NEWSROOM: 28 October - 03 November 2007

Western Union helps Tongans stay connected
03 November 2007 - Source: Western Union Press Release
 
The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU), a worldwide leader in money transfer services, helps Tongans in New Zealand conduct their personal business smoothly and stay connected with family in their homeland.

Western Union’s comprehensive Agent network offers more than 10 dedicated locations in Tonga (new locations in Eua and Ha’apai opened in 2007), making transferring funds from New Zealand quick, easy and hassle free.

Many Tongans living in New Zealand send money back to the island to support family – helping to pay for groceries and household expenses like power, water and telephone bills. Western Union helps take the stress out of transferring money by offering an easy-to-use service that delivers your funds quickly and reliably.

Patsy Filimoehala, from Otahuhu, regularly sends money to Tonga. She says the money is mainly used for her personal expenses, and she has always found Western Union to be fast and friendly.

“I always experience customer service that is friendly, approachable and exceptionally efficient,” says Ms Filimoehala.

According to Robina Nakao, CEO of Fund Management Ltd – Western Union’s Agent in Tonga, remittances are very important to the Tongan economy.
“Remittances sent home from family members working in New Zealand are a vital support for communities and families in Tonga. Tongan people living in New Zealand need to transfer money home regularly throughout the year, so it is incredibly important that the service they use is reliable and easy-to-use,” says Ms Nakao.

“With Western Union, the money is generally available for pick up within minutes* of its being sent and no bank account is required for the sender or the receiver.”

As well as sending money home for general expenses, Tongans living in New Zealand also transfer funds for family events throughout the year such as birthdays, weddings, funerals, Mothers’ or Fathers’ Day. Many Tongans also regularly donate money to their churches, sending money back for occasions such as Misinale, or White Sunday. Tongans who have property in the islands also send funds home for loan repayments with financial institutions.

“Western Union aims to provide exceptional customer service and have in the past gone beyond the call of duty to make arrangements for elderly or sick customers who are not able to come into the branch to collect funds. Western Union Agent representatives have personally delivered transferred funds to customer’s homes,” says Bridget Dennis, Western Union’s regional manager, New Zealand and Isles.

“During peak periods, such as Mothers’ Day and Christmas Eve, Western Union extends its opening hours to ensuring that all customers’ needs are met and funds are sent or received in time for the celebrations. We value the trust our customers place in us.”
 

Pacific Island business people on a mission
02 November 2007 - Source: Pacific Islands Trade & Investment Commission Press Release
 
The Pacific Islands Trade & Investment Commission (PITIC NZ) is leading an inaugural mission of ten successful New Zealand Pacific business people to Samoa and Tonga on 5-10 November 2007.

The ‘Air NZ Return to Roots Mission’ to Samoa and Tonga is a first for the Auckland based Commission, the New Zealand trade office of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS).

PITIC NZ was established in 1988 and has assisted trade, investment and tourism to the Pacific Islands fully funded by NZAID, under the umbrella of the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

PITIC NZ Trade Commissioner Chris Cocker said the difference with this mission is the focus on linking Pacific Island business people to opportunities in their home lands.

“It’s the first time we’ve tried to directly link New Zealand Pacific business people back to their counterparts in the Pacific Islands through a trade mission. Some of the delegates left their homelands of Samoa and Tonga many years ago and have successfully established businesses in a competitive New Zealand environment.”

“The advantage here is the delegates have the benefit of knowing their Pacific home lands, language, culture and customs and understanding their target markets said Mr. Cocker.

“We’d like as many of the delegates to invest or buy from their home countries. In future we want to extend this initiative to other Pacific Islands.”
The trade delegation will start with business meetings in Samoa from 5-6 November and move to Tonga from 8-10 November 2007.

The team from PITIC NZ includes Trade Commissioner Chris Cocker and Investment Executive Manuel Valdez, Samoa Trade Commissioner Va’atu’itu’i Apete Meredith and consultant Fa'amatuatino Tino Pereira, Managing Director of Niu Vision Group Ltd. will also be accompanying the delegation along with New Zealand media from Radio New Zealand International, Spasifik Magazine, TVNZ’s Tagata Pasifika and Islands Business Magazine.

