Mediawatch on RNZ today strongly criticised Stuff and YouTube among other media for using Israeli propaganda’s “Outbrain” service.
Outbrain is a company founded by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) military and its technology can be tracked back to a wealthy entrepreneur, which in this case could be a euphemism for a megalomaniac.
He uses the metaphor of a “dome”, likening it to the dome used in warfare.
Outbrain, which publishes content on New Zealand media, picks up what’s out there and converts and distorts it to support Israel. It twists, it turns, it deceives the reader.
Outbrain uses the media in the following way. The content user such as Stuff pays Outbrain and Outbrain pays the user, like Stuff.
“Both parties make money when users click on the content,” said Peacock.
‘Digital Iron Dome’
The content on the Stuff website came via “Digital Iron Dome” named after the State of Genociders’ actual defence system. It is run by a tech entrepreneur quoted on Mediawatch:
“Just like a physical iron dome that scans the open air and watches for any missiles . . . the digital iron dome knows how to scan the internet. We know how to buy media. Pro-Israeli videos and articles and images inside the very same articles going against Israel,” says the developer of the propaganda “dome” machine.
Peacock said the developer had stated that the digital dome delivered “pro-Jewish”* messages to more than 100 million people worldwide on platforms like Al Jazeera, CNN — and last weekend on Stuff NZ — and said this information went undetected as pro-Israel material, ensuring it reached, according to the entrepreneur: “The right audience without interference.”
According to Wikipedia, Outbrain was founded by Yaron Galai and Ori Lahav, officers in the Israeli Navy. Galai sold his company Quigo to AOL in 2007 for $363 million. Lahav worked at an online shopping company acquired by eBay in 2005.
The company is headquartered in New York with global offices in London, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington DC, Cologne, Gurugram, Paris, Ljubljana, Munich, Milan, Madrid, Tokyo, São Paulo, Netanya, Singapore, and Sydney.
Peacock pointed out that other advocacy organisations had already been buying and posting content, there was nothing new about this with New Zealand news media.
But — and this is important — the Media Council ruled in 2017 that Outbrain content was the publisher’s responsibility: that the news media in NZ were responsible for promoted links that were offered to their readers.
“Back then publishers at Stuff and the Herald said they would do more to oversee the content, with Stuff stating it is paid promoted content,” said Peacock, in his role as the media watchdog.
Still ‘big money business’
“But this is also still a big money business and the outfits using these tools are getting much bigger exposure from their arrangements with news publishers such as Stuff,” he said.
He pointed out that the recently appointed Outbrain boss for Australia New Zealand and Singapore, Chris Oxley, had described Outbrain as “a leader in digital media connecting advertisers with premium audiences in contextually relevant environments”.
The watchdog Mediawatch said that news organisations should drop Outbrain.
“Media environments where news and neutrality are important aren’t really relevant environments for political propaganda that’s propagated by online opportunists who know how to make money out of it and also to raise funds while they are at it, ” said Peacock.
“These services like Outbrain are sometimes called ‘recommendation engines’ but our recommendation to news media is don’t use them for the sake of the trust of the people you say you want to earn and keep: the readers,” said Peacock.
Saige England is a journalist and author, and member of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).
* Being “pro-Jewish” should not be equated with being pro-genocide nor should antisemitism be levelled at Jews who are against this genocide. The propaganda from Outbrain does a disservice to Palestinians and also to those Jewish people who support all human rights — the right of Palestinians to life and the right to live on their land.
The Employment Relations Authority (ERA) has knocked-back an attempt by one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest universities to axe more than 100 staff.
The Auckland University of Technology planned to make 170 academic staff redundant, but the ERA has now ruled that its process was flawed and breached the collective agreement.
Now the school may need to walk back its dismissals, and start all over again.
ERA said AUT had called for voluntary redundancies too early, before the institution had even decided which positions to cull.
The Tertiary Education Union (TEU) is celebrating the ruling as a win. However, AUT says the union and the university have interpreted the decision differently and it would be seeking clarification.
Lawyer Peter Cranney, in an email to members of the TEU yesterday, said the ERA was considering a compliance order that would require AUT to withdraw all the notices it had already issued.
“Although a compliance order is discretionary, the [ERA] authority has indicated it will not decline the granting of the order it needed,” he wrote.
