Call for National to shift on race policies

A former National MP has joined a call for the National Party to rethink its race policies in view of the projected "browning" of the population.

Fiji-born Arthur Anae, a National list MP from 1996 to 2002, urged Pacific Islanders to vote Labour in last month's election because of what he saw as the social risks of National's policies on Maori and Pacific issues.

National leader Don Brash promised to review the future of five government agencies handling Maori issues as part of a move against "race-based funding". Mr Anae said yesterday that the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs would have been threatened too if National had won.

"Abolishing the ministry has been on the drawing board for a long time," he said.

He said National's former immigration spokesman, Murray McCully, also issued a discussion paper in 2002 proposing to scrap special immigration quotas for people from Fiji, Tonga, Tuvalu and Kiribati and review a longstanding quota for Samoa.

The quotas provide 1100 places a year for Samoa, 250 each for Fiji and Tonga and 75 each for Tuvalu and Kiribati. The total of 1750 places was 3.6 per cent of the 48,815 people granted residence in New Zealand in the year to June.

Mr Anae said he pushed for the quotas under the former National Government, but no action was taken to extend them beyond Samoa until Labour won power in 1999.

"What really gets my back up is that they are rolling out the red carpet to certain parts of the world for people to come here, but the Pacific has been totally abandoned," he said.

He noted that National said very little about the Pacific in its election campaign.

"There are a lot of hidden agendas there that didn't come out," he said.

He said he allowed his National Party membership to lapse after he left Parliament because he was "pretty disgusted with the whole state of things". The party's Pacific committee, which he had once chaired, had collapsed.

"They have to realise the demographic makeup of this country. The National Party hasn't seen that. They still don't see it. They are stretching the social fabric of this country to breaking point," he said.

"I'm glad to see that some of them in there are starting to say that they want to start rethinking their whole thinking regarding Maori and Pacific people and small minority groups in New Zealand. They have got to realise the changing face of the nation."

A new group called Nationals for the Treaty (Natfort) is lobbying for a softer party line on Maori issues.

However, National's immigration policy this year did not mention the Pacific quotas, and immigration spokesman Tony Ryall said yesterday: "We haven't considered removing them."

"We have some concerns about how they might be operating but we haven't stated a preference to get rid of them," he said.