Scoop  Top Scoops

AGENDA TRANSCRIPT
Presented by RAWDON CHRISTIE
Interviews Of Pita Sharples & Antony Young

Transcripts © copyright to Front Page Ltd but may be used PROVIDED attribution is made to TVOne and Agenda.

THE MAORI PARTY
What exactly do they stand for?

RAWDON When Maori Party MP Hone Harawira made an unofficial visit to Australia's Northern Territory earlier this month, he was criticised for focusing on the plight of Aborgines when Maori rates of child abuse in New Zealand are more than double that of non Maori. The deaths of the Kahui Twins and more recently Nia Glassie also highlight what National leader John Key has described as a growing underclass. So where exactly does the Maori Party stand on this issue, and what does it say about their underlying principles. Pita Sharples is Co-leader of the Maori Party, he joins One News' Political Editor Guyon Espiner.

GUYON ESPINER Well Pita Sharples anyone reading a newspaper or watching a television bulletin this week will have seen the horror of the Kahui case played out. Is child abuse in New Zealand a Maori problem.

PITA SHARPLES – Maori Party Co-leader
No, Maoris are totally over represented in this area, but there are actually more child abuse cases, killings as well as abuse by non Maori than Maori, it's just somehow the Maori ones hit the headlines.

GUYON Well let's look at the numbers on that, 10,000 cases of confirmed child abuse a year, Child Youth and Family tell me, 46% of those are in Maori families, that’s vastly out of proportion with the population.

PITA Oh totally out of proportion, but if you have a look at the last lot of killings for child abuse, 28 are Maori and 58 are in fact non Maori, so that’s more than double are not being done by Maori, so yes we're over represented but let's not lose sight of the fact that we do have a New Zealand problem.

GUYON Sure but why is that?

PITA Oh there's a lot of reasons why and you know we were the first to point out the pressure that poverty places on certain families, but I think it's bigger than that, there's a disjointedness in the family breakdown, particularly in urban situations and so you’ve got people living in an uncontrolled environment without support, and a lot of lack of hope sometimes, things like that.

GUYON When did this start to go wrong, do you trace it back to urbanisation in the 60s and 70s?

PITA Well you can at the first level because you know I came to Auckland during that whole mass of migration of Maori to the cities and because I'd had a year at university I was able to get people's power switched back on but it was that kind of thing that living in the city the discipline is just so rigid and without functioning as a hapu or a family group Maori were suddenly lost and we formed a whole lot of committees to cater for that, but yeah there's no doubt about that, that’s where it started.

GUYON How much of this is an economic problem for Maori about poverty rather than about culture?

PITA Well you know the Maori Party has said over and over again that there's some economic injustice, measures that haven’t been taken.

GUYON Because you don’t see middle class Maori doing this do you, you don’t read in the newspapers about Maori teachers and lawyers committing these kinds of crimes so surely it is an economic issue.

PITA But there's a lot of Maori also in the working class you don’t hear of them doing this stuff too, I mean yeah it is definitely associated, that’s one of the factors but it's about not belonging that causes this. The whole thing about gangs feeling disenfranchised from their families who are struggling in the urban area, that’s where they began in the towns where parents are struggling to make ends meet both money wise and job wise in the old days and so it produced this group of young people who said well we're gonna do our own thing, and so they’ve formed families and while a lot of the activities are criminal or were criminal they actually form a very tight knit group and that’s why they exist.

GUYON You’ve talked about the damage that globalisation of the economy has done to Maori and the liberalisation of the economy, the stripping off of tariffs etc, has damaged Maori you say. What would the Maori Party try to do to influence the government to turn some of that stuff around?

PITA Well there's a lot of things that are meant to be done. In the first place our philosophy is that what is good for Maori is good for New Zealand, you can't have one group staying behind another group moving ahead in certain areas, we've all gotta move together, so there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done, for example high on the agenda is Maori language and so that people can feel cool about themselves, the Treaty claims, it's a joke the way that they are being handled and the amount that’s being given for them. So there's people out there still feeling injustice injustice, until justice issues are settled like the Foreshore and Seabed, suddenly you can go to court you may own the foreshore bang don’t go to court, It's that whole area of as if you're being punished all the time, my mother smacked for speaking her language, all those kinda things it impacts on generations. So you know to me it's about going forward but to go forward you’ve gotta deal with the past. It hasn’t been done.

