Stirring
Opinion
Stirring a hornet’s nest
Given that New Zealand is a multi-cultural nation devel oped by immigrants since the Maori first arrived, it is inevitable that immigration and race relations are two issues seldom far removed from the headlines.
That has been never more true than this year as the country pre pares for its first general election under a new system of propor
tional representational voting.
The election will be keenly fought by more than 20 parties all hoping the new system - specifically designed to give minority groups a better chance of representation in parliament - will offer them a say in the running of the country.
That means the parties are all earnestly seeking campaign issues that will be potential vote winners.
New Zealand First, led by former National Party Minister of Maori Affairs Winston Peters believes it has found one in the ris ing level of immigration. And early opinion polls, which saw the party’s and Peter’s personal popularity soaring around the coun try, seemed to indicate it was on the right track.
In the process it stirred a hornet’s nest, for it is impossible in this multi-cultural country to divorce debate on immigration from charges of racism. Combine the two and you have a ready-made election issue filled with fire and fury that whatever it does for votes will do nothing for the cause of harmonious relations.
What set it all off was the revelation that a post-war record of nearly 55,000 migrants were granted permanent residency last year and 60 per cent of them were from Asia - more than half of those from Taiwan, China and Hong Kong.
Dubbing this wrong when 160,000 New Zealanders were unemployed, Peters launched a campaign of speeches on the theme; “Whose country is it anyway?” The government had no mandate to approve a mass influx of foreigners, he said, and immigration should be “cut to the bone” - a maximum of 10,000 highly-skilled newcomers a year.
He didn’t single out Asians for criticism, but chose the Auckland suburb or Howick - dubbed “Chowick” by locals because of the influx of Chinese in recent years - for his main attack. His policy is not xenophobic or racist, he insisted, but responsible and reflected the name of his party. That was not the way many people saw it, especially Prime Minister Jim Bolger (a long-time antagonist, who fired Peters from his cabinet five years ago prompting his eventual resignation from the National Party and the formation of New Zealand First).
“The last thing this country can afford is the development of xenophobia or racism,” the prime minister said. “ The group most
at risk if that was to become a virulent political disease is the Maoris themselves.”
But Peters had clearly touched a chord with many voters.
Opinion polls had already showed that more than half of New Zealanders believed there were too many Asian migrants in the country.
Coincidentally or not - and probably not - Peters anti-immi gration campaign was followed by a dramatic rise of his party’s
popularity in the polls.
Translated into votes at an election, the polls would give New Zealand First up to 26 MPs in the new 120-seat parliament and, with neither National nor Labour likely to be able to form a gov ernment on its own account, make Peters the coalition king maker.
One poll also made Peters the country’s most popular politi cian, toppling Bolger as preferred prime minister 25 per cent to 18 per cent - a situation not guaranteed to improve the worsening relationship between the pair.
But like most multi-racial countries around the world, issues of race are extremely sensitive.
Given the environment, it was probably only a matter of time before these sensitivities manifested themselves - and they did in most unpleasant ways.
Chinese community leaders reported a rash of harassment inci dents, vilification and “go back home” taunts around the country, even to people who had been bom in New Zealand and whose families had been there for years.
Worse, there was a spate of attacks on Somali refugee families, with objects thrown at their homes, dogs set on them and even attacks on their children.
If there were people who thought these incidents had nothing to do with the immigration debate, the recently-appointed Race Relations Conciliator, Rajen Prasad, was not among them.
Race relations had nose-dived, he said, adding that while New Zealanders had every right to a “robust” debate on immigration and population policy, so far it had been an emotional one that had raised tensions among groups which had lived side by side for years.
“The effects have been catastrophic for some minority popula tions.”
At the time of writing. Pacific Island migrants had escaped attacks of the kind inflicted on Asians and Africans. But as stated earlier, the cause of harmonious race relations in this country, has not advanced one jot. •