“The parties will now have three days to consider the matter; and if a compliance order is necessary, the AUT will need to comply within five days.”
Cranney said any compliance order would be issued by Friday.
Trust difficult to rebuild, says union organiser TEU organiser Jill Jones said the decision meant people at risk of losing their jobs no longer were.
“It’s great because what it does show is our collective agreement has been respected by the Employment Relations Authority,” Jones told RNZ Morning Report.
But although staff members were “absolutely” thrilled with the decision of the ERA, there was a breakdown of trust with their employer and it would be difficult to rebuild it.
“Its been a long, hard road for these staff members. They’ve paid a very large price.
“These are members that really, really care about their students and the high price that they’ve paid for this bungled redundancy is that lots of things have happened.
“It’s felt as if, to them, it’s been a very callous and uncaring process and it’s going to be difficult to come back from that.”
Frances* was one of the unlucky 170 to receive a redundancy letter.
“This level of disruption and instability in our lives is just crippling,” she said.
The ERA decision had not brought much comfort.
“It’s kind of a double-edged sword,” she said. “I’m really happy that we’ve seen some justice be recognised through the court system, but I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
Frances expected AUT to withdraw her notice of dismissal, but did not expect a happy ending.
“I’m not deluded, they’re still going to come for me I’m sure, but they’ll have to start from scratch and do it properly,” she said.
“That’s all we ask, that this is done properly.”
Poor handling of the situation had destroyed staff morale, she said.
“For three months, I’ve been feeling disengaged, demotivated, angry, upset, waiting, waiting, waiting for this letter,” she said.
“This whole process has been about targeting, humiliating, and bullying people.”
AUT seeks clarification of ‘complex findings’ An AUT spokesperson said the findings were legally complex and it regretted that a “procedural issue” highlighted had made staff more uncertain.
“Although the ERA has published its findings, it has not issued orders.
“AUT’s view of these findings differs from that of the TEU. AUT is endeavouring to clarify and resolve the issue promptly.
“Given the differing views between the parties it will therefore be necessary to return to the ERA tomorrow for clarification on some aspects.”
AUT said ERA’s findings found no bad faith in how it had acted — and AUT had formed a differing view of the collective agreement.
“The ERA has noted that AUT should have identified the specific positions potentially declared surplus and, at this point, written to offer voluntary redundancy to the people in these specified positions.
“Following clarification of the procedural issue we will write to those impacted by the decision to confirm the way forward.”
* Name changed to protect identity. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A new study suggests that the news media’s tanking levels of public trust may be made worse merely by association with social media.
The study, released this month by the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, has exposed gaps between trust in news via conventional delivery and the same thing consumed via social media.
It doesn’t matter whether people use social media or not: Levels of trust is lower if they simply associate news with the platforms.
The gap varies between platforms and between countries but the overall finding is that levels of trust in news on social media, search engines, and messaging apps is consistently lower than audience trust in information in the news media more generally.
And our media is becoming more and more associated with social media.
Many of the country’s main news outlets have done deals with Google to appear on its Google News platform. Click on the app and you’ll see stories from Stuff, Newshub, New Zealand Herald and NewstalkZB, Radio New Zealand, Television New Zealand, Newsroom, and the Otago Daily Times.
I think I’ve also seen The Spinoff in there, too.
NZME has brokered a deal with Facebook for the use of content, and other publishers are using the Commerce Commission in the hope of leveling the negotiating playing field.
Split between north and south
The Reuters study (part of the institute’s on-going research into trust in the media) was a split between north and south. The four countries surveyed were the United Kingdom, the United States, India, and Brazil. Two thousand people were surveyed in each country and covered seven platforms: Facebook, Google, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, WhatsApp, and YouTube.
New Zealand use of social media more closely follows that of the United States and the United Kingdom than India and Brazil so the data relating to those two nations are quoted here. The full results can be found here.
Google showed the smallest gap between platform and general trust in news. It was only one percentage point behind in Britain where 53 percent express general trust in news. In the US, where the general trust level sits at 49 percent, Google was actually four percentage points ahead.
The same could not be said for other platforms.
To ease the calculation, we’ll say roughly 50 percent of respondents in both countries express trust in news in general. Contrast that with news on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, which score in the mid to high twenties.
