THE PRESS FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 1982. Compromise on citizenship

Press, 20 August 1982, Page 12

THE PRESS FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 1982. Compromise on citizenship

Both Western Samoa and New Zealand get something out of the compromise that has been worked out over the Privy Council ruling on citizenship. Western Samoa is recognised as having a special relationship with New Zealand; Western Samoans living in New Zealand are granted New Zealand citizenship: and Western Samoans who take up New Zealand residence permanently will be granted New Zealand citizenship. New Zealand will continue to control immigration from Western Samoa. The compromise will be embodied in both a protocol to the Treaty of Friendship between New Zealand and Western Samoa and in New Zealand legislation. The Prime Minister, Mr Muldoon, says that both Opposition parties in New Zealand agree to the deal; the AttorneyGeneral, Mr McLay, is going to Apia to settle the details of the protocol. • Widespread consultations will be needed in Western Samoa to ensure that it is clear that the present and future Western Samoan Governments will accept the protocol. Some compromises leave the parties without satisfaction because they seem to detract from the true aims of one or other of the parties; some compromises satisfy the main points, but stop awkward situations developing. This compromise appears closer to the latter class. .The Privy Council ruling said that Western Samoans born before 1949, and the children of fathers born before 1949, were eligible for New Zealand citizenship. This ruling entitled perhaps 100,000 Western Samoans to New Zealand citizenship. The ruling overturned the clearly understood relationship between Western Samoa and New Zealand. With one exception, the compromise will return the position to what it was understood to be before the Privy Council ruled; the exception is the granting of citizenship to those resident in New Zealand and to those who will emigrate to New Zealand permanently. The compromise takes account of the Privy Council ruling in that it makes concessions on citizenship. The compromise acknowledges the Privy Council ruling on a woman charged with overstaying, but does away with any suggestion that the majority of Western Samoans are New Zealand citizens: However the legislation is presented, it will overthrow the broader implications of the ruling of the Privy Council. Western Samoans living in Western Samoa, who are now entitled to New Zealand citizenship under the Privy Council ruling, will lose their New Zealand citizenship.

To do less would be to. abrogate responsibility. It was always a vain hope that Western Samoa, for its own purposes, would stop emigration to New Zealand. The Prime Minister of Western Samoa, who has a slender hold on power and whose own seat is under appeal, would have had some difficulty in taking an initiative which seemed to deprive Western

Samoans of something that many of them might have decided that they wanted. Even if he had decided to do so, a future Western Samoan government might have changed the policy. This could have caused future embarrassment. The only appropriate course was for New Zealand to decide itself who should be citizens of this country. New Zealand would have had to act whatever Western Samoa thought about the matter.

The happy aspect is that the action is being taken with the agreement of the Western Samoan Government. The United Nations Declaration on Human Rights opposes the stripping of nationality from people, not citizenship. New Zealand may come in for some criticism, but should be able to ride out the complaints. The declaration also says that people should be allowed to leave and return to their own country. New Zealand has not asked Western Samoa to offend against that principle by imposing limits on immigration itself.

The special relationship that Western Samoa will enjoy with New Zealand may give rise to criticism from some other South Pacific countries, whose citizens will not have the same rights. Because of New Zealand’s links with Western Samoa through the League of Nations mandate, New Zealand can justify the special relationship. The legislation that New Zealand will introduce, probably next week, will have a retrospective aspect. This was a sensitive time politically for the Government to have to face the point of retrospective legislation because of the muddle over the Clyde dam. New Zealand’s relations with its neighbours, which is the issue at stake in the case of Western Samoa, are important and the domestic tangle over the Clyde dam has properly been kept to one side in the political discussion so far.

Perhaps the Western Samoan citizenship mess can be laid at the door of past legislation. The Privy Council gave its interpretation of various laws in the past. What the Privy Council failed to do was to take into account the practices of the New Zealand and Western Samoan Governments in conducting their relationship. This was a peculiar way to decide a constitutional issue. The presentation of the New Zealand Governent’s case in a narrow way did not assist the Privy Council to arrive at a decision that was sensible as well as legally sound. Many New Zealanders may well wonder that the question of the relationship between the two countries in the South Pacific could be the subject of a decision in London. The result of the Privy Council ruling may not change much in the end in the relationship between New Zealand and Western Samoa. It may eventually do a great deal to change the relationship between the New Zealand courts and the Privy Council.