The future lies in your hands

UNLIKE some of his Cabinet colleagues, New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister Don McKinnon is not what you would call an excitable politician. He doesn’t get carried away; he doesn’t use what some might call

extravagant language.

So when he starts talking about Pacific Island peoples in New Zealand being a “social time bomb”, one tends to listen.

You sense that he is not just seeking headlines.

That he has a message to convey and his words were carefully chosen. And when he says there is danger of Pacific Island peoples in New Zealand becoming socially disenfranchised, the whole country, but those peoples above all, should listen.

McKinnon was speaking in his capacity as Minister of Pacific Island Affairs, so his words carried even more weight.

In a couple of recent speeches he pointed out some undeniable facts. Provisional census figures show that the number of Pacific Island people in New Zealand jumped 25 per cent between the 1986 and the 1991 census to nearly 140,000.

Depending on a number ofburcaucratic interpret ations, this is a conservative figure.

McKinnon himself suggests the actual number of Pacific Island people in this country is closer to 200,000. In the last five years, he says, they have increased in the Auckland region alone at nearly 11 times the rate of the overall New Zealand population.

He says there arc 51,000 Pacific Islands people in the New Zealand labour force - and one in three of them is currently out of work. That is well beyond the national average in a country where unemployment remains the biggest single concern.

“Now, il one marries the unemployment rates with population growth statistics, one can see that there is going to need to be some quick footwork in the next few years to address what could become a social lime-bomb,“ McKinnon says.

He warns, “ They re going to become a larger and increasingly marginalised segment ol our society, unless we do something about it.”

Now, the question is. who is “we ? Who is going to have to do the footwork?

In two key speeches, McKinnon made no bones about the answer.

It is, he said, the Pacific Island peoples themselves.

Pulling no punches, he told Pacific Island students on their welcome day at the Auckland Institute ofTechnology, “The future of the Pacific Island peoples in New Zealand lies in yoiir hands."

A couple of weeks earlier, he had told a seminar of Pacific Island •cscarchcrs to get oil their chufl's if they wanted a better deal for their

Dcoplc.

He said he could find only one contestable research funding project argetted at the interests ol Pacific Island people - and that was a study )f Maori and Pacific Island plant use.

He confessed that he could not do very much to help raise the tandards of Pacific Island people in New Zealand if they did not give lim the facts of (heir predicament.

"If one doesn’t have (he raw data about standards of living, health ind economic development, and ifonc doesn’t have the analysis of that lata, then one is unable to lobby authoritatively for one’s interests,” ic said.

As Pacific Island Affairs Minister, 1 am somewhat hamstrung in tow far I can advance the ease for resources being deployed to Pacific sland communities in New Zealand. The reason is I lack clear vidcncc of where the interests of this segment of our society lie.”

Now, some would some say that is the government’s responsibility, hit that tails (o acknowledge the realities of life today.

V\hat was not public knowledge at that time was that forces were t work m Wellington to abolish the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs,

Wellington

set up in 1984 as a unit of the Department of Internal Affairs and given full autonomy in July, 1990.

It was all part of a government drive to cut costs and although the ministry’s budget is only SBOO,OOO, it had been eyed by the Cabinet expenditure review committee along with every other potential saving.

Although nothing was official at the time of writing, I understand the ministry has not only been reprieved but could get extra resources as the government reviews the Tangata Pacifika program, previously assigned to the Ministry of Maori Department.

This includes a series of development projects including housing, vocational train ing, education and welfare grants designed to improve the lot of Pacific Island people.

It would have been untenable if the government had ditched funding for the program - especially in the light of McKinnon’s comments - and a decision to retain it, and hopefully refocus it under the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, is unquestionably the

right one.

Abolition of the ministry, which some in government favoured, would have been a disaster. As it is, it has only seven and a half people on staff, including only two in Auckland, which is the world’s biggest Polynesian city.

Chief executive Apii Rongo-Raca (a Cook Islander) admits he doesn’t have the basic data, or the technology to interpret what he docs have, to begin to understand the scope of the job he has been entrusted with.

He does not even know whether the growth of Pacific Island population in Auckland is due to the birthrate or increased immigration. At the time of writing, he was fighting with the Statistics Department over whether he should have to pay for more detailed information or be entitled to it “in the public good”.

A key to the future development of Pacific Island people in New Zealand is education. As McKinnon pointed out, in secondary schools, Pacific Island students achieve mostly below average grades. And out of 76,000 tertiary students nationwide, there arc only 1500 Pacific Island youngsters.

Rongo-Raca admits the Pacific Island ease has to be argued on facts and he needs more research to do that. “So far, we have argued on emotion and that will not get us anywhere.”

He says there has been progress. Nearly 200 pre-school language nests have been developed over the last three years, producing 3000 children fluent in their native tongue as well as English - important

in retaining pride and national identity.

But he says the money spent on research has to be quadrupled - to about 5100,000 a year - to establish exaedy what Pacific Island needs arc in terms of education, future employment needs and opportunities.

With the majority of the Pacific Island population under 25, youth is the key to the future.

Apii Rongo-Raca fiercely rejects despondent talk that the Pacific Island people in New Zealand have made no progress in recent years.

He says there used to be about 200 Pacific Island students at the Auckland Institute of Technology - there arc now 1500. “We never used to have lawyers, accountants and Bachelors of Commerce we have them now.”

And for a sport-mad country like New Zealand, the presence of five Polynesians in the backlinc of the All Black team for the second centennial test was a major development.

It may have been cold comfort to unemployed Pacific Island people.

But Rongo-Raca says, “We arc actually doing very well. There may be a long way to go, but we shouldn’t overlook the progress that is being made.” n

David

Barber