GUYON And your Co-leader Tariana Turia talks a lot about colonisation and the negative impacts on that, I mean do you see that being a factor in these rates of child abuse?

PITA There's no doubt it was a factor in setting our position where we are today and people like me would say well colonisation still exists in that we can't get the priorities that Maori want, are just put on the back burner, like Kurakaupapa Maori, we went to great extent to establish that kind of school and government's put it on the back burner, they won't create opportunities for Maori speakers to become teachers.

GUYON Are you saying that that process of colonisation is still happening?

PITA Oh very much so, you ask any Maori anywhere and they’ll tell you straight up of course it's alive and well, it's one of the big industries today.

GUYON In what sense?

PITA In almost every sense, in the justice sense, in the health sense, and so and so, education sense. It took us 107 questions to the Minister to find out how much money was being spent on Kaupapa Maori education and that’s a lot of time and a lot of questions just to find out that and there's 16 million dollars missing that they’ve said they’ve spent, we can't find it. So it's like this, they say one thing but in actual fact Maori and Maori language things are low on the agenda, very low.

GUYON But isn't this ultimately an economic issue, I mean as we said before …

PITA It's a people issue, until a government comes in and realises we're a nation, and to be a nation everybody has to feel good about themselves and they can see that there's a group of Maori who are tangatawhenua and the general public have difficulty with that concept well at least through the government's eyes of promoting a tangatawhenua, an indigenous group who belong here first, they don’t want favouritism just recognition that their language their culture and stuff is a vital part of New Zealand, and that they can make choices for themselves, that’s been totally submerged and it's ongoing through a process of colonisation. So let's break out of that and let's put the funds in that direction and it's not racial targeting at all, it's dealing with the past and bringing things forward. So that’s the solution, it's very clear.

GUYON So are you talking about separate funding in all those sectors in health and education etc.

PITA I'm talking about funding to go to those areas which haven’t been dealt with and are under developed which should have been dealt with in mainstream funding that they haven’t been. Like now we need, everyone says Kura's a good idea but where are the speakers of Maori says the government to go into the schools, they're the problem, but how many years have we been challenging government to set up realistic opportunities for Maori who speak Maori to actually be teacher trained and go into schooling. So it's like that unless they're prepared to say we'll fund this then it's not going to happen.

GUYON Your major political competitors are really the Maori wing of the Labour Party. Labour has halved unemployment and for Maori it's 7% the lowest it's been in 20 years, I mean what new solutions are you guys gonna offer, why shouldn’t Maori just stick with this government?

PITA You're right that unemployment has halved and gone even further down but that’s happened all over the southern hemisphere I mean it's not just here in New Zealand and it's just fortunate that Labour's hit that economic boom.

GUYON That’s just good luck?

PITA Oh a lot of it is, yes it's what's happening all over the world in the development of it yes, yes indeed, but let's look at it, what's happened is they’ve halved the Maori down to here, but they’ve halved the Pakeha further you know, we're still at odds with the general figure of unemployment, we still are the people that are unemployed in ratio.

GUYON Your people, Maori voters, essentially want you to work with Labour don’t they? I mean you’ve talked about being able to work with both National and Labour but could you really work with National?

PITA Our people more and more want us to keep doing what we're doing, representing a Maori viewpoint.

GUYON Let's pick up on that though because don’t they want to know, don’t your voters want to know which side you would work with, you’ve talked about being able to sort of …

PITA And we've got to stay on that line, we have to otherwise we've sold out. We got into the setting up a Maori Party to push the Maori viewpoint and aspirations and needs and we've done that and we'll keep doing that. Now who comes with us is really the question rather than who we go with.

GUYON But I look at your speeches and they're quite left wing economically you talk about the evils of globalisation, you didn’t vote for abolition of youth rates bill because it wasn’t left wing enough for you.

PITA That’s right and the government paid us a compliment because they said we're a principled party and you should be voting like a union.

GUYON Okay well if you’ve got those principles how could you work with the National Party on those issues when economically at least you're left wing?

PITA You see I can give you another list, how can we work with a Labour government that’s just taken the Foreshore and Seabed and dashed our hopes, how often do 35,000 people march on parliament, I mean one and the others are both sitting over there, they look the same to me and who we work with in the future is going to be determined by our electorates it's not by us.

GUYON What about the way that you use that power, do you see yourself sitting on the crossbenches still or do you want to share executive power, do you and your party and your MPs want to be Ministers in a government?

