Setting the Agenda

Securing the majority of the 800,000 non-voters will be key to Labour’s chances for success next year.

My paper looked at shifting the focus of university’s from recruiting Pasifika students to their institutions as mostly an activity of adding flavour, to a deliberate approach of engaging these communities as a means of facilitating their personal and familial aspirations.

The new reality is that many of our people have been won to the idea that moving out and away from communities that we’ve traditionally lived in is the way to get ahead. Freire (1972) argues that after a while, the oppressed begin to mirror the attitudes and aspirations of the oppressor.

Well the Ministry of Education are up to their usual acculturalistic and assimilationist activities yet again. This time they’re out in Pasifika communities setting up ‘power stations’ that act as homework centres in churches in Porirua, south, west and east Auckland.

The big story for me around Local Body elections was the emergence of young, Pasifika leaders many of whom stood under the banner of the Labour Party. Lotu Fuli, Apulu Reece Autagavaia, Rev Obed Unasa, Ruby Manukia-Schaumkel and myself are just a few of the new people to have been elected to a local board and the Counties Manukau DHB.

I’m convinced that under Cunliffe’s leadership Pasifika voters will both be inspired to the booth and others, back to Labour.