Pacific Island Issues
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- Ensure that Pasifika learning is embedded throughout the New Zealand Curriculum, and is developed with the input of communities.
- Support and strengthen the Pasifika Education Plan and develop a national Pasifika Education Strategy.
- Support a culturally appropriate environment so that extended families can be involved in their children's education, and ensure that families have access to the resources they need to support their children’s learning.
- Provide scholarships for Pacific language teachers at primary and secondary schools.
- Promote the use, regeneration, and protection of Pasifika and heritage languages in the school environment.
- Read more here.
- Act, including through the New Zealand education system, to officially recognise the five main Pacific languages used in New Zealand: Samoan, Tongan, Cook Island, Niuean and Tokelauan.
- Establish an Immigration Pacific Plan that recognises Pacific Climate Change refugees; and establish a Ministerial Advisory Group to examine the outstanding immigration issues with Pacific countries.
- Establish an annual Pacific Futures forum to support Pacific communities to create and build a new collective vision for Pacific people in New Zealand, to provide the framework and long-term goals to guide how government will work with Pasifika community.
- Invest in Pasifika Youth and support work opportunities on the basis of earning while learning with a focus on lifting achievements for young or long-term unemployed Pacific NEETs.
- Strengthen and enhance New Zealand's special relationship with the Pacific Region.
- Read more here.
- Invest in the establishment of the TaTupu – a cultural, social and economic transformational change kaupapa led by Pacific churches and communities.
- Build a viable Pacific Cultural Centre in Auckland as an employment and economic development centre so Pacific social, cultural and economic efforts can be brought together, harnessed and strengthened.
- Introduce a one-off amnesty for Pacific overstayers.
- Reinstate the parent category and family reunification visas.
- Establish 500 second chance Pacific adult scholarships, so those who have not been to university or undertaken formal studies, can do so; and 150 paid Pacific adult internships per year as part of retraining the Pacific workforce affected by changes in the marketplace.
- Read more here.
- Providing $25,000 for Toloa Scholarships for Pacific students to pursue tertiary studies in science, technology, engineering and maths.
- Encouraging more Pacific groups to become Community Housing Providers so they can work for and represent our communities.
- Encouraging better Pacific trade opportunities through PACER Plus.
- Pilot Project Tatupu to help Pacific families move to the regions to and establish new lives and communities there.
- Supporting Pacific business and entrepreneurs by expanding the focus of the Pacific Business Trust and Pacific Young Enterprise Scheme.
- Read more here.
Not yet available on their website.
Not yet available on their website.
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1 Comments
Having family and friends living in a major Pacific Island I think a popular policy might be to process visitor visas in a humane manner rather than with erratic glacial speed.
Last year it became so embarrassing having my UK relatives just arrive and my highly reputable PI relatives requiring sponsorship, a fairly expensive visitors visa which needs a confirmed flight to be processed but then is processed so slowly that the air ticket expires. The PIs involved thought it was caused by their visas being processed in Fiji which tends to be seen as a rival country for sporting events. I didn't like the racial overtones so I wrote and complained and asked for an explanation - I mean it is only a visitors visa not a work visa and these were mainly people who had visited several times in the past without any crime or over-staying or demands on the health system.
To cut a long story short: although Fiji processes other countries they give the same diabolical service to their own citizens. On the NZ visa website it allow for says 25 working days but in practice they miss this ludicrously long deadline for over 20% of applications. Surely if there is an issue with an application then the applicant should be contacted in hours not months.
So a policy for all political parties: treat Pacific Islanders like human beings - if they want to visit NZ and spend their money here let them do it.
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