Niue has just suffered one of its periodic hurricanes, the last severe hurricane being in 1959. The hurricane has resulted in a severe set back to crops on the island and to the various development schemes the New Zealand Government has established to achieve some degree of economic viability. It has also resulted in some reappraisal of the extent and nature of the aid this country extends to the island.

In Government circles there appears to be two current points of view about how Niue Island, our last inhabited island possession, should and can progress. The first is that the absence of private enterprise on the island is to be deplored and that everything possible should be done to create a private sector in the island's economy. There are of course private traders on the island, the largest of whom is Mr. Robert Rex who is also Leader of Government Business in the Island's Assembly.

Murray Rowlands, author of this article, is at present Advisory Officer, the New Zealand Public Service Association.

Mr. Rex must have inherited his business sense from the Australian side of his ancestry (he is half Niuean and half Australian), for most Niueans are profoundly uninterested in the prospect of owning private businesses. This is not because the social moves of the island community operate against individualism—the Niuean seems to have a more individualistic idea of himself than the Cook Islander or Samoan—but rather that the concept of the accumulation of large private profits is alien to him.