Among three more members' Bills plucked from the Biscuit Tin today, there is a piece of legislation looking to fix a 40-year-old outcome of the anti-Pacific racism of the Dawn Raids era.
Green Party MP Teanau Tuiono's Restoring Citizenship Removed By Citizenship (Western Samoa) Act 1982 Bill would restore the right to New Zealand citizenship for people from Western Samoa who were born between 1924 and 1949 - a right promised to them and found to be owed them by New Zealand’s then highest court.
Green Party MP Teanau Tuiono talks with Samoan counterparts during an inter-parliamentary trip to Apia, 11 July 2023. Photo: Johnny Blades / VNP
In 1982, the Muldoon Government pushed through the Citizenship (Western Samoa) Act to deny New Zealand citizenship to Western Samoans.
Earlier that year, the Privy Council found, 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. However, the National Party-led Government under Robert Muldoon took that away.
According to Tuiono, there are people alive today who are not just entitled to become New Zealand citizens, but who actually once were New Zealand citizens. Appropriately, I caught up with Tuiono in Samoa last month when we chatted about his bill which he said he decided to put in the ballot after the Dawn Raids apology in 2021.
"There was a couple of things that I thought needed to happen in order for that apology to be more meaningful," he explained.
The first thing was an amnesty for overstayers. The second related to that government decision from 1982.
"Other people were reaching out to me saying hey look, there’s also this racist piece of legislation which is still on the books, the Western Samoa Citizenship Act.
"The Bill I put in the ballot is about repealing that Act, but also setting up a pathway, if they want, for that elderly generation to get their citizenship."
Empty apology?
The 2021 Dawn Raids apology was welcomed by the Pasifika community of this country, an event which Tuiono was central to and described as emotional and momentous.
However, an independent review this year found that dawn raids targeting Pasifika have not stopped, revealing that Immigration New Zealand had not done adequate work to align their practice with the apology.
"It's disgraceful, it's 2023. Saying that the Dawn Raids were something that happened way back when and then magically stopped is just not true, as we found out this year," the MP said.
"If we are going to be more fulsome in addressing the Dawn Raids era, we need to close off a number of things."
This included addressing the legacy of people wrongly cast as overstayers and having their citizenship denied, Tuiono said.
Chance to right a wrong
In 2003 during the second term of the Helen Clark-led Labour Government, a petition with more than 90,000 signatures calling for the 1982 law's repeal was presented to Parliament. No action was taken by the government.
With only three more sitting weeks left before the House rises, it is uncertain whether Tuiono's Member's Bill will get a first reading before this Parliament term finishes. But it will have its day, and he was hopeful of gaining the support of other parties.
"I think it's incumbent on the New Zealand Parliament, New Zealand Government to sort that out," Tuiono said, adding that research showed the legislation probably directly affects no more than 5000 people.
