and it can be done.