PITA Look our electorates will decide that but if it comes to the crunch that we have to give up too much in terms of the aspirations of our people we'll be back on the crossbenches.

RAWDON We're now joined by our panel Chris Baldock and John Roughan. John the Maori Party sticking to their principles there?

JOHN ROUGHAN – Columnist, NZ Herald
Yes and it's always interesting on these issues just how independent they really want to be both politically and who you align with who you might go with or as you said who comes with us, which is a good position to take I think. Also on issues like child abuse, it surprises me that the Maori Party don’t get into that issue for a more independent stance and say give us some power and we will handle it, but it still seems to me that you're asking mainstream New Zealand to deal with it and I'm just surprised that that isn't a bit different from your point of view.

PITA Well what I have been doing is actually working with the committees on the ground in the child abuse areas and trying to get funding for them directed from government. What I'm saying to them and I've said it in the House, stop building your departments up and don’t put more staff on, put the money into the committees that exist that are doing good work, great strides in South Auckland for example.

JOHN And these are Maori initiatives that you're talking about?

PITA Maori initiatives and in some cases Pacific Island initiatives and the whole of the whole of the community. Yes great stuff being done.

CHRIS BALDOCK – Editor, Sunday News
We had a letter in this weekend from a Maori gentleman who's very much saying the focus for that funding should shift to groups like Tainui that we know are doing very well and what more stuff can those organisations be doing, should it all come from the government?

PITA I see, the money should come from Tainui are you saying?

CHRIS Well he's saying yeah organisations like Tainui should have their hands up.

PITA Well why is that? Are the Tainui people doing this or something?

CHRIS I don’t know the gentleman who wrote the letter…

PITA You see it's a New Zealand problem and the money's gotta come from everywhere, industry should be putting some money into there like say Mainfreight and the stuff they're doing in schools and that, other companies are doing good stuff too, so it's gotta come from all sources, we've gotta recognise that this is our problem not say oh they should pay or they should do it or something, it's all of us.

RAWDON Pita we are committed to building a competitive capitalist economy, it seems to me that that’s not achievable while a large slice of our nation believes in a tribal culture.

PITA Not at all, in fact it's quite the opposite. Maori have come third in the world for entrepreneurship setting up businesses and that’s pretty good out of 30 OECD countries. Some of them have failed three or four years down the line and that’s because of lack of capital or acumen in that area, but basically Maori are very entrepreneurial and very business minded, so no that’s not true at all, in fact we would certainly dive in that area. It's just a question of fixing up the past as well so that we can put more effort into the future.

RAWDON Should our child abuse situation be attributed to colonisation?

JOHN I think so, I think that Pita was talking constantly about the lack of belonging of these people, the people that show up in the figures and make the headlines are people who have been disconnected from hapu and tribal links and the kind of supports that used to exist, and I think you're right and the solution has to lie in reconnecting those people to Maori society right. What can the Maori Party do, what ideas do you have about how to do that?

PITA What the Maori Party is, is the Maori voice or the Maori health of a Westminster government. We are not the voice totally of Maoridom, we speak on their behalf and within Maoridom you’ve got tribes you’ve got committees you’ve got all sorts of things, we're many things in our thing, and to me it's a question of getting all those voices to come forward, own everything, and do stuff and that’s what our job is to do, is to motivate them to take their position their role and to give them the opportunity to do that rather than us be the answer to anything. We're just pawns.

JOHN You can't set up the structure that they could do that through?

PITA Well you see that’s very important that the Maori people set up their own structure and not have one forced on them by politicians and before we were politicians we were the very ones suggesting stuff and getting a good ear, now we've gotta sort of conduct the choir if you like and let our people come forward with it, and they do, they are, and we're looking at Kingitanga where does Tu Haetia fit in this, Hepi's son Timi Te Heu Heu, and all that thing – where does the tribes Ngati Porou, Ngati Kahungunu, Ngapuhi where do they fit, and so on, and where do the urban groups fit. So this is the thing that our people are dealing with right now how to, what sort of organisation, what sort of house, what will be our structure.

CHRIS We run a number of stories in Sunday News that are very positive about Maori and I think we're pretty well represented in that respect but amongst certain sections of society do we just need a mindset change here and stop feeling hard done by and actually move forward, do you think there is that sense? We're gonna talk about immigrants who are coming here and umpteen stories of people coming here qualified as surgeons, senior engineers whatever and they're starting from rock bottom and they're doing it they're moving ahead, so do people just need to wake up a bit and say hey we can make progress.

