The Cook Islands is a large ocean state. Our fifteen islands are scattered across almost two million square kilometres of ocean, and for the families of our Pa Enua, our outer islands, that ocean is both our greatest inheritance and our hardest daily reality. Nowhere is that truer than in the north. It is why this Government has made the development of the Pa Enua, and of our northern islands in particular, a central priority of our national vision. And it is why the new wharf announced for Penrhyn, Tongareva, is one of the most significant commitments we have made to our people.
In Palau, on the margins of the 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, the Prime Minister announced a funding intention of around NZ$101.5 million for a safe and reliable wharf at Tongareva, in partnership with the United States and New Zealand. It is one of the largest single investments in transport connectivity our country has ever seen. The scope and timeline will be worked through a feasibility study and technical engagement between the three partners, but the intention is clear, and it is grounded in a priority our own people have named for many years.
To understand why this matters, you have to understand Tongareva. Tongareva is our northernmost and most remote atoll, 1,365 kilometres from Rarotonga, home to around 230 people in the two villages of Omoka and Te Tautua, on either side of a vast lagoon. For perspective, the distance between Tongareva and Rarotonga is comparable to the distance between Melbourne and Brisbane, without the benefit of land to bridge the divide. Almost everything that reaches Tongareva: fuel, food, building materials, medicines, and disaster relief, comes ashore through a landing built by United States forces in 1942. For more than eighty years that infrastructure has been the island’s lifeline. Today it is well beyond the life it was ever meant to serve.
In May this year, Tongareva ran down to its last 100 litres of diesel, and it was our police patrol boat Te Kukupa that carried the fuel north. The island has lost 64 percent of its population since 1971, one of the steepest declines in the country, as families weigh the difficulty of getting home, of getting supplies, of reaching a doctor, against the deep pull of their enua. A reliable wharf does not, on its own, reverse that story. But without one, every other effort to keep our northern islands alive is built on sand.
This is not a new idea, nor a sudden one. It is the result of decades of work. The need for a safe harbour at Tongareva appears in the island’s own priorities year after year, in our National Infrastructure Investment Plan, and in successive national development strategies. Over the past decade the Government has built the policy foundations for a stronger Pa Enua: a Population Policy committed to halting and reversing outer-island decline; a National Sustainable Development Agenda that puts connectivity and resilience at its centre; new state-supported shipping, including the MV Tuitui Moana; and a Domestic Shipping Policy that guarantees scheduled voyages to the north. What has lagged is the physical infrastructure. The wharves and runways that external financing of this scale can now begin to unlock. The Tongareva wharf is where plans on paper begin to become concrete on the ground.
This is a project that reaches into almost every part of national life: connectivity, fisheries, health, security and the economy. And so it is best explained by the people who carry those responsibilities for our nation, and above all by the people of Tongareva themselves.
“This wharf is the lifeline that brings fuel, food and building materials,” says Prime Minister Hon. Mark Brown.“It is what allows our people in the Pa Enua to travel, to return, and to remain on their islands with dignity and opportunity. This project belongs to Cook Islanders, not only in name, but in practice. From design and procurement through to construction and the long life of the wharf that follows. We secured it on our own terms, and for our own future.”
For the Member of Parliament for Tongareva, Vaine Wichman, the announcement answers a conversation her community has been having with successive governments for a generation.
“The Tongareva wharf upgrade is a major vote of confidence in our Government and in the strong partnerships we have built over many decades,” says Vaine Wichman. “Our people, including our own Tongareva and Cook Islands engineers and builders must be fully included as this long‑overdue project takes shape. I commend the Prime Minister and look forward to welcoming the United States Ambassador as we move forward together for our island’s future.”
The Mayor of Tongareva, Rangitava Taia, speaks to what a reliable wharf means in the rhythm of everyday island life.
“When the ship cannot land safely, everything stops. Our shelves empty, our fuel runs low, and our people worry,” says Mayor Taia. “A proper harbour means our families can plan, our fishermen can work, and our young people have a reason to stay. This is our island’s future, and we are ready to help build it, hand in hand with the Government and our partners.”
For those who run the island day to day, the wharf is above all about service delivery.
