Discrimination Against N.Z. Citizens Alleged

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30900, 5 November 1965, Page 18

Discrimination Against N.Z. Citizens Alleged

The Government should never cease to impress on foreign Governments its desire that New Zealanders should not be discriminated against on political or racial grounds, says the 1965 interim report of the Canterbury Council for Civil Liberties. Such pressure, although it could not always be immediately successful, might in the long run increase civil liberties.

The council strongly believed the right to travel was an essential civil liberty for all New Zealanders, the report says.

It was taking a strong and active interest in the admission of Maoris to South Africa, and felt Maoris must be allowed to take part in all representative sports. If Maoris were excluded from represenative sports teams travelling to South Africa an essential citizen’s freedom would be taken away. “In this context we would like to draw the attention of the Government to the fact that Cook Islanders are not freely admitted to Australia, While the Cook Islands are now an independent territory, New Zealand still represents these islands externally, and should insist that the civil liberties belonging to New Zealanders should also be applicable to Cook Islanders. “We have it on record that Mrs Marjorie Crocombe, wife of a well-known Australian anthropologist, a Cook Islander herself, was refused an entry permit into Australia without special formalities. Another Cook Islander, Mr Nooroa Tuaiti, has found even

greater difficulties in entering Australia. We are aware that the Government has taken up these cases with the Australian Government, but feel that we should not rest until Maoris and Cook Islanders have the same right of entry into Australia as New Zealanders of different extraction. “The American State Department discriminates against individual New Zealanders (as against all entrants from other nations) on the grounds of political convictions and past and present affiliations. The case has come to our notice of a New Zealand citizen in Vancouver not being allowed to board a plane for New Zealand which flew by way of San Francisco because the American authorities objected to this person’s affiliation with the N.Z.— U.S.S.R. Society.” Another case was that of a Wellington author, Mr G. F. Mills, who had been refused admission to the Cook Islands, presumably because of his political convictions. ,

After becoming independent the Cook Islands had admitted Mr Mills and given him a warm welcome.

“It is regrettable that the New Zealand-appointed Resident Commissioner had not seen his way to remedy his oppressive action when it was still in his power to remove this stain of suppression of civil liberties and the right to travel,” the report says.