Green MP Teanau Tuiono says all political parties – except National – are willing to do the right thing around a group of about 5000 elderly Samoans.
In a surprise move yesterday Government coalition partners ACT and New Zealand First joined Opposition parties to send Mr Tuiono’s private bill to a select committee.
It reverses a 1982 law passed by the Muldoon National Governemnt which effectively overturned a Privy Council judgment that people born in Western Samoa when New Zealand was in control could claim New Zealand citizensihp.
Mr Tuiono says the long term damage of that act can be seen in the fact the speaker of the Samoan parliament and a number of its MPs were in the gallery for the first reading debate.
“You had a group of New Zealand citizens recognised as citizens by the Privy Council and then they had that citizenship taken away. It was unjust. This is about rectifyig that injustice of the past, recognising the Western Samoan Citizenship Act of 1982 was straight out racist,” he says.
Mr Tuiono says the select committee should also look at how the affected elders, numbering about 5000, can be supported.
