Refugee Services Aotearoa Reception

May I begin by greeting everyone in the languages of the realm of New Zealand - 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 evening and the sun has set [sign].

May I specifically greet you: the Chair of the Refugee Services Board, Dr Love Chile and your National Management team - Jenni Broom, Brett Denham and Peter Cotton; Ministers of the Crown, Hon Chris Carter, Hon Maryan Street, Hon Shane Jones; Members of Parliament, Tim Barnett, David Bennett and Lesley Soper; Mayors of Porirua and Hutt cities respectively, Your Worships Jenny Brash and David Ogden, Distinguished Guests; ladies and gentlemen.  

My wife Susan and I are delighted to welcome you all here to Government House Wellington this evening to this reception to formally launch Refugee Services Aotearoa New Zealand under its new name.

This organisation has become a principal NGO partner of the Government in New Zealand's refugee resettlement programme for more than three decades.

During that time it has helped more than 40,000 refugees and their family members settle into their new environment and integrate into a new society - and it has done this successfully. 

It is unique in being able to offer a nationally-recognised certificate course for community volunteers - giving them the knowledge and skills that enable them to help newly-arrived refugee families meet the huge challenges they face.

Many may wonder how New Zealand, a small country in the far south-west of the Pacific, has gained a reputation where refugees have come to be welcomed in an ongoing basis.

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 The 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, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.  The 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 and eventually to Pahiatua is memorialised in a plaque on the Wellington waterfront. 

These events, of course, predate the establishment of Refugee Services Aotearoa New Zealand, but the organisation has continued the tradition of a goodwill that our country extended to those first refugees.

I would like to pay tribute to Refugee Services Aotearoa New Zealand for its high level of activity and for its creativity, both over a long period.

It does things in a particularly Kiwi way - with a lack of fuss and formality, but with plenty of friendliness, practicality and professionalism - offering 'mateship' as well as guidance.

This is an approach which has won it plaudits both beyond New Zealand as well as here.

I would particularly like to applaud the volunteers who give so much of their time and their energy to work with refugees.

It is not an easy process. Unlike other migrants who move to another country for the positive reason that they want to, refugees do so for the negative reason that they are forced to.

The difference creates particular issues for refugees that other migrants rarely experience.

Many have suffered abuse and violence, some even torture, and will go on suffering the symptoms of post traumatic stress syndrome well after arriving here.

Sometimes they will have their families with them, but that is not always the case.  On occasions, members of their families may have died in the violence that caused them to flee.

So in addition to all the issues that every new settler faces, including language and culture, refugees have to contend with the psychological weight of their past on their shoulders.

They have little but their own fortitude with which to turn the downside of their situation into constructive forward-looking lives.

But they do it - and often very successfully.

For example, I am advised that 24 Somali students have graduated from WaikatoUniversity in the recent past - with degrees ranging right up to doctorates - and that about 50 more Somali students are currently studying at Waikato.  

Such students not only gain the base on which they will be able to build careers, but as they do so, they add a richness to university life - and to the culture of New Zealand more generally.

Referring to the Treaty of Waitangi, recently retired High Court Judge and Law Commissioner, Hon Justice Eddie Durie, once referred to the two peoples of this country—tangata whenua and tangata tiriti, people here by virtue of the agreement made at Waitangi in 1840.

Whether we or our ancestors came here by canoe, ship or aeroplane, and for whatever reason we came to live here, the Treaty gives us all a mandate for the contribution each of us might make and a shared basis for moving forward.

Ours is now a far more diverse nation that at any point in its history. The last Census revealed that 23 per cent of New Zealanders were born overseas and a major challenge for those arriving in New Zealand, is how to integrate into our society and yet hold on to their own culture, customs and languages.

It is important that they are able to be New Zealanders and to 'be themselves'. It is equally important that other New Zealanders recognise, respect and understand the various cultures that make up our country in the 21^st century.

To close I will give another, quite different example, of how refugees are contributing much to New Zealand.  Again, it is an example from Somalia, and of a young man who fled is war torn country with his family six years ago. 

The media recently reported that Ajiil Farah had become the first Somali New Zealander to graduate from the Waiouru Training Centre as a member of the New Zealand Army.

His comments bear repeating because they speak much of how those new to our country are enriching it whilst also providing valuable role models for others.

He told The Waikato Times and I quote him: "The biggest success for me is being able to show my community that they can do anything in this country that they want to do, especially the young people coming up."

On that heartening note I would like to close by offering everyone greetings and wishing you good health and fortitude in your endeavours and in New Zealand's first language - Maori: No reira, tena koutou, tena koutou, kia ora, kia kaha, tena koutou katoa.