Historic citizenship bill passes first reading, despite opposition from National

Green Party MP Teanau Tuiono's landmark Restoring Citizenship Removed By Citizenship (Western Samoa) Act 1982 Bill passed its first reading in Parliament last night.

In a rare show of unity, all parties except National voted in favour of passing the bill.

Tuiono says although he had high hopes, a vote is never guaranteed ahead of time.

“I was ecstatic to be honest. You never know, right? Because this is politics and you don’t know until things are confirmed. So it was great to hear their speeches and great to see their support for this bill.”

Doubts about how some parties would vote turned into relieved applause from the public gallery, which included the Samoa’s Speaker of the House, and several members of parliament.

Act MP Parmjeet Parmar said the party supported the bill to the select committee stage as they want to hear what submitters have to say.

“I know some members are looking quite surprised, but this is what the ACT party stands for, we believe in equality, we believe in fairness.”

Tuiono believes fairness was the underlying reason behind the strong show of support.

“That's at the heart of this bill, you had people who were New Zealand citizens who had their citizenship taken away from them, and so from a fairness aspect, I think members resonated with that around the House as well.”

National was the only party to vote against the bill.

In his speech, Upper Harbour National Party MP Cameron Brewer said the legal arguments to resolve the issue had been ‘exhausted’ over the past 42 years, and the current legislation wasn’t being presented in a workable format or forum.

“Our concern is that it does create a number of unprecedented measures and it also creates a situation where we have got a focus at the moment on managing the immigration settings at this stage in a private members bill format and forum is not appropriate.

“We've also been talking to friends like our friend Arthur Anae, we have also been lobbied hard. We have also taken legal advice but on the balance of it, National will oppose this bill.”

Tuiono says the group’s response was telling, and hopes to have further discussions with the party.

“I just don’t think they read the bill to be honest. Some of those comments were not, how can I put this in a nice way, informed. Conflating immigration and citizenship, they’re two different things.

“I’m still open to sitting down with the National party and trying to figure out what their issues might be with the bill.”

Watch the full interview on Pacific Mornings with Green MP Teanau Tuiono:

What happens next?

In the select committee stage, submissions are heard from the community, along with legal advice from different government departments.

Tuiono says they want to hear Pacific voices who are directly or indirectly impacted by this.

“If you’ve got stories that need to be shared, come to the select committee, there’s lots of different perspectives out there.”