Tropic Twilight hailed a success

Transcript

A multinational taskforce led by the New Zealand Defence Force has handed over a new fuel depot and refurbished schools, hospitals and community facilities to the remote northern Cook Islands atoll of Penhryn.

The 60-strong team made up of military engineers and tradesmen from China, New Zealand, Britain and the United States has spent six weeks on a range of infrastructure projects on Penrhyn and Manihiki as part of Exercise Tropic Twilight.

Mary Baines was in Penhryn and filed this report.

At the official opening of the fuel depot, many of the 250 people who live on Penhryn gathered to give dignitaries a traditional welcome.

The fuel depot will support the Cook Islands police fisheries surveillance vessel, Te Kukupa, which conducts long-range maritime patrols against illegal fishing in the northern Cooks.

It has replaced the old fuel facility, which was built in 1992. There was concern its location on the side of the harbour and its age could have led to a potentially devastating oil spill.

The Cook Islands deputy prime minister, Teariki Heather, says the new depot was badly needed.

"Because of the distance, the isolation of Penhryn island, but also where most of the illegal fishing happens, for environment issues that we had with the other one previously, but this one is state of the art. So both for environment, and for the illegal fishing that is happening in the northern Cook Islands."

The Member of Parliament for Penrhyn, Willie John, is also concerned about illegal fishing, saying there has been a depletion of fish stocks in the northern Cooks.

"There are heaps of illegal boats fishing around, especially round here in the northern Cook Islands. And we don't know how much fish they are taking out of our waters."

The commanding officer of Te Kukupa, Tepaki Baxter, says the new depot, which can store 80,000 litres of fuel, will allow his team to be out on the water for much longer periods of time.

The boat patrols the Cook Islands exclusive economic zone, which is 1.8 million square kilometres.

Mr Baxter says its primary role is to stop illegal fishing, but it is also involved in disaster relief, search and rescue, and medical evaluations in the outer islands.

"We are going to double our patrol time out here. Because in the past we just come here once. Take on fuel, and then we go back to Raro. We've got 80,000 litres here - like I say, double the limit, we can go patrol, come back, go out again, and come back, take fuel to come back. More time at sea to do the job."

As part of the Tropic Twilight exercise, schools, a hospital, a clinic and other community facilities were refurbished.

That included plumbing work, fixing any electrical hazards and ensuring they are cyclone resilient.

Lance Corporal Clem Duval worked on one of the main buildings on the island, which houses the courtroom, police and customs offices, and the bank.

"We replaced all the windows that were rusted and broken with new louver windows, new glass, fully painted the interior, repaired the furniture inside, replaced the door handles with new door hardware, lockable stuff that the bank can use, and also the police and customs.

So it was in a pretty bad state before you got here?

Yeah, the building was extremely run down - termites, rust, none of the doors would close properly, etc etc."

Lance Corporal Aaron Hill helped to renovate the preschool, which was in such a bad state of repair the children had to move out last year.

He showed me the repair work.

"Basically there were no doors there, so security was nil. The ceiling here had big holes in it, it was all collapsed pretty much. All the louvers you can see around here could not work, they were rusted closed, rusted open. We've also put a lock on the door just here and then the hurricane shelter just out here to prevent winds and rain coming into the building."

Tropic Twilight also aimed to develop the NZDF's capability to deploy alongside other defence forces to provide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief in the Pacific.

The Senior National Officer for the New Zealand contingent, Captain Andy Blackburn, says the exercise was a huge success.

"The ability to conduct joint operations across governments, across government departments, working with American, Chinese and British forces. We have made it all work, we've achieved all our tasks and we can leave here knowing we have left product that is useful and added value to the island."

The New Zealand High Commissioner to the Cook Islands, Nick Hurley, says the Tropic Twilight exercise has enforced very important partnerships.

He says it saw Chinese participation for the first time.

"It's very significant as a genuine partnership issue. I mean within the New Zealand side, for the first time you have Chinese involved, but you also have the usual US, Australia and the UK involved, and they are used to working with each other. But getting that interoperability, getting used to each other has been one of the key learnings from this and it's been really great having that opportunity."

The project was run by the government of the Cook Islands and the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and was engineered by GHD.

The exercise, funded by the New Zealand government, cost almost US$670,000.

The project also involved some engineering tasks on Manihiki, such as improving the e-learning centre there.