Letter: Prime Minister Brown’s departure tax proposal

Dear Editor, I have to say that when I first read that Prime Minister Mark Brown proposed a departure levy as a possible solution to paying for water (PM: Free water for households, 22 June, Cook Islands News), I was quite shocked as the levy is more directly linked to tourists who are responsible for the extra water usage.

Mainly because I assumed that I and any other locals making the rare trip abroad would also be subject to the departure tax.

Why should the locals add a departure tax to their water bills when the cost should be borne by the tourism industry? I asked myself. Oh, I was wrong.

His point of view was totally incomprehensible to me and I had to read between the lines. I really did. It was only a week later that I began to understand the PM’s message!

He suggested a departure tax as a solution not only because he loves the people but because he knows that as a government, a departure tax does not require an administrative or bureaucratic apparatus like TTV (To Tatou Vai), which is an independent agency with offices and staff to read meters, prepare bills, collect payments, and does not require the unnecessary expense of a board of directors to oversee, I don’t know? Board lunches? Board papers? Minute-takers? And all the politics and positioning that necessarily entails? I’m really not sure.

I mean, when the Prime Minister proposed this, he knew that water companies didn’t need their own boards. Why have a board? ICI doesn’t have one.

How many decisions does the board have to make? Won’t they be different every month?

Do they need to make a decision to shut off the water supply to some poor families because they exceed their monthly quota? Will they? Really, will they? Children crying because they have no water to make their breakfast tea, no water to flush the toilet or brush their teeth? Will they decide to take homeowners to court to force them to pay for the excess water use? Will they really do this to the party’s voters?

The Prime Minister also knew when he suggested a departure levy that water was free, he has said it many times and so have others! It is only the infrastructure costs of getting the water to our homes and businesses that need to be paid for!

He knew that if the infrastructure was well maintained, its cost was essentially fixed and would remain the same from year to year. We were not charging for water, we were charging for the pipes and tanks and the cost of maintaining them. He also knew that the departure tax would change.

More tourists means more taxes. More tourists means more water. Fewer tourists means less taxes, and fewer tourists means less water. In either case, we either get more taxes or more water.

The Prime Minister obviously knows the country’s finances very well, and as the person who controls the money, he knows how the budget will be overspent. From TMV (Te Mato Vai) to TTV, this is a journey that costs $100 million!

Is this why he made the sensible suggestion of increasing the departure tax? Did he also suggest merging TTV and ICI, or ICI absorbing TTV? I don’t know. I have to understand the meaning of these words more deeply.

So I got out my calculator and figured that $15 per departing passenger would easily provide TTV with more than $2.5 million per year, with no real difficulty collecting the money. There might even be a few dollars left over to fix a leaky pipe or tap at home for free. All of this is part of plumbing maintenance to conserve water. From tank to tap, from mountain to lagoon, poetic, isn’t it? Could the money be better spent? I doubt it.

Thank you, Prime Minister, for planting this seed. But wait! Why am I writing this article? Didn’t the Prime Minister provide this solution in the first place?

Over to you, PM.

“Swamp People”

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