Advocates for citizenship bill set sights on international legal remedies

Advocates could seek international legal remedies if the bill currently before Parliament fails to deliver justice for Sāmoans who have long been denied New Zealand citizenship rights.

On Wednesday, Green MP Teanau Tuiono's Restoring Citizenship Removed by Citizenship (Western Sāmoa) Act 1982 Bill was presented to the Committee of the Whole House.

An amendment to ensure successful applicants are refunded their citizenship application fees was supported.

But two other amendments proposed by Tuiono aimed at expanding eligibility to descendants of Sāmoans, born before 1 January 1962, and waiving application fees entirely, were voted down by the government.

Former National MP and Pacific community leader, Anae Arthur Anae, doesn’t believe the bill in its current form fully addresses the historic injustice.

“The final bill that's going to go through to the third reading will be one (where) they accept an error was made way back," Anae said.

Watch lawyer Graeme Edgler's take on the citizenship bill.

“They accept that the people born between 1924 and 1949 should become New Zealand citizens and they can make an application now, once it's all passed through, and pay a fee."

However, Anae also wants the pension entitlement to begin immediately and not require the beneficiaries to have lived in New Zealand for 10 years.

The youngest of the group impacted would now be aged 76, which means they will be in their mid-80s before receiving the pension.

“I wanted those people who had denied their rights to get 50 per cent of the New Zealand pension now,” Anae says.

“I still believe because they denied and deprived our people their rights deliberately, they should be looking at it seriously and if that means us going to the international human rights committees about these things, that's what we have to make a decision on.”

Anae says that contrary to the National government’s estimate that the bill could apply to as many as 100,000 people, only 15,000 would be eligible.

Advocates also want the citizenship entitlement to be extended to their descendants, as had been ruled by the Privy Council in the 1980s.

Anae is confident that there is a “good team of lawyers” available to help seek international remedies but he says it will be up to the Sāmoan community to decide whether they wish to progress it internationally.

“This thing is for us to raise the money to do it and let’s test the will of our people," he says.