Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister Nicola Willis give an update on fuel supply amid the Middle East conflict. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon visited Samoa and Tonga this week with a delegation from New Zealand. The trip got off to a rocky start with claims, later debunked, Luxon had asked for a matai title. Political Reporter Julia Gabel travelled with the Prime Minister on the trip.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon travelled to the Pacific this week to meet its newest leaders and came back as a Samoan chief.
On a muggy Monday outside Apia’s Government building, Luxon was given a prestigious matai title that prompted both nation’s leaders to gush over how tight New Zealand and Samoa’s familial connection was.
But during Luxon’s three day Pacific visit, a delicate issue simmered in the background that raised questions over the integrity of family bond.
“Family don’t ask other family to jump through hoops to get a visitor visa to enter Aotearoa New Zealand,” Green MP Teanau Tuiono, who was part of Luxon’s delegation on the trip, said.
Currently, travellers from the Pacific need a visitor visa to enter New Zealand which can involve a medical exam to prove they are in good health and won’t be a burden on New Zealand’s health care system.
Former MP Arthur Anae has presented a petition to Parliament, signed by tens of thousands of Pacific Islanders, urging the Government to give Pacific nations visa-free access to New Zealand.
Anae’s petition has raised questions over why 60 other countries, most of which don’t have cultural ties to New Zealand, can get cheaper and easier access to New Zealand under the electronic visa scheme.
It does seem highly unlikely Luxon’s Government would green-light visa-free access to New Zealand for Pacific travellers anytime soon, although he has committed to first seeing the proposal through the parliamentary select committee process where the public can air their views on the issue directly to politicians.
In an interview with the Herald, Luxon raised the issue of an immigration risk assessment that spotlighted concerns of Pacific travellers overstaying their visa.
Tuiono said such concerns needed to be rigorously tested and the evidence provided to the public to prevent repeating the horrors of the Dawn Raid era, where Pacific Islanders were targeted for allegedly overstaying, but in reality, many of the overstayers were from other nations.
“Many Pacific Islanders, particularly many of us who grew up during the Dawn Raids era, and I remember that, and then we had the apology, we look at the immigration system and it feels racist,” Tuiono said.
“It’s the way that they treat us and the way that they don’t treat other people. There are people who just want to come and visit families. I was talking to some Fijians and they were fundraising and they wanted to come and watch the Fijian Drua game in New Zealand, to come and spend money in this country, but they couldn’t.”
Tuiono urged the Government to find a middle ground for the time being that allowed Pacific travellers to enter New Zealand swiftly for cultural obligations, funerals and birthdays.
The first question Luxon got from local Samoan media during his Pacific trip was about visas and at every press conference in the Pacific after that, local media asked at least one question about visas. Clearly, it’s an issue their readers want answers to.
The issue is a sensitive and indeed an emotional one for many. After all, as Samoan Prime Minister La’aulialemalietoa Polataivao Leuatea Fosi Schmidt said, these are New Zealand’s “brothers and sisters”. But Luxon cites previous times in recent history when Pacific travellers were allowed visa-free access to New Zealand which led to huge strain on New Zealand’s resources, particularly the health system.
Being in Samoa and Tonga, there are blatant similarities with Māori culture. There are parallels between a pōwhiri and the sacred ava ceremony used to bestow Luxon with his matai title.
Most prominent was how both indigenous ceremonies are above the political issues of the day: it does not matter who the manuhiri (guests) are, or whether you agree with their politics, obligations for hosts present requirements to provide hospitality and uphold the integrity or protocol of that traditional process.
Of course, in the background, protests might brew. There were reports of potential protests at Luxon’s matai ceremony and discontent on social media but none of that appeared in person at the ceremony or throughout his trip in the Pacific, at least not in front of the media.
That is in line with how Māori elders might try to calm down younger generations from protesting too vigorously at pōwhiri, like at Waitangi recently, because ultimately, obligations on hosts to uphold the mana of a pōwhiri is, for some, paramount.