PITA Very definitely, and you're quite right there are people with that mindset but it goes with the lifestyle if you like. If you're left out you feel bitter and angry and you blame stuff and so you're always going to get a group like that whether it's ethnic group, whether it's race or whether it's a group based on sex or whatever, people who are left out will push that point of view.

RAWDON Pita, Chris, thanks very much for that. Guyon have we learned a bit more about the Maori Party philosophy?

GUYON Yeah a lot of interesting ideas there. I think what is going to be really interesting Pita Sharples puts it who will go with us, I just think that’s going to be a really interesting development in terms of who the Maori Party can work with. Interestingly Helen Clark is now counting the Maori Party as part of the centre left bloc so she's certainly counting them on her side and I just wonder how long the Maori Party can continue saying to its voters look you give us the power and then we'll choose because Maori voters have shown that they do split their vote for the Maori electorate and so far for the Labour Party, so I just wonder how long they can go down that line.

RAWDON And yet the Maori Party's saying we're not gonna compromise in order to accommodate the two major parties.

GUYON Well that’s right and that has been the minor parties position across the board for some time now but that’s seen as the way to maximise their vote and I think strategically they’ve probably made the right call, I just wonder whether it's going to be a little bit harder to sort of hold the line on that.

HIGH FLYING KIWI
Growing up Chinese in New Zealand

RAWDON This weekend is the Bananas New Zealand Going Global International Conference organised by the New Zealand Chinese Association. The aim of the conference is to highlight the achievements of Chinese people in New Zealand and around the world. One of the guest speakers this year is Antony Young who went from Miramar in Wellington to Manhattan in New York where he has a multi billion dollar media company working alongside heavyweights like Time Warner and Fox. The son of a first generation Chinese migrant Antony Young joins me now. Antony, Bananas, it's a racist term is it not?

ANTONY YOUNG – President, Optimedia International U.S.
Yeah, I think there's a bit of confidence in the Chinese community in New Zealand to sort of go out and talk about sort of those issues and I think it's a really great initiative I think the community's really moved on in New Zealand since I was here.

RAWDON So it's confidence to take a label and use it as part of an identity or almost an explanation of who you are and how you think.

ANTONY Yeah I think it's a growing kind of confidence in identity, recognising that New Zealand's made up of lots of different people and not – you know the usual Chinese thing is to sort of shy away from those sorts of things and coming out and expressing themselves I think is a real positive development.

RAWDON So how do you identify yourself?

ANTONY Well I guess I identify myself firstly as a Kiwi, as a New Zealander, I'll wear the All Black jersey particularly next month, and then you know I can't ignore the fact that I'm Chinese, it's sort of part of my makeup. Sometimes you just try and put it out of your mind and you don’t let it be a factor and then you recognise part of being who I am is being Chinese.

RAWDON I assume your upbringing must have been very Chinese was it not?

ANTONY Well yeah, I mean son of a greengrocer so sort of came through that route, and you know I think some of the values, his father worked very hard to sort of get him into his sort of being a greengrocer and my Dad worked really hard to help me get where I am today.

RAWDON Now that’s an interesting one because I read that he would have loved the traditional accountancy, doctor, profession path, was it not a huge disappointment when as a teenager you said no I'm gonna go and do advertising?

ANTONY Yeah, you know like for a Chinese advertising's not a real profession really. I think he's sort of starting to realise I must be doing something right, but yeah he wanted me …

RAWDON What now?

ANTONY Yeah right now.

RAWDON Has it taken that long to convince him?

ANTONY No no I think he has, he's been a big fan, but yeah you're right I think the accountant is a pretty kind of safe and I think part of it he knows what they do, but you know I married an accountant so.

RAWDON So that let you off the hook did it?

ANTONY Let me off the hook.

RAWDON Antony's done one thing right now in spite of the fact you're on this enormous sort of media industry. Now what do you think the difference is between your family and that of new migrants, today's migrants?

ANTONY Well I mean it's really just one generation and I think from what I grew up you know there weren’t nearly as many kind of Chinese Asian faces as you see here today, and so I think what we tried to do is we tried to blend in, you know my Dad joined the local bowling club, you just meet friends and get on with it, there wasn’t sort of big kind of clusters of Chinese people mixing together. I think now it's there's a bigger population and you’ve got the opportunity to sort of be who you are in New Zealand more and so I don’t think it's a good thing a bad thing it's just what it is.

