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Vaine Elia - Source: ONE News -
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A row is brewing over access to pensions in the Pacific in what some are saying is a case of discrimination.
New Zealand citizens say it is unfair that after working and paying tax in New Zealand for decades they are being stopped from getting their pensions where they want to, such as Rarotonga.
Kiwi Les Priest worked in New Zealand for nearly 30 years before moving to the Cook Islands.
"I've paid all my taxes, 29 years to be precise, before I came over here," Priest says.
But because he has not spent five continuous years in New Zealand since turning 50 he cannot get his pension.
"This is my home, my friends are here, my family is here, why should I want to go back for five years," he says.
Both Priest and his friend, Gordon Sawtell, have been campaigning for more than a decade. Now they are stepping it up and are joined by other Cook Islanders, like Vaine Elia.
Elia, a New Zealand citizen, worked as a typist for 26 years but went back to Rarotonga to look after her sick mother. To get her pension she has now had to return to live in Auckland for five years.
"I deserved to get a pension because I worked right through my life," she says.
She now lives alone in a tiny bedsit in Otara and misses her friends in the Cook Islands.
"Over here you just sit in the house, you can't do anything," she says.
The pensioners' hopes are pinned on the government changing the rules.
And Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully says he personally believes there is "very strong merit" to doing so.
"I think there is a strong case to be put together and I'm trying to put it together so that it's convincing," he says.
However, he says at issue is the paying for the health and living costs of pensioners who would rather be in the islands.
