Tim Tepaki lures countrymen back to the Cooks.


Meet Tim Tepaki. A Cook Islander who united parliament, split the public and wants to save his homeland's biggest project.

Tim Tepaki

Like other free-associating states, Niue and soon Tokelau, the Cook Islands suffers not from too many people, but too few.

Most Cook Islanders have used their birthright-a New Zealand passport-to vote with their feet.

Tepaki is one of them. Based in Wellington, the property developer wants to use his experience in Aotearoa to help stem decades of migration loss by attracting talented countrymen and women back to their homeland.

He wants them to be paid well, have good jobs and every opportunity to develop their own future.

Tepaki sees his contribution towards those goals in opening five-star hotels on the main island of Rarotonga and the country's second busiest destination, Aitutaki.

High-end tourism, he says, is the answer to migration problems facing his homeland.

“That's why savvy local authorities around the world encourage developments,” he says.

It's the same message he has been promoting for just over a decade.

Last year, Tepaki moved closer to a deal.

Tepaki got serious interest from New Zealand's Investors Forum, a group claiming 2000 private investors and NZ$400 million in properties.

He united a fractured parliament behind the Unit Titles Bill 2005, promoting new laws as vital to gaining investor support for the projects.

Politicians were keen to find a solution for a particularly annoying thorn on their side for, by now, more than a dozen different administrations involving all sides of the 24-seat house.

Tepaki split public opinion down the middle. On one side, an educated elite, horrified at a first draft that appeared to give more rights to leaseholders than landowners.

A formal petition signed by a quarter of all voters called on members of parliament not to accept it. Landowners at first supported the petition.

The bill was referred to a select committee and then secretly rewritten.

Presented with a new, safer version of the bill, some landowners thought they had been duped by petitioners and got annoyed with what they saw as an attempt to limit their options.

It could have been the biggest change to land laws since the Cook Islands Act of 1915 that sets out lease-only requirements for land deals.

Some are still not convinced that unit titles are anything more than the thin edge of a freehold wedge designed to split land from its leasehold protections.

“Sad as it may be, the loss of our ancestral land to foreigners may be the one thing that serves as a wake-up call for our people, but not before I fear it is too late,” says Tere Carr, one of two women heading the Group for Political Change, a new political party.

But it was not just land rights. Environmentalists pointed out the new law allows for an intensification of development.

Instead of a few investors in each project, the new law allows dozens or hundreds to participate in a body corporate, potentially increasing the size of projects in a country already swamped with a glut of rooms and showing signs of environmental stress.

Tepaki insists his unit titles bill will solve problems, not add to them.

Bravely, he has tied his fortunes to the long-stalled Italian hotel project.

Signed in 1987 and sited at Vaimaanga, on the south side of Rarotonga, the project has been a disaster from the start and it is far from finished.

Step one for Tepaki's company was to sponsor a radio talkback show to gauge public opinion.

“Of particular interest was those who wished to return home but wanted job certainty and expected higher wages than currently offered,” he said.

Plans were drawn up, artists' impressions painted and a management linkage announced with Hilton, the international hotel management group.

“We are of course hopeful that introducing an international brand to the Cook Islands will raise service standards and wages accordingly and perhaps go some way towards meeting the expectations of those wishing to return home,” said Tepaki.

Among other promises, Tepaki has pledged to set up recruitment offices for Cook Islanders in New Zealand and Australia, conduct full training for those needing it, and most notably, pay back the NZ$55 million in public debt owing on the hotel.

Pressure on Tepaki to deliver is high.

In 2002, government sacrificed a chance to have the highly regarded international hotel chain Outrigger to manage the hotel with development to be completed by the lesser known but equally reputable Covington Group.

It became clear that Tepaki was favoured as a bright local star.

After painting the big picture in 2005, 2006 is a make-or-break year for Tepaki.

Some details are already devilling. His former country manager, William Framhein, resigned and filed a civil claim for NZ$20,000 in unpaid wages.

Tepaki counter-attacked by alleging fraud; Framhein is now threatening defamation.
Hilton has so far not responded to questions about its relationship to the project; nor has the Investors Forum.

Questions to Tepaki's Group office saw the reporter told to “do more research” and dismissed by return email as “lazy” and a “timewaster.”

More seriously, an audit report has been finished into another project, one that saw him take over ownership of the former high commission office in Wellington.

Valued at NZ$4 million, the deal involved a former prime minister, the same one who saw off Outrigger and Covington, and who is now high commissioner in Wellington.

Like the Rarotongan Resort, another former state asset, no cash changed hands.

Tepaki secured ownership with a “security deposit” for an undisclosed amount. By law, members of the public are not allowed to read the audit report until it is tabled in parliament.

If Tepaki fails with the project, he won't be the first.

As well as honourable attempts like the Outrigger proposal, there has been a long list of crooks. Some are now in jail in their home countries over charges involving guns, drugs, gangs and tax fraud.

After nearly two decades of such setbacks, observers say government may want to consider keeping itself separate from future negotiations.

Otherwise, Tepaki's theories about high-end tourism may never be put to the test.