15 Jun 2021

Pacific advocates want meaningful action alongside apology

From Morning Report, 8:26 am on 15 June 2021

Pacific advocates are calling for meaningful action to accompany the government's promised an apology for the Dawn Raids era of the mid-1970's.

Jacinda Ardern yesterday acknowledged the racist policies of National and Labour governments which targeted overstayers by their Pacific ethnicity.

There are calls now for an "overstayer amnesty" and for current overstayers to be allowed to remain in New Zealand as an appropriate gesture of goodwill.

Polynesian Panthers founder Will 'Ilolahia and Manase Lua, a Pasifika leader whose parents were targetted in the Dawn Raids, spoke to Susie Ferguson.