Helen du Plessis-Allan's view of Pacific Islanders is that they "don't count". They are of no importance to New Zealand. She sees them as "welfare spongers" and Nauru as a "hell hole". Good talkback host she may be, and her provocative comments probably increase her ratings, but she is abysmally ignorant of New Zealand and Pacific Islands history. She claims to be interested in politics but politics without history is like a three-legged horse.
[Note: I have used the modern names for the islands mentioned.]
Part 2. A History of New Zealand-Pacific Islands relationship
For most of the 19th Century Britain, France, Germany and the Unites States were competing to increase their world-wide colonies, and their "last grab for empire" included the Pacific.
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| German Governor, visiting NZ parliamentarian and chief Mata'afa Iosefo, 1903 |
By the early 20th century, Britain had "acquired" New Zealand, Papua, Solomon Islands, a share in Vanuatu, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Fiji, Cook Islands, Niue and the Tokelau Islands and it had signed a Treaty of Friendship with Tonga.
France had "acquired" New Calendonia, Wallis and Futuna, and French Polynesia, the USA "acquired" Hawaii, American Samoa and a number Micronesian islands to the north.
This left Germany with the north-east of New Guinea (the Dutch took the west) Nauru, and Western Samoa.
When New Zealand obtained self-government in 1907, the Cook Islands and Niue and Tokelau were included in its "realm." and Cook Islanders and Niueans became New Zealand citizens, as they remain today. In large part self-governing, they travel on NZ passports and NZ represents them in the United Nations.
Tokelau, administered by NZ since 1925, was annexed in 1948 and Tokelauans became NZ citizens. The Northern Cook Islands, whose "ownership" were disputed, were ceded to the Cook Islands by the USA in 1980.
As NZ citizens Cook Islanders, Niueans and Tokelauans have had unrestricted access to Aotearoa, long before Helen du Plessis (who says they "don't count") was born, and even longer than from when she became a NZ citizen!
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| Note the white officers, pn88 |
In 1914 NZ invaded Western Samoa and for the duration of the war its German citizens were interned on Soames Island in Wellington Harbour.
After the War Samoa became a League of Nations mandate administered by NZ. Not all Samoans were happy about this, which led to the Mau affair in 1927 (see below).
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| Niuean soldiers, World War I |
In 1919 SS Talune, a NZ ship carrying Spanish flu, did not reveal it had been quarantined in Suva, and authorities in Apia, Samoa were unaware of the epidemic in Auckland. Disembarking passengers were carriers of the virus that within a year left 90% of Samoa's population infected, and an estimate 20% dead. Pause on that figure for a moment.
In Fiji three emergency hospitals were set up and many died. The ship also called at the three main Tonga island groups. Mortality was estimated to be less than in Samoa, but there were too few able-bodied men alive to give the deceased proper burials. In the 1960s when I was living in Nuku'alofa people were still digging up human bones in their gardens. No epidemic occurred in other parts of the Pacific, including American Samoa, where strict quarantine was observed.
Nonetheless, a report at the time (which echoes today among the supposed causes of poor Maori and Pasikifa crime, housing and health statistics) passes the blame to Pacific Islanders. In part it reads:
"The colonial administrations in both Fiji and Western Samoa presumed that ignorance and superstition ruled the indigenous mind and body, effectively placing natives at risk from themselves and their customs. In doing so, indigenous Polynesians were seen to be the cause of their own illness and death."In 1927, a peaceful demonstration in Samoa led by the Mau Movement was shot at by NZ soldiers and Tupua Tamasese, a high ranking chief, was amongst those killed.
Years later, Helen Clark apologized on behalf of NZ to Samoa for these two acts, the influenza epidemic and the Mau shooting.
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| Banaba before and after the mining |
Further north, phosphate had been discovered on Nauru and Banaba. The Germans on Nauru sold their "rights" to the British for £2,000 cash and £12,500 in shares. After World War I phosphate mining was administered by a trust established jointly between Britain, Australia and New Zealand. and millions of tonnes were eventually strip mined to be spread over farmland in Australia and NZ, leaving 80% of the Nauru landscape looking like the face of the moon.
Banaba, now part of Kiribati, was similarly strip-mined and its population forcibly relocated to Rabi Island, Fiji. No wonder du Plessis-Allan called Nauru a “hellhole", though she probably referred to the refugees, not the denudation.
The rural economy of Australia and NZ owes much to Nauru and Banaba.
During World War II 40,000 Papuans manhandled Australian arms along the Kokoda trail in the fight against the Japanese. Many of these so-called "Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels" died. Much of the population of Nauru and Kiribati were forceably relocated. In the Solomons and Vanuatu, whole villages and cultivated areas were destroyed to make room for American airstrips and American and NZ personnel. Many villagers starved.
Fijians, Cook Islanders, Niueans and Samoans fought in the NZ armed forces, and Tonga, impoverished but fiercely loyal to the British Crown, collected enough money to buy a Spitfire!
With manpower short in New Zealand, thousands of Islanders, including Tongans and Samoans, worked in NZ factories, farms and hospitals, becoming our "reserve army of labour", mainly filling unpleasant, underpaid and temporary jobs, a tap to be turned on or off at our will.
Those readers old enough will recall the "dawn raids" during the Muldoon era when police raided homes for those overstaying their work permits, and indiscriminately catching some Cook Islanders and Niueans in their net. South Auckland, Lower Hutt and Porirua had already started to acquire a distinctly Polynesian demographic.
The post-war years also saw a revival of trade with the Islands and attempts to
All failed, partly as a result of poor agricultural advice. The Chief Agricultural Officer in Niue, for example, had previously been a clerk in Levin, and it was on his advice that large areas were cleared for ploughing Niueans later called the result a "desert".
But the main cause of failure was the demise of the old-style mixed cargo-passenger ships, the Tofua and Matua run by our Union Steam Ship Company. They were replaced by passenger air travel (resulting in an unforeseen vast increase in Pacific Island emigration) and single-purpose freight ships bringing us bananas from large estates in Ecuador and the Philippines, with increased profits for NZ wholesalers. Small-scale Pacific farmers could not complete.
Today trade with the Islands is very much one-sided affair with our exports vastly exceeding our imports, and until now we have made few efforts to improve the imbalance.
The series of nuclear tests conducted in the Pacific in the 1950s and 1960s by France and Britain, and in which NZ participated, were launched with no permission given by the local people, completing the circle that started with first "grab for empire." And in this limited sense, Helen du Plessis is right: Pacific Islanders, and their opinions, "don't count."
But as we shall see in the concluding article tomorrow, it is now much more a two-way process. Pacific Islanders are counting far more than they did in the past.
--- ACW
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