Henare Tau: Debate On Pacific IssuesText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHenare Tau: Debate On Pacific Issues[Sitting date: 18 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9584. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TAU HENARE (National): Can I start by saying welcome. Secondly can I mention three names that have not been mentioned in this House so far today. One is Arthur Anae a former member of Parliament of Samoan descent and a member of the National Party for some time who served in this House. Taito Phillip Field who unfortunately went off the rails was another member of Samoan descent and in fact made a pretty big contribution while he was here. In fact he came in with me 20 years ago this year. The other one is my brother-in-law Tukoroirangi Morgan. Half of him is from the Cook Islands. We think of him as being only the Māori MP the Western Māori MP the Te Tai Hauāuru MP and the king’s spokesperson but his other half his father was from the Cooks.I was born and bred in Ōtara in “O-town 274”. Let me tell you the names of some of the families whom I grew up with. I am very proud to have been able to go into each of their homes and be looked after by the mothers and fathers of my friends. The Kaleta family—rest in peace my brother Kaleta Kaleta who died some years ago. There were the Jackson whānau the Iosefa whānau and the Tafa family—the Tafa family whose father played a game of cricket with us in Ōtara. He was a stand-in he was a ring-in he smashed Howick Pakuranga all over the field and I still remember the cries of despair from the other team. There were the Tuai family the Papali’i family the Tofilau family and the Collins family. They were all people I grew up with and I consider myself to be a true Pacific Islander. This is a Pacific Island nation; we just have not thought about it yet. So I am hopeful that one day in my lifetime we will all call ourselves Pacific Islanders just not in the way that we think of our brothers and sisters in the Pacific Islands.Māori made the long journey to these shores over 1000 years ago. Why they left is beyond me. Who would want to leave an idyllic neighbourhood such as the Pacific to come down here to the South Pacific? Maybe it was overcrowding maybe it was for the adventure of a lifetime or maybe it was the real Kiwi attitude of wanting to know what was on the other side of the fence. Auckland has the biggest concentration of Pacific Island people in the world. You know that is one of the things that we should keep in the back of our minds every day. It is time New Zealand realised that its true place in the Pacific is as I said as a Pacific Island nation. We need to assist our brothers and sisters in the Pacific to be part of the international organisations such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.I have come to despair over the last couple of years that our Pacific Island brothers and sisters cannot even afford to be members of these international organisations. I want to float some ideas in the last minute or so. Maybe the Pacific Island people can piggyback on some of our free-trade agreements. Maybe it is time for a Pacific Parliament à la the Rt Hon Mike Moore’s suggestion 20-odd years ago. We have common borders. We have citizenship. We have issues like citizenship. There are three issues that I get in my office every week: immigration residency and citizenship mainly from the Pacific Islands. It is about time we started treating the Pacific Islands like our back lawn with our whānau in it and offer them more than just a few immigration schemes.