Refuge New Zealand: A Nation's Response to Refugees and Asylum Seekers.

• Author: Alley, Roderic
• Position: Book review

REFUGE NEW ZEALAND: A Nation's Response to Refugees and Asylum Seekers

Author: Ann Beaglehole

Published by: Otago University Press, Dunedin, 2013, 263pp, $40.

In an important speech made shortly after becoming prime minister in 1972, Norman Kirk asserted: 'we shall strive to relate what we say and do abroad to the values that govern our policies at home.... We believe in the individual worth and dignity of every man, woman and child regardless of race or colour.' While inconsistent in its application, Kirk's aspiration has been a constant in New Zealand foreign policy following the experience of what real marginalisation meant during the Great Depression. However, this has been tempered by a wary pragmatism, ever alert to domestic sentiment and the wishes of stronger allies. While partly buffered by its isolation, New Zealand has remained alert to the global controversy surrounding refugee and asylum seeking. This has forced continued policy change, not all of which has been positive. These tensions have persisted in New Zealand's handling of refugee and asylum seeking, comprehensively analysed in this wide ranging, well-sourced and thorough investigation by Ann Beaglehole.

Since 1944, when they were first distinguished from other migrants in its official statistics, New Zealand has accepted more than 30,000 refugees. That creditable record of acceptance per head of local population has been strengthened by a willingness to accept refugees considered hard to settle, including the disabled, emergency protection cases, and even some suffering from HIV/ AIDS. That has been commendable given the proclivity of other receiving nations to often 'cherry pick' the most skilled and able from available refugee pools nominated by the UN high commissioner for refugees.

More negatively, refugee policy has been stigmatised domestically through calls by trade unions, Maori opinion, and populist politicians demanding prior attention to local need. As recounted here, Bert Bockett, New Zealand's director of employment, was unapologetic in 1947 about discrimination against some groups in favour of others as it was not a fundamental right but a privilege for any alien to enter New Zealand. By contrast Fred Turnovsky, when meeting a local Reserve Bank cashier who had previously refused his request to remit funds to get his parents out of Czechoslovakia to the United States in the late 1930s, commented that it may interest 'you to know that my parents were killed...