Talk with me creative writing and arts competition awards ceremony

May I begin by greeting everyone in the languages of the realm of New Zealand, in English, Maori, Cook Island Maori, Niuean, Tokelauan and New Zealand Sign Language.   Greetings, Kia Ora, Kia Orana, Fakalofa Lahi Atu, Taloha Ni and as it is the evening  (Sign)

May I specifically greet you: Ray Wallace, Deputy Mayor of Hutt City and fellow councillors; Kevin Third, Director of the Refugee Division of the Department of Labour; Award winners; students and parents; Distinguished Guests otherwise; Ladies and Gentlemen.

Thank you for inviting my wife Susan and I to attend this awards ceremony.  Susan and I have been firm supporters to the refugee community with Susan's patronage of the Wellington Refugees as Survivors Centre and my patronage of Refugee Services Aotearoa.

I have been asked to present the awards for the Talk with me creative writing and arts competition, but before I do, I would like to speak briefly about the place that art can play in daily life.

Art is about human empathy expressed through the power of the imagination. The imagination links the known with the unknown, the familiar with the disparate—it has the power to bridge gulfs between cultures and individual experience.

That is of importance in this essay and arts competition and why I am pleased that the Department of Labour's Settlement Division has continued to support them.

Today we are recognising aspects of human experience that, for most of us, are beyond our usual experience. That is not the case, however, for those of us who have been a refugee and been dispossessed. Driven from home and loved ones by the forces of fear, violence, hunger and death.

This competition provides us with a window into that world. It is a stark and elemental world which our young essayists have captured in simple and compelling terms.

"Do you know how it feels to spend a day without any food?" asks one of our young essayists. He continues. "I know. I know how eyes start to change and you no longer can see because of hunger. Hunger can eat you alive."

This language is direct and unflinching. There is no need for hyperbole because experience speaks volumes.

Our capacity to share in that experience is a measure of our humanity and is a primary function of art. Imagination has, as I have already foreshadowed the power to bridge the seemingly unbridgeable, to restore and heal.

That empathy finds visual expression in the art work submitted by our contestants. The work is by those who have suffered as refugees and by those who have seen that experience only at a distance. The power of empathy is tellingly evident. These young New Zealanders have demonstrated that, in spite of their privileged lives, they have the imaginative power to project themselves into the world of less fortunate humanity.

To see and feel what it is like to be a refugee and to gain recognition of the challenges and barriers refugees face in building new lives in alien lands is very useful. For many refugees, that struggle continues long after they reach their new home in New Zealand.

One of our young artists captures this sense of isolation with keen irony as she depicts a lonely and isolated refugee surrounded by well meaning but uncomprehending aliens. Refuge is not an event; it is not a destination but often a long and often painful process.

To return to our young essayist's memories of life in a Tanzanian refugee camp, in spite of all, he finds time to step beyond his own experience. 'If I was having a tough life with my parents, what do you think it was like for someone who did not have a family?" he asks. "There were orphans in the refugee camp."

The events that drive refugees to our shores are rarely "acts of God."  They are invariably acts of man. The refugees who come to our shores are often the victims of religious and political persecution, wars, man-made famine and that euphemism for the unspeakable—ethnic cleansing.

But it is by the acts of humanity that we can help heal these wounds. New lives can be salvaged from this avalanche of human misery.  New Zealand has an international reputation for accepting and welcoming many thousands of refugees from many countries and provided them with a new life.

That reputation extends back more than 60 years towards the end of the Second World War when in October 1944, a large contingent of Polish refugees —all children—arrived at Wellington aboard the USS General Randall. 

They did so on the invitation of the then Prime Minister, Rt Hon Peter Fraser, who had led New Zealand's contribution in war time and thereafter with an emphasis on our international contribution in the United Nations, on development of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.  Press photographs of the children show some looking bewildered but, despite the deprivation and misery these children had faced, others are smiling on what was a sunny Spring day.

When they arrived at the Wellington Railway Station, hundreds of local children greeted them, waving Polish flags and, all along the route north to Pahiatua—their new home—groups of New Zealand children cheered the new arrivals.  The epic journey of these refugees from Europe to New Zealand is recognised in a plaque on the Wellington waterfront. 

I am advised we have an annual quota of 750 refugees and last year 748 people were accepted for settlement - bringing the total to 3,800 over the past five years.

In global terms these figures are small but they are not without significance. New Zealand is one of only 26 countries worldwide that offer a permanent home to refugees in need of resettlement. It is a record of which we have a right to be proud.  

To conclude, a final quote from our young essayist when he says: "What I would love in my lifetime is too see countries like New Zealand that have a good heart, keep looking after those who cannot look after themselves. In that way, the earth will be a happy place to live."

It is a sentiment I can only share and applaud.

And on that note, I will close in New Zealand's first language Maori, by offering greetings and wishing everyone good health and fortitude in their endeavours.  No reira, tena koutou, tena koutou, kia ora, kia kaha, tena koutou katoa.