List of Participants:
1. Uluomatootua Saulaulu Aiono
2. Margaret Brown
3. Fatu Brent Fuatavai
4. Siaosi Niuhulu
5. Sosefo Sime
6. Repeka Lelaulu
7. Andreas Vaioleti
8. Theodore Marama
9. Tenukuloa Roti
10. David Wong Tung

For more information please contact:
Trade Commissioner Chris Cocker
Pacific Islands Trade & Investment Commission
5 Short Street, Newmarket, Auckland
Tel: 09 529 5165; Fax: 09 529 1284; Email: eleanori@pitic.org.nz
 

First Pacific woman Minister for Pacific Island Affairs
01 November 2007 - Source: eventpolynesia.com
 
Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Helen Clark today announced the reallocations of portfolios and renewed cabinet line-up, which included Hon. Luamanuvao Winnie Laban as first Pacific woman to hold portfolio as Minister for Pacific Island Affairs.

Luamanuvao Winnie Laban was previously Associate Minister to Hon. Phil Goff, former Minister of Pacific Island Affairs. She is continuing to hold her other portfolios as Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment and Associate Minister for Economic Development and Associate Minister for Trade.

Minister Laban became New Zealand's first Pacific woman member of Parliament in 1999 and she has been the Labour Member of Parliament for Mana since 2002.

She is a university graduate in Social Work (Victoria University) and Development Studies (Massey University). She was bestowed the Samoan chiefly title of Luamanuvao, from the village of Vaiala, Vaimauga, Samoa, in 1992.

Before entering Parliament, Winnie worked in the public, private and voluntary sectors in New Zealand and overseas.

Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Helen Clark also announced the three new Cabinet ministers elected to the cabinet; Steve Chadwick, Shane Jones and Maryan Street.

Ms. Clark said that the three vacancies arise from the impending retirement of Steve Maharey, the decision by Mark Burton to return to the backbench, and the place vacated by David Benson-Pope in July.

“There are seven women Cabinet ministers. Three Cabinet Ministers are Maori.”

“The changes made at this time are all about putting the Labour-led Government in a strong position to campaign for re-election in 2008,” Helen Clark said.

The reallocations of portfolios and new minister’s duties can be found on the New Zealand Government website: http://www.beehive.govt.nz/ViewDocument.aspx?DocumentID=31156
 

Call for Pacific women to be involved in decision-making
31 October 2007 - Source: Fiji Broadcasting Corporation Limited
 
Opening a regional consultation for Pacific Members of Parliament on the Pacific Plan and human rights in Auckland, Speaker of the House of Representatives Margaret Wilson said that including women in decision making processes would aid in the promotion of gender equality and women’s rights.

Thirty MPs from eleven Pacific Island countries are attending the five-day consultation which started this Monday in Auckland.

Wilson said if issues of culture are complex and difficult, those of gender are equally difficult.

The first step to addressing issues of discrimination against women, she says is an understanding of where gender roles are constructed and the consequences that flow from that construction.

The second step is the understanding as to how those roles can change for the benefit of both men and women.

Wilson added that until gender discrimination is redressed and women are treated with equality, it will be impossible for any country to experience full enjoyment of the human rights agenda.

Wilson said, from her experience in working towards gender equality in New Zealand and the Pacific region, that a key to achieving equality was to include women in all aspects of decision making.
 

New Zealand writer explores little-known South Pacific conflict
30 October 2007 - Source: Toronto Star
 
Even current affairs junkies, knowledgeable about Darfur and Chechnya, were often ignorant of a vicious little war waged on the island of Bougainville – one of the Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific – between 1990 and 1996.

Now the conflict is portrayed from the point of view of a 13-year-old native of Bougainville named Matilda in Mister Pip, a Booker Prize nominated novel by New Zealand author Lloyd Jones. Jones, 52, who will read this afternoon at 4 at the Premiere Dance Theatre as part of the International Festival of Authors, begins his novel with the historic imposition of a blockade around the island of Bougainville.

"It was an extraordinary thing to do," says Jones. "No one could get in and no one could get out. Medicines couldn't get it. It was a pretty dreadful situation, with Bougainville effectively closed off from the world for almost 10 years."

The conflict began over a huge copper mine opened on the island by Australians and other foreign interests. Extreme pollution and destruction of the land, social tensions generated by outside workers and other grievances led to a rebellion of the islanders against the government of Papua New Guinea. Some of the atrocities subsequently committed against the people of Bougainville are graphically portrayed by Jones in the novel, as well as the resilience of the people. That resilience was aided by an incredibly fertile landscape.

"People were building tree huts during the blockade – it was back to nature, to pre-European conditions," Jones says.

All the while, neighbouring Australia and New Zealand more or less ignored the conflict.

"It's in our backyard but it's also a blind spot," says Jones. "Australia definitely chose to look the other way. But after the place was sealed off so effectively, no one knew what the state of affairs was on the island. If it had been a little nation state in Europe, the whole world would have known about this. But in the southwest Pacific, no one cared."