TikTok news is trusted by only 20 percent on those surveyed, the same number as WhatsApp rates in the United States (the UK is higher on 29 percent).
Only YouTube emerged from the twenties, with its news content being rated by 33 percent in Britain and 40 percent in the United States.
Complex reasons
The reasons for these gaps in perception of news on social media are complex. This is due in part to the fact that social media serves many different purposes for many different users.
News is only a small part of the interchange that occurs. The study shows that no more than a third use Google or Facebook for daily access to news, with other platforms below 20 percent, and on TikTok only 11 percent.
Large portions of the public, in fact, do not use social media platforms at all (although this does not stop them having opinions about them in the survey). Usage varies between Britain and America but a quarter to a third never use Facebook, Google or YouTube and half to three quarters do not use the remaining platforms.
Previous Reuters research has shown levels of trust in news are higher in those who access it on a regular basis. Distrust is highest among those who have least contact with news and with social platforms. This is confirmed by the latest survey.
News organisations may take some comfort from the findings that young people are more trusting of news on social platforms than older people. The gap is huge in some cases.
An average 14 percent of Americans and Britons over 55 trust news on Facebook. That rises to 40 percent among those under 35. The gap for Google is similar and even greater on other platforms.
News aside, however, people have generally positive views of platforms. More than two-thirds give Google a tick and almost as many give the thumbs-up to YouTube. Both are seen as the best platforms on which learn new things.
Facebook doesn’t fare so well
Facebook does not fare quite so well but at 40-45 percent positive rating, while fewer than a third feel positively about Twitter and TikTok.
In spite of these warm fuzzies, however, the surveys reveal “big problems”, particularly with Facebook.
Almost two-thirds of respondents blame Facebook for propagating false or misleading information and it is also seen as the worst culprit in on-platform harassment, irresponsible use of personal data, prioritising political views, and censoring content.
Although opinions expressed by non-users has complicated the Reuters study, both users and no-users express similar views when it comes to these problems. For example, the proportion of Facebook users that say false or misleading information is a problem on the platform (63 percent) is virtually the same as those who say it is in the overall sample.
The study, which includes an even wider range of variables than are included here, attempts to correlate platform usage and ideas about journalism. After all, it is on such platforms — and from the mouths of some politicians — that users encounter discussions about journalism and criticism of journalists.
The survey asked specific questions about journalists. Half the respondents thought journalists try to manipulate the public to serve the agendas of powerful politicians and care more about getting attention than reporting the facts.
Forty percent thought journalists were careless in what they reported, and a slightly higher proportion thought they were only in it for the money.
Criticism of journalism
The researchers then attempted to identify where and how criticism of journalism is encountered. Twitter users are most likely to encounter it. In the United States almost half said they often see criticism of media there and the UK is not far behind.
More than 40 percent of Facebook and Google users in America encounter it and a third of British users of those two platforms say they see it there. Other (newer) platforms have even higher incidences.
So that is where the criticism of journalists is propagated, but who is doing the criticising? Almost half those surveyed in the United States pointed the finger at politicians and political parties, although a similar number also say the hear it from “ordinary people”.
The figures are slightly lower in the UK but around a third identify political or government sources.
The survey also asked whether other public figures were responsible for criticism of journalists. Celebrities and activists figure in around a third of responses but so, too, do journalists themselves.
The surveys also give some pointers about the relative importance of “clicks” or how much attention our newsrooms should give to real-time analytics. The answer is . . . some.
Respondents were asked to pick the factors that were important in deciding whether they could trust information on online platforms. In both countries fewer than 40 percent said the number of likes or shares were important or very important.
Media source familiarity
Around half paid attention to comments on items but far more important was whether they had heard of the media source. Two thirds were influenced by the tone or language used in headlines and almost 60 percent were influenced by accompanying images.
That finding correlates with another in which respondents were asked who should be responsible for helping to differentiate between trustworthy and untrustworthy content on the internet.
More than two-thirds put that responsibility on media organisations, higher than on tech companies, and significantly higher than on government (although Britons were more inclined toward regulation than their American cousins).
However, if the research proved one thing, it was that the media/social media environment is deeply nuanced and manifests the complexities of human behaviour. The conclusions drawn by the researchers say as much. They leave a couple of important take-aways.
