In his letter to Fiam\u0113 on May 19, 2025, Peters explains the compensation \u201cresolves all issues arising from the sinking of the HMNZS Manawanui between the government of New Zealand and the government of Samoa\u201d and \u201cthe government of Samoa will not seek further payment from New Zealand\u201d.<\/p>\n
The New Zealand Government announced the $6m\/SAT10m compensation on the first anniversary of the sinking of the HMNZS Manawanui on October 6.<\/p>\n
Auckland University of Technology law professor Paul Myburgh thought this amount was a \u201cfirst down payment\u201d to look after impacted villages: \u201cBut reading these letters it becomes apparent that they are attempting to ring-fence all of their liability, apart from a reference \u2013 a fairly obscure reference \u2013 to ongoing reef assessments, whatever that might mean.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was difficult to say what an appropriate compensation amount would be, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not across all the details, but one thing I\u2019ve learnt from comparative collisions and groundings, etc, is that it is very difficult to assess and cap the damages because they tend to be ongoing. In other words, while that wreck is still on the reef it will continue to cause damage, so any sort of legal attempt to cap the damages indefinitely means that somebody along the line is going to be short-changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The wreck of the HMNZS Manawanui lying on its side under about 30m of water on the Tafitoala Reef, on the south coast of Upolu, in August. Photo \/ New Zealand Defence Force<\/p>\n
Senior lecturer and Pacific Security Fellow at Victoria University\u2019s Centre for Strategic Studies, Dr Iati Iati, was surprised that the letters reference Samoa\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs as having set the compensation figure at 10m tala.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hadn\u2019t heard of any process for an independent inquiry for how much the costs would be,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a little taken aback by the figure of 10 million tala only because I\u2019ve seen a study done by Massey University over the Rena, and it was done I think around 2021 and they estimated costs for the Rena \u2013 direct costs that is \u2013 around $46 million [NZD]. That wasn\u2019t including indirect costs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iati noted the Rena had sunk much further out at sea in comparison to the Manawanui, and the impact would have been different and probably less than what was experienced in Samoa.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s left me with a lot of questions as to how they determined that 10 million tala figure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The ship sank in early October 2024, after running aground on a reef. All crew escaped to safety, with locals helping the rescue efforts. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Peters\u2019 letter to then-Samoa Prime Minister Fiam\u0113 Naomi Mata\u2019afa, dated May 19, 2025, refers to \u201cthe long- established and respectful bilateral relationship between New Zealand and Samoa, founded upon sovereign equality and governed by a spirit of close friendship, underpinned by the significant Treaty of Friendship\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest it leaves me with more questions than answers. This looks like to me just a very diplomatic way to bring this situation to an end without addressing alot of issues that should have been addressed,\u201d Iati said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m curious as to whether there\u2019s more to this than just New Zealand sending the Manawanui to do some kind of reef surveying. I\u2019d be interested to know if there were any other actors involved and what their reasons were for the Manawanui to be conducting these exercises on the coast of Samoa, especially given that the order for the Manawanui to conduct this exercise was finalised just as it was leaving port so it seems to me like there\u2019s a wider story here that hasn\u2019t been looked at.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iati questioned whether other parties should also be liable for some part of the cost of the impact of the Manawanui that was borne by the Samoan people.<\/p>\n
With 40 years\u2019 experience as an oil spill response scientist, Paul Irving was in Samoa soon after the Manawanui sank, for Sprep \u2013 the Secretariat of the Pacific Environment Programme.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy role and function was to work with and for the Samoan government as much as possible. I was effectively loaned to them by Sprep to provide, to organise advice, to seek international support and to give them the best advice possible given that they were not the spiller, their country was the victim.\u201d<\/p>\n
Irving said the correspondence between Peters and Fiam\u0113 was diplomatic, rather than a letter of compensation or insurance usually associated with one country causing another country injury or harm because of the actions of its sovereign citizens.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think $6 million – 10 million tala – is a relatively small amount given that the estimate to remove the vessel from the area was around, between $75m and $100m, so I think New Zealand got away with about 10% of the cost of cleaning up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe New Zealand Government certainly was not thinking the same way when it required more than $500m to be spent by the owners of the Rena to clean up the reef in the Bay of Plenty.\u201d<\/p>\n
– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In his letter to Fiam\u0113 on May 19, 2025, Peters explains the compensation \u201cresolves all issues arising from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[334,18432,120954,48801,120952,48802,117,111,43,139,69,1523,5902,120949,120951,120953,120950,80],"class_list":["post-195254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-compensation","tag-did","tag-fuatai","tag-hmnzs","tag-leiataua","tag-manawanui","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-samoa","tag-shortchange","tag-susana","tag-teuila","tag-wreck","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}