The dawn raids were a dark part of our history we rarely revisit. Muldoon used base racism in the 1975 election to invoke a crackdown on Pacific Islanders who had been seduced into moving to NZ to help do the hard building jobs locals didn’t want in the post war boom of the 50s. When the economy suffered a down turn in the 1970s from the oil shock, these ‘overstayers’ were easy to blame for the climbing unemployment rate. First Kirk introduced the dawn raid scheme, only to suspend it and offer amnesty, but Muldoon stoked the issue back into life and invoked a draconian new immigration stance that saw houses being raided at dawn and families dragged to the Court and then to the airport.
Key is following in the fine tradition of the racist National Party.
Denying Ioane Teitiota climate refugee status and throwing him, his wife and 3 NZ born children back to a sinking island that is polluted and over run by seawater is a cruel and inhumane stance for a country that has done sweet bugger all to combat the climate change that is making Teitiota’s homeland uninhabitable.
Shrugging his way through a press conference and calling Teitiota an over stayer not only denies the real impacts climate change are having on the Pacific, it also flies in the face of basic human decency.
Key is playing to the feral part of his electorate who need some raw meat after his backdown on Syrian refugees. Denying Teitiota climate refugee status also refuses to acknowledge this as a looming crisis in the Pacific.
NZ should be better than this.
And who was the Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi occupied Europe all those years ago, fearing for her life?
That’s right. It was FJK’s mother!
Being racially/culturally targeted, or scared of what climate change is doing to one’s home, the threat is the same, as is the fear of the consequences.
The case of Ioane Teitiota and his family deserves to be treated with serious consideration and respect for his circumstances, due to the dangerous climate change situation affecting his Pacific Island home, Kiribati.
Climate change refugees will increase around the world, as regions will disappear through rising sea levels, particularly in the Pacific.
Then what will FJK say and do?
Will they all be called overstayers then?
1000%
Key can be sighted as a party responsible for a part of increasing climate change by killing off the very laws that protect the environment such as then RMA and the NZ National Rail policy Labour put in the Government rulebook from 2004 under the great environmentalist Pete Hodgson.
So without many rail services since Shonkey has actively now cut out or run down & damaged like the Napier Gisborne line, this particular Government is hell bent now on only building more roads for inefficient truck freight!!!!!
Now we will see the Greenhouse emissions now rising dramatically until the next Government restores rail & the previous Acts to engender a lowering of Greenhouse emissions, and we hope that is not to long away.
” I believe Ioane Teitiota is an overstayer” John Key acting in his capacity of a human being. “To say otherwise is not credible” What a hypocrite! When has anything Key has said been credible. “We will not raise GST, there is no such thing as Xkeyscore, no more asset sales etc, etc ,etc”
If Key bases things on being credible, Key would be long gone by now!
Check your history Martyn: It was the Labour Party that started dawn raids.
Did you even read the article before you commented?
Andrew, did you miss this bit from Martyn;
The Labour government also passed the Terrorism Suppression Act, which is also opposed by many on the left.
Do you support everything National does, 100%?
The real story about this guy has come out this afternoon and I feel Labour and Twyford have got egg on their face which in Twyfords case is not unusual.
It’s easy to say this sort of stuff. Where is their proof? The current govt are always saying they have done this or that but I have never seen any proof anywhere. I live in NZ society and would surely see some of it. The seem to pull figures from thin air and make statements there is no way of checking and think we all ‘believe’.
Check the demographics of Kiribati.
https://www.quandl.com/collections/kiribati/kiribati-population-data
This is the real issue.
The population has gone from 40,000 to over 100,000 in 40 years and along with that, they’ve destroyed their own environment.
Nothing at all to do with climate change.
Climate change is not threatening this mans home anytime soon. He is an overstayer. The correct decision has been made.
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