South Auckland Pacific communities suffer from financial crisis
Updated
When the Global Financial Crisis struck last year, there were forecasts the island nations of the Pacific, would be insulated from its effect. Nearly nine months later, that hope has proved futile. While all nations are suffering a downturn, what's making it worse for the Pacific, is the reliance a lot of island nations have on their expatriate communities living and working overseas. New Zealand has one of the biggest communities of Pacific people in the world, with most of them based around South Auckland, and right now South Auckland is doing it tough.
Presenter: Pacific Correspondent Campbell Cooney
Speakers: Talent: Melino Maka, NZ Tongan Advisory Council; Leau Peter Skelton, Mangere Community Board; Milovan Lucich, Asia Development Bank Economist; Karen Crichton, Mangere Market Fruit Vendor; Alby Cook, Mangere Store owner
Each Saturday it's places like this in South Auckland, the Mangere Markets, where the country's expatriate Pacific Islander Communities, come to buy the food their families need for the week ahead, share some gossip and a laugh.
But since August last year, the official starting date for the Global Financial Crisis, the storeholders at Mangere have noticed less and less people each week.
New Zealand has a population of around four million people. Seven Percent of them are either from, or descended from the Pacific Island nations from around the region. Auckland's often described as the biggest pacific city in the world. There's more Samoans there than there are in Samoa, nearly as many Tongans as are in Tonga.
As well there's substanial numbers of Fijians, Cook Islanders, Papua New Guineans, Solomon Islanders, and Niueans. In fact the number of Niueans living in New Zealand is estimated at around three thousand.
There's only around 1200 still living on Niue, and I'm not the only person, who's tried to get in touch with a member of that country's government, to have better luck ringing a phone number in Auckland, than one on the home island.
The reason New Zealand's the destination of choice for many Pacific Islanders is simple. Jobs and opportunity. With little in the way of resources and industries island nations don't have much to offer. South Auckland is the place most of the islanders have settled.
It's close to the international airport, the first point of arrival for them.
Relatively cheap, stated owned housing is in good supply, and in most cases there's already an established community from their homeland close by.
Most importanly, it's close to the factories and industries, where most islanders will chase work. But those opportunities and jobs are starting to dry up, as the Global Financial Crisis puts downwards pressure on New Zealand's economy.
And it isn't just Mangere storeholders noticing islander communities are doing it tough.
Based at Manakau, Ullrich Industries builds aluminium products like ladders and screen doors, exporting them around the region, and around a quarter of his employees are islanders.
The blue collar fabrication jobs like those on offer here are the ones most islanders come to New Zealand in pursuit of, and Chief Executive, Gilbert Ullrich, has nothing but praise for them. But like a lot of businesses Mr Ullrich's had to reduce production, and that's meant jobs have gone, and islanders are amongst the casualties. What's happened at Ullrich's is happening around New Zealand.
The big whitegoods manufacturer Fisher and Paykel is moving production to cheaper labour markets in Asia. Others businesses have shutdown, or slowed down.
Islanders aren't the only New Zealand community affected. But the affect on them reverbates all the way back to their home island. In most cases not only are they trying to support their families, but also an extended family living back home.
Remittances are the backbone of the economies of countries like Samoa and Tonga. But as Karen Chrichton points out when they're doing it tough, so does everyone.
And while people like Albie Cook are unhappy they can't meet all family committments, the leaders of the islander communities in South Auckland are encouraging their people to resist the pressure being exerted on them by tradition and family to continue funding island nation economies. One of them is Leau Peter Skelton.
What's making it worse is that the remittances that are still flowing back to the islands are worth a lot less. But as the jobs disappear, the islander communities in South Auckland face another issue, poverty.
And that issue is starkly illustrated in suburbs like Otara. It's a landscape of cheaply built stated owned house, old and wrecked cars, and fast food outlets.
It's set against a skyline of high tension powercables, running over the roofs of homes, suspended from pylons which runn through backyards, more than one utilised as a makeshift clothesline.
If you've seen the 1990 New Zealand movie, "Once were Warriors", filmed in and around South Auckland, you'll recognise the view.That movie gave South Auckland a measure of infamy, with its depiction as a breeding ground for domestic violence, gang warfare and poverty.
It's not a reputation local civic leaders appreciate. But it is just the creation of a filmmakers imagination. South Auckland is a tough area.
Accompanying me on my visit, as both a guide and lookout, was Melino Maka from the New Zealand Tongan Advisory Council.
Peter Skelton from the Samoan Community says ensuring his community members aren't starving behind closed doors, is taking up more and more of his time. During my time in New Zealand one option put forward to me as a solution for the islanders was for them to go back home. And in reality going home is no option.
Jobs might be hard to find in New Zealand, but they are non existant in smaller island nations. That means a lot of island people are prepared to do just about anything to get there, and once they have arrived, avoid going back. It's estimated there around 16 thousand visa overstayers from the Pacific, now living in New Zealand.
In a desperate bid to avoid deportation, many of them were prepared to pay up to 500 for a visa stamp provided by Maori activist Gerard Otimi, which he claimed meant they were the welcome guest of the Maori nation, with the right to live and work in the country.
The visa is worthless, as this woman pointed out when she confronted Otimi at a meeting in Manakau.
Otimi's now facing deception charges, and New Zealand police are calling on those who payed him for the Visa, to come forward and assist them and immigration officials with their investigation.
But the people who've allegedly paid Otimi for a useless visa are already desperate, and trying to avoid deportation.
When the request for assistance was made, one of the reporter present asked John Timms from New Zealand Police, if some sort of amnesty would be offered to overstayers. No one, let alone an illegal immigrant, out of a job, can afford to waste 500 dollars in any currency.
But if the choice is saying goodbye to your money, and staying in a country with something to offer, although right now it might not be much, or coming forward, and facing deportation back to an island nation with nothing to offer, the betting in New Zealand's that community assistance in this investigation, is unlikely.