“As a trade-off for expanding reach and scale, newsrooms have often ceded considerable control to these outside companies in terms of how their content is distributed and how often and in what form their work appears on these services.
“Such relationships have been further strained as publishers become increasingly dependent on platforms to reach segments of the public least interested in consuming news through legacy modes, even as platforms themselves have pivoted to serving up other kinds of experiences farther removed from news, recognising that many of their most active users have less interest in such content, especially where politically contentious issues are involved.”
They say the gap they have identified is likely a reflection of this mismatch in audience perceptions about what platforms are for, the kinds of information they get when using the services, and how people think more generally about news media.
“It is possible that the main challenge for news organisations when it comes to building and sustaining audience trust is less about the specific problem of how their journalism is perceived when audiences encounter it online, and more about the broader problem of being seen at all.”
My conclusion
Years ago, we heard the term “News You Can Use” as a response to the challenge of declining newspaper circulation. That was a catchy way of saying “We must be relevant”. The Reuters study is further proof that journalism’s real challenge lies in producing content that ordinary people need to live their daily lives. If that means collating and publishing daily lists of what every supermarket chain is charging for milk, bread, cabbages and potatoes then so be it.
Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes a website called Knightly Views where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.
Aotearoa New Zealand’s ruling Labour’s caucus has unanimously decided to suspend Hamilton West MP Dr Gaurav Sharma effective immediately in the wake of allegations of bullying of and by MPs.
This morning, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s office confirmed the meeting to discuss allegations of bullying raised by Hamilton West MP Gaurav Sharma would take place this afternoon.
The meeting addressed Dr Sharma’s status within the party after he took his concerns to the media rather than usual party processes for dealing with disputes.
Dr Sharma has complained, however, that using those mechanisms have got him nowhere, saying he had tried dealing with the concerns through the party whip’s office and Parliamentary Service for the past year and a half.
He was not at the caucus meeting this afternoon.
“I note that he did find the time to talk to media,” Ardern said.
“Caucus has determined suspension is the most appropriate response to the repeated breaches of trust from Gaurav over recent days.
No longer in caucus
“This means Gaurav will continue as the MP for Hamilton West and be expected to be present at Parliament. However, he will no longer participate in any caucus events or activities unless caucus’ permission is granted.”
Dr Sharma was emailed, phoned, and text messaged to try to get him to attend the meeting today, she said.
Watch the conference
Labour’s unanimous decision to suspend MP Dr Sharma. Video: RNZ News
Ardern said she called and tried to message him after the meeting this afternoon, as have others, and she hoped this was not the first he had heard of his suspension.
“We have made efforts to convey this information to him directly.”
The whips directly engaged with Dr Sharma on whether he would attend, she said.
“Originally a range of options were sent and they didn’t receive a response. They then proposed a time and they were told at that time that no, at that time Gaurav had a specific event.
“They then advised that we would set a meeting time at a time that suited Gaurav today, he advised that nearer to 3[pm] would suit so whips suggested 2.30, we then at that point didn’t receive any further engagement.”
All of Labour’s MPs were invited to attend today, she said.
Labour’s caucus has unanimously decided to suspend MP Gaurav Sharma effective immediately https://t.co/qogiWItoxG
Decision unanimous
She said the decision was unanimous, and the team was clear that to function as a political party in a place where open debate and dialogue was key, members needed to be able to trust their colleagues.
“You need to feel you can speak openly and freely. That sense of trust has been broken by repeated breaches of our caucus rules over the last five days and that made the decision very clear,” she said.
Ardern and party leadership have continued to refer to the allegations — which in particular accuse former whip Kieran McAnulty of bullying and gaslighting — as an employment concern between Dr Sharma and the staff in his office.
RNZ has sought comment from McAnulty repeatedly but he has not responded.
Ardern said, based on the documents she has reviewed, the Labour whip’s office and Parliamentary Service began working with Dr Sharma to address concerns raised about his staff management. He was then asked to work with a mentor, which he objected to.
“Finally agreement was reached at the end of last year. Further issues were later raised by additional staff members including those in his direct employment, This resulted in another pause on hirinig and again coaching, mentoring and temporary staff in the meantime.
“Gaurav again objected to this intervention and the need for his future hiring of staff or undertakings on his part. A protracted process ensued.”
No other concerns
Ardern said she still had heard no concerns raised by any other MPs about McAnulty.