Eventually New Zealand and Australia did threaten to intervene, and subsequently helped to broker a peace between Bougainville and the Papua New Guinea government, with Bougainville promised eventual independence. This does not occur, however, before teenaged Matilda leaves the island to seek education and a better life, near the end of the novel. Most of the novel describes how Matilda manages to cope not only with the war outside but with an inner war fought on the island between two points of view – that of her Bible-reading mother and that of a white schoolteacher, who tries to expand the imaginations of his pupils by reading Dickens's novel Great Expectation to his class.

"They're not mutually exclusive," Jones says of this battle of the Bible versus Great Expectations. "It takes Matilda's mother to point out the irony that, on the one hand, Matilda and the teacher are prepared to believe wholeheartedly in a made-up character such as Pip, but on the other hand, when it comes to God and the devil they're not prepared to extend the same sort of belief."

Charles Dickens's Pip, an orphan who escapes a life of oppression by going to London, hits home with Matilda and the teacher. "The whole business of changing and escaping your past – as any immigrant does, and any orphan does – may have a special resonance for people in the southwest Pacific, particularly for New Zealand, that has a population of immigrants," Jones says.

Jones is unafraid to slip into other people's identities, and has been accused of what we in Canada frequently refer to as appropriation of voice. Jones is unrepentant. "That's not a reason to steer away from a topic because it might be uncomfortable," he says. "One of the things that is argued that comes up now and then – often because I bring it up – is the notion of authenticity: a 52 year old white man writing from the black female point of view. People often say, `How do you get inside the head of such a character?' It's not authentic. For it to be authentic it would have to be written by a black female.'

"But it's a whole fictional construct. That is the only important thing; that it works on its own terms, on the page."
 

‘Expressions’ auditions for Pasifika Festival 2008
29 October 2007 - Source: Auckland City Council Press Release
 
“Expressions” is a chance for budding performers to audition to be part of Auckland City Council’s 16th Pasifika Festival at Western Springs Park on 7 and 8 March 2008.

Audition slots are available on Saturday, 17 November for first-time artists to show they have what it takes to perform at one of the largest free community festival events in the southern hemisphere.

From relatively small beginnings, attendance has grown rapidly. These days the annual event attracts crowds in excess of 225,000 and hundreds of performers from all over our region and the Pacific. A spectacular opening night concert provides the gateway for the following day of performances, entertainment, food and festivities.

Pasifika Festival is recognised as an important celebration of the art, culture and lifestyle of Auckland’s Pacific Islands communities – and festival director Ole Maiava says he is excited about what new talent could bring to the event.

“Pasifika Festival provides the perfect break for Pacific artists to showcase their talent to the public. The new performers will take to the stage alongside larger headline acts, many of whom got their start through the same process years ago,” says Mr Maiava.

Pasifika Festival scooped best established event at this year’s New Zealand Association of Event Professionals industry awards.

All forms of performance and artistic expression, from traditional song and dance to comedy and more contemporary musical genres will be considered.

For an audition application form, contact Leehane Stowers – email leehane.stowers@aucklandcity.govt.nz or phone (09) 354 2159.
Completed forms must be returned by Friday, 9 November.

Pasifika Festival is proudly sponsored by Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), Pacific Media Network (Radio 531pi and Niu FM), Sport & Recreation New Zealand (SPARC), Air New Zealand, Flava 96one – and supported by New Zealand Community Trust (NZCT), Fonterra Brands (Tip Top) Limited and McCallum Industries' Palm Corned Beef.
 

Miss Samoa welcomed home by Deputy Mayor
28 October 2007 - Source: Councillor Su’a William Sio
 
On Saturday morning at 5am, on behalf of His Worship Mayor of Manukau City Len Brown, Deputy Mayor Su’a William Sio welcomed home Sherryl Natalie Elekana, Miss Samoa New Zealand and congratulated her on winning the crown of Miss Samoa.

In a brief speech to Sherryl and to her uncle Aiolupotea John Roache and other family, Su'a said,

"Sherryl, on behalf of His Worship the Mayor Len Brown and of the people of Manukau City, we welcome you back home and congratulate you on being crowned Miss Samoa. Your win is a significant personal achievement on your part. We are so proud of you because you not only have natural Samoan beauty but you are also a young women that is mature, courteous, humble and extremely intelligent. Aorere College would be proud of you. AUT would be proud of you. Your family have every right to be proud of you as well and the people of Manukau City. You are a strong role model for all our young people in Manukau City."

Congratulations again Sherryl and to your family.
 

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