The significance of visas varied greatly between islands. Where Samoa’s leader jokingly (adding to Luxon’s diplomatic headache) implied New Zealand should answer those calls in return for providing a matai title, Tonga’s Prime Minister, Lord Fakafānua, said it was a domestic issue for New Zealand and he was appreciative of recent changes to the visa scheme for Pacific travellers, reducing the fee by $55.
Samoa’s Prime Minister indeed induced a headache for Luxon with his comments over the matai title.
It started with his claims in Samoan media that later proved to be untrue that Luxon had requested the title. Backroom wrangling saw that claim officially retracted by the Samoan Government, but not before the remarks had made it back to New Zealand, causing some embarrassment to Luxon.
And then, while visibly emotional to a crowd at a state dinner, he revealed he had received a 3am call from New Zealand indicating the ceremony could be called off and had enlisted respected Samoan leader Sir Michael Jones for help.
The Herald understands Luxon’s team did consider whether to call the ceremony off, feeling slightly bruised by how the false claim Luxon had asked for the title had played out.
Jones, who has two matai titles and is revered within the Samoan community as well as being an All Black legend, told the Herald that witnessing the commotion preceding such a sacred ceremony was painful.
New Zealand and the Pacific were family, he said, and therefore, like siblings, that bond was unbreakable and there was no other option but to work through the issues.
In the end, Luxon went through with the ceremony.
Overall, Luxon was obviously relaxed in the islands. He calmly rebuffed awkward questions about visa-free travel for people we call family and shut down probing about the controversy over his matai title.
Indeed, he seemed far more laid back in a hibiscus shirt and lei in the blistering 30C heat of Samoa and Tonga than he had several weeks prior at Parliament in Wellington when he faced a different kind of heat. The stability of his leadership was questioned after a political poll plunged his National Party to figures not seen since the disastrous Todd Muller and Judith Collins 2020 era.
If Luxon was nudged out of his comfort zone during the matai ceremony, where he and wife Amanda were required to dance traditionally in front of a large audience, then he swiftly returned to home base with a series of law and order announcements.
Those announcements included ramping up New Zealand’s support via funding to catch sophisticated offshore drug cartels that use the Pacific nations as transit points before moving cocaine or methamphetamine into New Zealand.
Luxon called the Pacific a “super highway for drugs” and New Zealand’s Police Commissioner Richard Chambers, appears so concerned about the flow of cocaine from South America that he wants Kiwi cops stationed in Colombia within the year.
At a school in Tonga, Luxon played badminton with Lord Fakafānua and a squad of primary kids. In Samoa, he watched New Zealand’s Tīpene kura (St Stephen’s School) play rugby against the local Wesley College.
Tīpene won that game but perhaps the real winner that day was Luxon, who was presented, after the game, with a portrait of himself painted by local church students. As they handed him the A3 canvas, he declared it would go “straight to the pool room!”
Where the portrait ends up is not the point (it was spotted stowed away in the 757 cabin for safekeeping), it’s that the students took the time to paint it for him. Kids, young teens, community leaders and elders loved Luxon as he toured their nations.
People cheered when he walked in to the room, sang, implored him to dance with them, fed him consistently, embellished him with leis and held a sacred ceremony bestowing upon him one of Samoa’s most important titles – a sign of the village of Apia’s upmost respect.
In Tonga, the police band played a medley of Māori waiata. In return, Luxon told them how much he loved Tongan marching bands and that he had watched the film Red, White and Brass at least three times.
That is indigenous hospitality at its best. Indigenous ceremony is largely above such mainstream politics because it existed far before the concept of politics we know today.
For his matai ceremony, Luxon wore traditional Samoan attire.
After two years of a coalition Government that has faced charges of being anti-Māori (which it staunchly rejects) mostly prompted by the contentious Treaty Principles Bill, Luxon and his wife Amanda’s serious and respectful participation in a ceremony for a culture, that feels at times like a proxy to Māori culture, felt warming.
Whether that warmth follows Luxon home is an open question. Some Māori would take anything, at this point, other than the pain that has been felt over the past two years.
Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.