She said she did not recall Dr Sharma ever raising his concerns with her and she had gone through records of events and text messages after hearing about his concerns last week.
“I have not gone through everything but from what I can see he is a member who I’ve had less engagement with than most, that is fair to say … he’s never raised the issue directly with me, and that is an expectation I would have because it’s set out in our rules.
“First if there’s an issue you go to the whips. If you’re unable to get resolution you go to either the Labour leader or to someone the Labour leader nominates. And if it’s still unresolved you go to caucus. That didn’t happen.
“He did raise them with my chief-of-staff at the end of last year. He told me about that and he also told me the resolution that was reached between them and I’ve seen the messages that demonstrate that. Neither of us heard anything after that until the events that led to this.”
After he published his column in The New Zealand Herald last Thursday, she called him and he did not pick up, she said. She then sent a text to ask about his welfare, rather than relitigating issues.
“I received one message in response, I won’t go into the details on that but it was essentially setting out his perspective on these issues.”
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern … “caucus were clear that the team retains the right to revisit the decision at any time if the rules continue to be broken.” Image: Angus Dreaver/RNZ
One of his allegations was found to have no basis, she said, but he has continued to make them.
“I am equally concerned that staff members have been implicated by the level of detail that’s been shared … we considered whether or not for transparency we should release some of the communications to demonstrate our perspective on what has occurred here but again that runs the risk of exposing staff.”
She said Dr Sharma’s status would be reviewed in December, to allow a chance for a return to caucus if trust with him was able to be restored.
“But in making the decision to suspend, caucus were clear that the team retains the right to revisit the decision at any time if the rules continue to be broken. To be clear, the caucus’ decision was squarely focused on actions over the last few days. What gave rise to those actions also deserves some reflection.”
Ardern said there were grounds for expulsion under the caucus rules, but the team wanted to send a message that while their trust had been lost and they considered the situation very egregious, they were a team that wanted to give second chances.
“If he does that there’s a pathway back, if he doesn’t then he will be expelled.”
She said the exact date in December for revisiting the decision had not been decided upon.
Options at that time could include continued suspension, a return to caucus, or expulsion. At this point, the possibility of sending a letter to the Speaker to request his removal from Parliament under the waka jumping law has not been discussed.
Informal caucus meeting last night As the meeting started this afternoon, Dr Sharma contacted RNZ claiming an earlier meeting involving some Labour MPs was held last night, without his knowledge.
Ardern said the outcome today was not predetermined at a meeting last night. She said one of the issues of misconduct was that Sharma had been sharing the contents of meetings publicly, which meant people felt they were unable to raise questions or discuss issues.
The reason Sharma was not informed of the meeting last night was “because people did not feel they could have an open conversation with him”.
Sharma claimed he had an image sent to him, a screenshot of the meeting.
“You’d note that probably if someone were deliberately sharing that message it would be more likely a gallery view,” Ardern said.
“I also knew who took that screenshot, it was intended they were trying to capture something else on their phone, the meeting was occurring in the corner at the same time, they accidentally sent it to someone they shouldn’t.
“What they sent was a screenshot of the conversation trying to set a caucus meeting time, it just so happened that they were multitasking … they’re somewhat embarrassed over the situation.”
The meeting last night was not a formal caucus meeting, she said, and she was also clear there would not be a predetermined outcome.
“Natural justice is very important to our team.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Things were looking very bad three months ago for both Papua New Guinea and Fiji. The two Pacific countries were each looking very vulnerable to the covid delta variant, albeit in different ways.
On July 10, PNG recorded its first official delta case, and the nation’s health professionals were soon warning the combination of very low testing rates, high percentage of positive tests and an extremely slow vaccine rollout provided a “recipe for a major spread”.
Fiji was already in the thick of it at the time. After the deadly delta strain entered the country via a quarantine breach in April, per capita infection rates became the highest in the world in the middle of the year.
By contrast, PNG is in the grips of a major wave, with less than 1 percent of the total population fully vaccinated. PNG is trailing much of the world.
Why have two Pacific countries, which share Melanesian cultural connections, handled their vaccine rollouts so differently?
Not a matter of geography or vaccine supply Fiji’s daily infection rate today is 4 percent of what it was at the peak, and it’s falling. Less than 50 new cases are currently being reported on average each day.
