Polynesians

Opinion

Hie plight of NZ's Polynesians

I WROTE only a couple of months ago about a new focus on the plight of New Zealand’s quarter of a million Pacific Island people, who along with Maori occupy all the bottom rungs of the nation’s socio-economic ladder.

Since then a new report has highlighted the significant gaps between Polynesians here and the rest of the population and warned there is little prospect of much improvement in the near future.

It showed that while the majority of New Zealanders are looking forward to the new millennium with hope and high expectations, the immediate outlook for the Pacific community in the coming centu ry is grim.

In a chilling prediction, the report said: “It is clear that Pacific peoples in New Zealand face the prospect of a similarly poor or worse socio-economic position in the new millennium.”

The report, entitled The Social and Economic Status of Pacific Peoples in New Zealand, warned the gaps were widening. It added: “There is little indication that the position of Pacific communities will change markedly in health, education, welfare, employment, justice, housing and other key sectors in the short to medium term.”

As I have noted previously, the implications of that for the whole of New Zealand are serious. Maiginalisation of six per cent of the population (and expected to more than double over the next 50 years) prevents Pacific people contributing to the national economy.

A Polynesian workforce that is unhealthy, ill-educated, badly housed and as a result dispirited is not good for its own community or the country at large.

The report, prepared by the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, did not mince words about the situation.

“The urgency of these issues cannot be understated,” it said. “It is clear that conventional approaches and thinking have been inade quate. Many areas are in a state of crisis. These are not problems that will wait for tomorrow.”

Whether the new government to be elected this November will listen and do something about it remains to be seen. Cynics will have doubts, for the record of successive governments is not good.

But to a large extent the solutions are in the hands of the Pacific peoples themselves, as Tuaraki Delamere, the Minister of Pacific Island Affairs, pointed out when releasing the report.

The community should stop trying to blame everyone else, he

said. “It is time we started looking in the minor to see where the real problem often is. Where we can, we need to take responsibility for ourselves. Only we, ourselves, can make a real difference.”

Delamere gave some examples, starting with family violence.

An earlier report showed that Pacific Island households accounted for 12 per cent of the cases of child abuse and neglect that came before the Children, Young Persons and their Families Agency last year - that is double the community’s proportion of the population. (Even worse, Maori and Maori-European families accounted for nearly half the total.) A beaten child, Delamere said, is more likely to suffer health problems, fail at school and end up in prison. He lauded Samoan community leader Ttno Pereira who had earlier attacked his peo ple’s excuse of traditional disciplinary culture to defend child beat ing.

As for education, he said. Pacific parents could make sure their youngsters went to school, attended classes and did their home work. While tire situation here is improving, more than a quarter of all Pacific students left school in 1997 with no qualifications. Of those who had qualifications, only one-in-three went on to further education or training compared with half of all school leavers.

That Pacific women are more likely than Europeans to be single mothers pointed to the difficulties they have in supervising their children’s education. On top of this, a Statistics New Zealand report showed that 38 per cent of Pacific children came from homes where the parent or parents were jobless. (The Maori situation was worse - 40 per cent - but both com pared unfavourably with Europeans whose figure was under 14 per cent.) Pacific Island workers were the worst hit by restructuring of the economy in the late 1980 s and early ‘9os. More than half of them were employed in manufacturing in 1986 but 10 years later this was down to under 31 per cent. The Pacific unemployment rate had by then gone from 5.5 per cent to over 15 per cent At 14.5 per cent this year (against 5.6 per cent for pakeha work ers, though the Maori rate is up to 19 per cent) it is not improving much and is the main reason Pacific peoples have the lowest aver age weekly income of all ethnic groups and nearly 37 per cent of them rely on government benefits.

But it is in health that the community can do most for itself, Delamere said, citing smoking, obesity and dietary problems such as high blood pressure and diabetes - conditions largely self-inflict ed.

Perhaps the most shocking report this year was one showing that New Zealand’s low child immunisation rate was blamed for spread ing measles in the Pacific. While it has been largely eliminated in Pacific countries that have high vaccination levels, island young sters going back from here are transmitting it, experts said.

Health care for under six-year-olds in New Zealand is free, “but unfortunately too many of our parents are just too lazy to take their children to doctors,” as Delamere put it.

That’s a shocking indictment of the Pacific community and indi cates an attitude that has to change before it can lay the blame for its woes on the government, pakeha or anyone else. ■

David Barber

Wellington