RAWDON You mentioned values earlier on about that’s what your father instilled in you what his father instilled in him, do you think that – we were talking to Pita Sharples just now about the child abuse situation in the country – do you think that Maori community and other communities in New Zealand could learn from the Chinese community?

ANTONY Well you know I think it's – could they learn from the Chinese community – I don’t know they should be themselves really I mean that’s the beauty of living in a multicultural country you don’t have to follow anyone you can be yourself, so no I think there's a lot of great values in Maori that everyone else could follow so I mean I think there is still strong family values everywhere else, there's quite a high respect for parents and listening to them and you know that’s probably what sort of helps get us all on the straight and narrow.

RAWDON But there certainly doesn’t seem to be an underclass within the Chinese migrant community, you know we don’t hear stories about abuse at that level do we?

ANTONY No I haven’t been exposed to that no.

RAWDON So why is that, what is the Chinese community doing which other communities aren’t in order to sort of you know create that safe environment?

ANTONY The family unit's very strong and I think yeah coming over as an immigrant I guess there's that mentality you come for a fresh start and to try and really do well and maybe you come with a slight disadvantage and so it makes you work a little bit harder, I don’t know if that’s the case.

RAWDON And you have worked very hard, I mean just very quickly the success of rising through various blue chip advertising companies you now are responsible for this huge multi billion dollar budget in charge of one of New Zealand's top media companies. Do you think that’s partly because you believe that to be accepted you had to achieve?

ANTONY Yeah, I think particularly when you leave New Zealand you sort of feel – there's a bit of intimidation there you sort of – I mean I worked in London and for us in the advertising and media business you know London is kind of a leading edge, it's where you know a lot of the thought leadership is taking place, so you go there with this view look I hope I can do this and it makes you work a bit harder, it makes you take it a lot more seriously, and you know you don’t go with any assumptions other than that so yeah.

RAWDON And ironically now you're the Kiwi expat living overseas in New York and they view you as a Kiwi?

ANTONY Yes, I mean Kiwis have got great reputations in business, you know Kevin Roberts has been a great sort of leader in that field, he's absolutely cleaning up in Madison Ave, yeah I think we've got a good reputation cos we come with a different point of view, I think when you're in New Zealand you're a better all rounder you do a lot more, you get your hands dirty, and I think we work, we seem to work really well with people from all different sort of cultures and I mean I think that’s really played you know it's really helped me, people like dealing with Kiwis and business is all about dealing with people really.

RAWDON Yeah sure particularly the communications business which you're riding high in. Chris what would your readers think of Antony and stories like Antony's?

CHRIS I think they would be happy to share in his success and others like him. I think your comment earlier on was very interesting about blending in when you arrive and not so many Asian faces around. There's huge numbers coming into the country now, there have been, what sort of advice would you have for those people because maybe there are perceptions that Asian communities will stick together, keep themselves to themselves, there's the old golf club cliché you know where guys play together at the golf club, would you have any thoughts or advice for new immigrants?

ANTONY Well I think when you're an immigrant you come over and you’ve gotta mix into the country and I think that’s where sometimes there are problems when you don’t, but you’ve gotta recognise you're coming to another country, someone else's country and I think working in it and being sensitive to the local culture is really important, just in the same way when I went to work in Hong Kong or in China from the other side, you’ve gotta be sensitive to what they're about rather than just say look here's what I'm doing.

JOHN When did you leave New Zealand?

ANTONY I left New Zealand at the end of 94.

JOHN Have you noticed any difference now in the reception that Chinese people get in New Zealand to what happened when they were a much smaller number and blended in more quickly with the population?

ANTONY No I don’t spend a lot of time in Auckland where I think a lot of the visibility of Asian immigrants are here. I think probably people because there is a bigger population have probably got to less know that group and I think there's a tendency when there's a big population, like you see in the US there are large pockets of different immigrants in the country so you tend to get less of a melting pot, you know they talk about New York being more like a tossed salad than a melting pot because of that and I think that’s one of the things that I probably notice where I think definitely growing up when I was a child you know you didn’t have as many kind of Chinese friends and you mixed with your neighbours and you missed with your friends at school.

RAWDON John you mentioned in your editorial today how the growing power of the Chinese economy and our tie to that is actually heightening tensions potentially over here.

JOHN Not just here but in countries like the US and others I think where there's a certain fear about China's growing economic power and a feeling that particularly on fixed exchange rates and issues like that where they might not be playing fair with the world, and that tension doesn’t really reflect at a popular level but you know I think it's sort of that probably worries the Chinese everywhere they are that you know the more successful you get the more tension you create sometimes.

