Islanders edging towards alliance

Press, 10 September 1984, Page 8

Islanders edging towards alliance

By

PATRICIA HERBERT

in Wellington New Zealand’s Pacific Island community is edging towards a firm alliance with the Labour Party encouraged by a Christchurch City councillor, Miss Louise Moore.

She said that a Pacific Island Council, formed last year under the party umbrella, now had 15 or 16 branches in Wellington, Auckland, and Christchurch. They canvassed hard for a Labour win in the July election, particularly in marginal seats with Island populations. Now that their party is in Government, they have high hopes and sent a strong delegation to this year’s Labour Party conference to show these hopes to the Cabinet. Their message was that the powerless were at last hoping to be heard and that those who had suffered most from the recession were ■: expecting to have their bur-

den shared. Miss Moore said they were encouraged by the appointment of Mr Prebbie as Minister of Pacific Island Affairs and that they hoped, through him, to tell the Government their needs and to learn more about politics and policies. To many Islanders this was a new and strange arena, she said. They did not have a history of political activism. One of the issues was education. Many of the Islanders living in New Zealand, particularly the older people, had had little formal schooling and needed access to training programmes. They also wanted some assistance in retaining thenown culture and language, Miss Moore said.

However, of more immediate concern was immigration. They were asking for an amnesty for overstayers, she said. One reason was “to give people a new beginning,” especially those with jobs and good

behaviour records. Another was to locate those people who had disappeared because their permits had expired and "to create a life-line for them and the people at home.”

Miss Moore said this was particularly important because over-stayers tended to come from poor backgrounds in the Islands. Those with wealthy families were more likely to return. They also wanted the immigration quotas introduced by the last Labour Government restored so that families could be reunited, she said.

Progress was made towards these objectives at the conference where delegates passed remits calling for the repeal of the Immigration Act and for an official review of policy.

Miss Moore said other concerns were housing compatible with the extended family tradition of the Islands and financial assistance towards home ownership.