In PNG, the official infection rate is now averaging just under 300 new cases a day, but this drastically understates the reality of what is happening in the country.
It’s not simply a vaccine supply issue. At this stage of the global crisis, PNG, like Fiji, has received substantial vaccine deliveries — principally from Australia, New Zealand and the COVAX vaccine delivery initiative.
In fact, thousands of PNG’s early deliveries went to waste because the health authorities were unable to use them. The PNG government has recently made the best of a bad situation by re-gifting 30,000 vials donated by New Zealand to Vietnam.
Our #PacificHub leader @CainTess comments on the challenges #PNG faces in its #Covid-19 vaccine rollout after having to transfer donated vaccines to Vietnam
PNG’s geography does present some challenging physical barriers to distributing vaccines – its legendary mountainous terrain and the remoteness of many of its inhabitants are well known.
But companies from Digicel to South Pacific Brewery manage to penetrate the most inaccessible areas with their products despite these difficulties. And the authorities manage to deliver the vote across the nation every five years in what is one of the world’s most extraordinary democratic exercises.
With its own rugged terrain and dispersed populations across multiple islands, Fiji has also faced major physical impediments to its vaccine rollout.
The major difference: leadership and belief We get closer to the problem when we think in terms of trust, understanding and belief.
Fijians have embraced the vaccination rollout almost as one, following the guidance of their medical authorities and falling in line with the firm “no jabs, no job” policy of its prime minister, former military commander and coup leader Voreqe Bainimarama.
In PNG, the term “vaccine hesitancy” understates the problem. One survey earlier this year showed worrying low willingness to take the vaccine, and another survey of university students showed a mere 6 percent wanted it.
These dramatically contrasting pictures cannot be explained fully through differences in education standards, or the quality of medical advice and attention.
To be sure, Fiji leads PNG in these respects — Fiji has 99 percent literacy compared to just over 63 percent in PNG, according to the latest available figures. And while Fiji’s medical system has its challenges, the decline in PNG’s health services due to chronic lack of investment puts it in a very different category.
In PNG, trust in leadership has flagged following decades of frustration with growing wealth inequality and concerns over governance and transparency.
I know how quickly Papua New Guineans tap into what’s happening in neighbouring Australia, too. They will have seen how the public debate in Australia has dented confidence in the AstraZeneca brand — the mainstay of their own vaccine supply.
But perhaps most troubling of all is the sense that many Papua New Guineans have developed a fatalistic belief that covid is just another health challenge to add to the litany of other serious problems facing the country, among them maternal mortality, malaria and tuberculosis.
It’s almost as if they believe this is all somehow PNG’s lot. But it doesn’t need to be.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will make a formal government apology for the 1970s Dawn Raids against Pacific Islanders on June 26 at a commemoration event in the Auckland Town Hall.
She made the announcement today alongside Pacific Peoples Minister ‘Aupito William Sio.
Ardern said there was strict criteria cabinet needed to apply when deciding to make an apology, including:
whether a human injustice must have been committed and was well documented;
victims must be definable as a distinct group; and
victims continued to suffer harm, connected to a past injustice.
Cabinet decided the criteria had been met in relation to the Dawn Raids, Ardern said.
There have been two previous government apologies meeting these criteria – the Chinese poll tax in 2002 and an apology to Samoa for the injustices arising from New Zealand’s colonial administration.
Ardern said the Dawn Raids were “routinely severe with demeaning verbal and physical treatment”.
She said when computerised immigration records were introduced in 1977, the first accurate picture of overstaying pattern showed 40 percent were British and American “despite these groups never being targets of police attention”.
“To this day, Pacific communities face prejudices and stereotypes established during and perpetuated by the Dawn Raids period. An apology can never reverse what happened or undo the decades of disadvantage experienced as a result, but it can contribute to healing the Pacific peoples in Aotearoa,” Ardern said.
The NZ government announcement today by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Pacific Peoples Minister ‘Aupito William Sio. Video: RNZ News
She would not say what the formal apology might involve but said it would focus on the ongoing impact on the community, and the history.
There was a period around 2000 where amnesty was available, she said.
People were “dehumanised” and “terrorised” in their homes, Ardern said of the Dawn Raids era.
