Dear Editor, The 11 people that travelled to Australia to promote a one-sided and biased consultation for the development of seabed mining may have cost Cook Islands taxpayers over $80,000. Probably the only person in the group, who knows and has a fair bit of knowledge of what the positive and negative implications, significances and destructions are, of seabed mining, is John Parianos.

The group consists mainly of Cook Islands Party supporters, staff, an Ariki and a Pastor, all on the Government payroll and allowances. What is alarming is the timing? With minimal media and public notices to Cook Islands people in Australia, this rushed trip was a failure from the start. Outspoken Cook Islands seabed mining critic, Helena Keenan-Williams, summed it up well: ‘2-3 days’ notice is poor and the group that came, weren’t specialists or environmentalists – the hosting of it all was just a shambles’.

One commented, who is responsible for this waste of public money and show-boating? The reply swiftly came; it has to be Mark Brown.

Not a Belmore Bowling Club member

(Name and address supplied)