RAWDON Which must concern some new migrant families here, but that’s not something you would come across?

ANTONY No, I think when I was working in London and New York they probably see me as a Kiwi first and I think people have become more I guess sophisticated about you know what a Chinese face looks like and an Asian face, Thai, Japanese, I think distinctions are a lot more sort of – people are a lot more aware of those. You know China is a powerful kind of economy and people are worried, I mean even in Asia people are worried about the sort of expansion of China and the power of that economy is taking a lot from other countries.

JOHN To come back to the cultural mix if I can and it seems to me the difference between Maori and all other minority groups is that Maori rely on this country as being their homeland and their identity and other minorities don’t, they’ve got somewhere else that they know their culture is strong and is their homeland, and for a person like yourself what does that mean, do you think of China at all, do you know China, have you been there?

ANTONY Yeah well I worked in China, been based in Hong Kong and China was a very big part of my role, so yeah you know I found myself in a situation where I was working in China.

RAWDON Do you speak the language?

ANTONY No, no I don’t, so I was an unusual thing for them.

RAWDON Do you want to learn it, have you had time?

ANTONY Yeah I think it would be very difficult now to do business in China without speaking Chinese but it is weird doing business in a country which my grandparents tried to get out of and I think it was sort of 50 years or 60 years of Communism, you know it's quite a different culture, I think I guess the sort of second generation Chinese New Zealanders here would see much less in common with someone from the PRC than they would someone from here.

RAWDON Antony I'll just very quickly mention your book, it's got a very long title if I've got time – Profitable Marketing Communications – A guide to marketing return on investment – which basically tells you that marketing is the best investment a company can make I hope.

FINAL THOUGHTS – GUEST COMMENTATORS

RAWDON We've just seen on Dairy Diary the story of the Patel's immigration to New Zealand and raising their children. Antony we've managed to hold on to you for a bit longer – you'd be able to relate to the Patel's wouldn’t you?

ANTONY Yeah I mean particularly when our Dad's made that sort of sacrifice of career for his family, you can't but he inspired by it but also as one of their children just feel like you’ve got to sort of do well to thank your parents and I think that’s why he's got two great kids who seem to have a real good future.

RAWDON So like your parents it seems like yeah it's a complete sacrifice in order to provide the best for the children.

JOHN Yeah big thing to do isn't it to come to a country where you can't really practise you're profession, you buy a dairy and you put your children into the status that you used to have in your home country, huge thing to do and very very admirable.

CHRIS I think it's fascinating positive stories like that that really need to be focused on because again you know we see problems with Maori whatever, we're seeing some focus on the negatives you know the loan shark at Sky City Casino, those sort of issues and I guess with large number or increasing numbers coming into the country we are going to import some problems that’s inevitable but I think you know we'll be interested to see how New Zealand handles that over the next decade or so and that any undercurrents of racism or whatever you know people can continue to assimilate at they do now and really think about the way forward because you know living in the UK as you well know we've seen that in the 70s, the 60s you know huge numbers of immigrants coming in and you are going to get resentment that is inevitable in some sections of society, but it will be interesting to see how New Zealand progresses.

RAWDON Did you conflict with racism when you were growing up?

ANTONY You know when you're growing up as a young kid at school things get thrown around but you know you don’t really let it affect you, if you do then it affects you but no I think by and large I think very lucky growing up in Wellington, I think people saw our family as a kind of good part of the community and generally everyone was very welcoming and no you didn’t feel like different you didn’t feel like an outsider, but that was a slightly different time now we're in a different part of New Zealand's development.

JOHN It's interesting the difference that it makes you know when numbers increase and the tendency of the immigrant group is to do things together more, and we see it in clubs, sports clubs and things everywhere and you wonder from the white New Zealander side whether we should try and integrate more but then you think well you know if immigrant groups want to enjoy their own company what harm does it do.

CHRIS But at the same time you know these are the groups which we should be valuing so highly because of the standards, the words which come out – hard work, appreciation, responsibility, every time, you know a lot of these people are a huge credit and make a fantastic contribution and Kiwis need to realise that you know it is a small country and they’ve got a big role to play in its future absolutely, increasingly so.

RAWDON Thank you very much Antony Young for hanging around, to John Roughan and also obviously to Chris Baldock.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

 

Top Scoops Headlines