“… it left a lasting impact. People were told at the time if you did not look like a New Zealander they should carry ID to prove they are not an overstayer. You can imagine what impact that has on a community to live in an environment like that.”
‘The stars have aligned’ – ‘Aupito
Pacific Peoples Minister ‘Aupito William Sio … “I don’t think there is any Pacific family who was not impacted on by the events of the Dawn Raids.” Image: Dom Thomas/RNZ
Many in the Pasifika community have long called for an apology, with more than 7000 people signing a recent petition.
The Pacific Peoples Minister said other communities, including Māori, were also impacted by the raids.
“I don’t think there is any Pacific family who was not impacted on by the events of the Dawn Raids and there is a strong moral imperative to acknowledge those past actions were wrong through an apology, they recognise those actions were unacceptable under the universal declaration of human rights, and are absolutely intolerable within today’s human rights protections, ” ‘Aupito said.
While the raids took place almost 50 years ago, the legacy of the era lives on today “etched in the memories and oral history of Pacific communities”.
“This apology is a step in the right direction to right the wrongs of the past and help heal the wounds of trauma that still resides in the psyche of those who were directly affected.”
On a personal level, ‘Aupito said it was a “huge deal” for the government to acknowledge the wrongs of the past.
“The stars have aligned,” Sio said, acknowledging the role the prime minister and ministerial colleagues played in agreeing to the advice they received.
‘Aupito recalls ‘traumatising’ raid ‘Aupito said there were many Pacific families who would talk about the Dawn Raids, and he wanted to give them the opportunity to talk about the trauma and help them heal.
Talking about his own experience, he said his family was raided in the early hours of the morning about two years after they purchased their home. His father was “helpless”, he said.
Pacific Peoples Minister ‘Aupito William Sio on what the apology means. Video: RNZ News
Talking about his own experience, ‘Aupito said his family was raided in the early hours of the morning about two years after they purchased their home. His father was “helpless”, he said.
“To have somebody knocking on the door in the early hours of the morning with a flashlight in your face, disrespecting the owner of the home, with an Alsatian dog frothing at the mouth in that door, and wanting to come in without any respect for the people living in there — it’s quite traumatising.”
His sister and 82-year-old father would not talk about that time, ‘Aupito said.
Other Pacific families had similar experiences, he said.
“You have to remember, we felt as a community that we were invited to come to New Zealand. We responded to the call to fill the labour workforce that was needed, in the same way that they responded to the call for soldiers in 1914.
“So we were coming to aid a country when they needed us, and when that friend or country felt they no longer needed us they turned on us, trust was broken.”
The apology was about restoring trust and building confidence in the next generation, he said while trying to control his emotions.
“I do not want my children or any of my nieces or nephews to be shackled by that pain and to be angry about it. I need them to move forward and look to the future as peoples of Aotearoa.”
PM to get covid-19 vaccine On the Covid-19 vaccine, Ardern said more details about the rollout would be announced on Thursday.
The prime minister will receive her first dose of the vaccine on Friday, June 18, afternoon in the South Auckland suburb of Manurewa, alongside her chief science adviser.
They Are Us film On the They Are Usfilm project, Ardern said everyone should know the discomfort she felt about the project, but at the same time it was not for her to say what projects should or should not go ahead.
“This is a very raw event for New Zealand, even more so for the community that experienced it and I agree that there are stories that at some point should be told from March 15, but they are the stories of the Muslim community, so they need to be at the centre of that.”
Auckland-based producer Philippa Campbell has withdrawn from the crew working on the proposed film. In a statement, Campbell said she deeply regretted the shock and hurt the announcement of the film has led to throughout Aotearoa New Zealand.
Immigration policy and overstaying Speaking about the current immigration policy, Ardern said there would be consequences for overstaying, but there were ways to do it “that do not lead to discriminatory practice”.
Asked if the apology for the Dawn Raids would include amnesty for some people, Ardern said there should not be expectations about that.
Amnesty in the early 2000s gave a pathway to regularisation for some Pacific people, Ardern said.
Any amnesty would apply to a wide-ranging cohort, she said.
“We wouldn’t want to seek to apologise for a discriminatory policy and then by giving that apology discriminate others by only having a certain policy apply to one group,” she said.
There is a large group of ethnicities and communities that would argue for a pathway to regularisation, she said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
