‘They’re Not Coming Home’: Shane Jones Defends Denying Citizenship To Australia-Based Māori

Mihingarangi
Forbes

Russell
Palmer Political reporter

Māori children whose
grandparents left to find work may have to go through a
process to return, under New Zealand First’s immigration
policy.

New Zealand First’s Shane Jones is defending
the party’s immigration policy, telling Mata the party will
no longer allow citizenship to be
“trivialised”.

Leader Winston Peters unveiled
the policy at the annual Immigration Conference last
week, including a promise to restrict birthright citizenship
to citizens only.

New Zealand ended unrestricted
birthright citizenship in 2005, so that children born in New
Zealand would only be automatically granted citizenship at
birth if at least one parent was a citizen or had permission
to remain in New Zealand indefinitely.

The NZ First
policy would further restrict this so that any non-citizens
including permanent residents would not qualify, which could
mean for example that Māori born in New Zealand whose
grandparents had gone to Australia to find work would need
to apply for a visa to return, if their parent was not a
citizen.

Jones told Mata host Mihingarangi Forbes that
New Zealand needed a reset on immigration “and to get a
reset, we need to essentially deploy the politics of
cut-through”.

“It’s one thing to campaign in poetry –
and I’m an expert at that – and then it’s another thing when
you govern in prose.”

Forbes asked – given hundreds of
thousands of Māori were living in Australia, many for three
or more generations – if he thought tūpuna signing the
Treaty of Waitangi would ever imagine the government
rejecting their mokopuna.

“I think that a lot of
whānau that have gone to Australia have gone there, and
they’re not coming home,” Jones said.

“Just look at
where I hail from in Kaitaia, when you get to that second
and third generation, they’ve got all the bloods of the
world … that shouldn’t define your identity exclusively,
but I do feel that those that have made home over there,
they aren’t coming home.”

He said if
“great-grandchildren or great-great-grandchildren” were to
return to New Zealand “then they’ll have to go through a
process”.

“You can’t just rock up home, having been an
Australian for several generations, and claim arbitrarily
hitherto unknown rights. I don’t accept that.”

He said
it was an “awful reality” that unemployment was high,
particularly for Māori, but indicated growth was the way
out of that.

While there would be opportunity for
people to “influence the final shape and form” of the
policy, NZ First was standing by it.

“We’re no longer
the wealthy country that we were, and the only way I can see
us getting out of that rut is to grow, develop, invest,
expand,” Jones said.

“It’s the government’s role to
determine who comes into New Zealand and the basis upon
which you enjoy your rights of occupancy, residency
here.

“We regard, rightly or wrongly, citizenship as
the birthstone of democracy. We’re no longer going to have
it
trivialised.”

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