New Zealand’s Minister of Pacific People, Aupito William Sio says the proposed measure by the Green Party’s spokesperson for Pacific People, Teanau Tuiono are “complex issues”.
Minister Aupito made the comments in response to questions from Radio Polynesia.
Last week, Tuiono confirmed in a statement a bill has been launched to strike an anti-Pacific racist law from the country’s books and help heal the wrongs of the past.
Adding that forty years ago the New Government passed a law stripping people from Samoa of the automatic right to New Zealand citizenship.
“It is a racist law and it is time to strike it off the books.”
Teanau Tuiono’s Restoring Citizenship Removed By Citizenship (Western Samoa) Act 1982 Bill would restore the right to citizenship for people from Western Samoa who were born between 1924 and 1949, as had been promised to them.
Minister Aupito told Radio Polynesia the Government has not discussed the proposed Members Bill. “And has no position on the proposed law change at this point.”
Adding that “the views of Samoa itself is crucial in any debate on citizenship and needs to be treated with respect before New Zealand acts unilaterally to unpick the law.
“The issues raised by the proposal are complex and our relationship with Samoa has progressed significantly in the past forty years,” said Aupito.
Tuiono said in a statement that in 1982, the Muldoon Government rushed through the Citizenship (Western Samoa) Act to deny New Zealand citizenship to Western Samoans.
“Earlier that year, the Privy Council found that because those born in Western Samoa were treated by New Zealand law as “natural-born British subjects”, they were entitled to New Zealand citizenship when it was first created in 1948. But the Muldoon Government took that right away – choosing racism over the rule of law.
“In March 2003 during the Clark Government, a petition with over 90,000 signatures calling for the law’s repeal was presented to Parliament – but nothing changed.
“There are people alive today who were not just entitled to become New Zealand citizens, but who were New Zealand citizens – but whom the government stopped being citizens because it didn’t like where they were born.
“It is possible to trace a direct line from the inequities that Pacific peoples face today to the widespread anti-Pacific racism of the Dawn Raids era, including this legislation.”