“Every service we provide: health, education, power and water, depends on what we can land at the wharf,” says Tongareva’s Executive Officer, “A modern wharf means we can bring in the water tanks, the generator parts, the medical supplies and the building materials our island needs, safely and on schedule, instead of waiting months and hoping the sea allows it. For us this is not politics. It is being able to look after our people properly.”
The wharf also opens a door the north has long been unable to walk through: the sustainable development of our fisheries. The Ministry of Marine Resources has been consulting northern communities, beginning in Tongareva, on the future of tuna and marine resources development in the Pa Enua.
“We began in Tongareva and our Pa Enua Tokerau because most of our tuna fishing happens in the north,” says the Secretary of Marine Resources, Pamela Maru. “The strong community interest shows how much Cook Islanders care about sustainably managing this resource and unlocking economic opportunities. A safe, reliable wharf is what turns that interest into real jobs and real income for our northern islands. A base from which our people can fish, create products, build a business, and get regular access to supplies and services to build a future on their own waters.”
A resilient northern wharf is also a national security asset. The Cook Islands polices an exclusive economic zone of 1.96 million square kilometres with the Guardian-class Te Kukupa II, gifted by Australia and based in Rarotonga.
“Tongareva sits at the very top of our exclusive economic zone, and today our patrol boat cannot rely on a safe harbour there,” says Commissioner of Police Teokotai Joseph. “A proper wharf in the north would give Te Kukupa II a place to shelter, to refuel and to resupply, so we can patrol our waters, protect our fisheries, and support search and rescue and emergency response situations for our remote communities far more effectively. The same boat that carried emergency fuel to Tongareva this year could do far more, for far longer, with a reliable port behind it.”
Alongside policing, the wharf carries a whole of government function that is rarely visible until it’s needed: disaster response.
“When a cyclone crosses the northern group, our response is measured in days at sea, not hours by road,” says Chief of Staff, Office of the Prime Minister Karopaerangi Ngatoko. “Everything that matters in the first days after an event: water, fuel, shelter materials, medical teams, communications equipment, has to come ashore somewhere, and at present the north offers us very few places to put it ashore safely. A harbour at Tongareva that can take a vessel in difficult conditions changes the arithmetic of a northern response. It gives our patrol boat and relief shipping a secure point at the top of the zone, and it means that when the next event strikes elsewhere in the Pa Enua Tokerau, our scarce national response capacity has somewhere to berth. We are also building for a sea that is rising and storms that are intensifying. Infrastructure designed to yesterday’s conditions will not serve our grandchildren. Designing this wharf for the conditions they will face is how climate adaptation stops being a commitment on paper and becomes protection our families can rely upon.”
Few services feel the island’s isolation more acutely than health.
“For our northern communities, distance is the greatest barrier to good health care,” says the Secretary of Health, Bob Williams. “A safe harbour means we can deliver medicines, vaccines and equipment reliably, keep our health facilities supplied, and support the staff who serve these remote islands. It means that when a patient must be moved, or supplies must get through, the sea is no longer the obstacle it has been for generations. Reliable access is the foundation of equitable health care for every Cook Islander, wherever they live.”
And it strengthens the national port network as a whole.
“A port must be built for the conditions it faces and with future generations in mind. Ports Authority welcomes the feasibility work for Tongareva and we would like to see a port that is safe, resilient and fit for the people of the northern group and Tongareva. Strengthening Tongareva port alongside Port of Avatiu and other harbours makes our maritime network stronger and more reliable for the whole country.”
What connects all of these voices is a single idea: that a safe and resilient wharf serves not only the people of Tongareva, but all our northern group communities that live at the very end of the supply and access chain. . It is how fuel and food arrive, how a patient reaches care, how a fisherman earns a living, how a patrol boat protects our waters, and how a young person finds a reason to stay. The Prime Minister has said he hopes the partnership can, in time, extend to renewing Penrhyn’s airport as well, so that Tongareva is connected by both sea and sky.
The work ahead is real, and we have been clear that it must be done properly, with genuine consultation, with Cook Islands hands at every stage, and with the interests of Tongareva and the nation held firmly in front. Now the direction is set. After decades of asking, the people of Tongareva are being heard. This is our commitment to the north.
