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Māngere College students raise their fists with Tigilau Ness (Photo: Justin Latif)
Māngere College students raise their fists with Tigilau Ness (Photo: Justin Latif)

SocietyJuly 29, 2021

How the Polynesian Panthers are raising a new generation of leaders

Māngere College students raise their fists with Tigilau Ness (Photo: Justin Latif)
Māngere College students raise their fists with Tigilau Ness (Photo: Justin Latif)

The government will deliver its apology for the dawn raids this Sunday, but what will it mean for the current generation of Pacific youth? Justin Latif tagged along with the Polynesian Panthers on their visit to Māngere College to find out. 

Māngere College’s Anne Tupou and Jordan Mau’u admit most of their peers didn’t even know who the Polynesian Panthers were.

But after three of the group’s legendary activists spoke, pupils weren’t just informed but inspired, judging by the cheering and fist punches in response. 

Alec Toleafoa, Tigilau Ness and Melani Anae visited the school ahead of the government’s apology for the dawn raids this Sunday at the Auckland Town Hall, to speak to students about why this upcoming event was so significant.

Polynesian Panthers Tigilau Ness, Melanie Anae and Alec Toleafoa with Māngere College students Anne Tupou and Jordan Mau’u (Photo: Justin Latif)

Tupou said she had a vague idea of what the dawn raids were, but only heard about the Polynesian Panthers very recently. 

“I didn’t know about them until I swiped on Instagram a few weeks ago,” she said. “I guess it shows we really need to brush up on our history. “

Mau’u was equally uninformed. 

“I don’t think a lot of our generation knows much about this past and it feels weird that there’s this other part of our history that we haven’t been told about.”

But their visit made an immediate impression on Tupou, the school’s head girl. 

“We learnt that we have to have pride and to appreciate that even though we’re a minority, we’re unique. 

“And for me, I’m going to change my subjects for uni next year to politics.”

Māngere College celebrated its 50th jubilee this year, which also coincides with the Polynesian Panthers’ 50th anniversary since they formed in 1971. 

As Māngere College staff member Herman Arp welcomed the visitors, he noted that their visit was particularly significant, as in the past, many Pacific students from central Auckland had been forced to attend the school rather than colleges closer to home.

“A few of our foundation students shared their stories with us at the jubilee,” he said. “They said they were identified in the schools they were attending and were encouraged to bus down here.”

There were even stories of police being called in to help pressure Pacific families, who were living in suburbs like Remuera, Mt Roskill or Ponsonby at the time, to send their children to Māngere, said Arp. Stories like this, along with accounts about the dawn raids, will be part of the school’s teaching going forward, he added. 

“I know we’re looking at ways of integrating these stories into our social studies curriculum. And while many of the younger students don’t really appreciate it, for our older students who are leaving soon, when they have heard these stories, they are livid.”

Tigilau Ness at Māngere College (Photo: Justin Latif)

Ness said coming to Māngere held special significance for the Panthers as not only is it where many Pacific families moved, but it was also home to a number of supporters of their movement including David Lange, who acted as the group’s lawyer prior to becoming prime minister. 

“He actually was our lawyer when we got arrested.”

Ness hoped their visit could spur on a new wave of Pacific activists given, as he said, “We were students ourselves when we joined the party and so we want to motivate and inspire them, in the same way we were inspired and motivated by the Black Panthers.

“Identity is one of the most important things for these young people to learn,” Ness said.

“They have to know who they are – so they can know where they are going. 

“This apology will be a historical occasion in their lifetime and going forward, they will be the ones writing policy and making change, so I really hope they can see themselves as part of this history.”

Toleafoa told the audience that the group’s visits to schools over the past decade played a big part in the decision to push for an apology.  

“A lot of our people have been silenced for 50 years by layers of shame and disgrace of being called overstayers. For the last 10 years we’ve been going to schools, and we hear a lot of stories from teachers and parents, so we’ve been listening to what they’ve been saying and we decided it was time to open an opportunity for healing.” 

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Image: Tina Tiller / The Spinoff
Image: Tina Tiller / The Spinoff

SocietyJuly 29, 2021

The MIQ booking system is unfair and inefficient. There are ways to fix it

Image: Tina Tiller / The Spinoff
Image: Tina Tiller / The Spinoff

While we wait for the harsh realities of Covid to change, the government could show compassion for those stuck overseas by revisiting the digital queue, writes supply chain expert Tava Olsen.

The booking system for New Zealand’s managed isolation system has been making headlines recently, with a market emerging for hired help to hit refresh in search of spaces, alongside various scripts and bots that automate much of the process. The critical issue is that the computer-savvy can jump ahead to grab a new spot, leaving behind those who have been trying for months to get a place. This fundamental unfairness is not OK in my mind; there are better systems possible.

Queueing theory 101 (the science of waiting) has long shown that unfair waiting comes at a high psychological cost. Everyone reading this will know how someone cutting ahead of you in a queue raises your own blood pressure. Now imagine you are desperate to come home and are faced with a system where how long you have been trying is irrelevant to your access to a space. A system where bots can be coded to scoop up spaces as they become available, leaving regular people in the cold.

The calendar page that greets visitors to allocation.miq.govt.nz

The key challenge, as emphasised by the minister for the Covid response, Chris Hipkins, is that demand exceeds supply. That is true, but this is far from the only system where that is the case. Imagine if we ran our kidney allocation system this way! Where desperate patients needed to keep hitting the refresh button on the system to see if a newly donated kidney had popped up, so they could jump on and sign up for it. Clearly, that would be ridiculous, and yet kidney allocation is another system where demand exceeds supply; sadly, some people die before receiving a donor kidney. There are hundreds or perhaps thousands of research articles written on kidney allocation systems. Articles on managing queueing systems, in general, are even more plentiful.

In the commercial world, when demand exceeds supply, it is often possible to raise prices and thus depress demand. That is probably not a desirable solution for MIQ booking. Therefore, one needs to go to tried and true queueing solutions of prioritisation, rationing, and delays.

First, prioritisation. The compassionate consideration system seems to be working, but it feels to me that there should be another priority class that sits below the compassionate consideration class but above the general pool. Those waiting to move to New Zealand permanently should have higher priority than those returning from visiting a healthy loved one abroad. While we wish we had enough spaces for both, that is not currently the case.

In terms of rationing, we are already doing that with our very restrictive visa system. We are limiting demand by denying entry to the people who would usually travel to New Zealand. Could we do more rationing? Probably. We could ensure that travel is essential for people looking to leave and then return. But that would be complex and a very long low-priority waiting line is probably a better solution for such travel.

Another solution that has been mooted is a lottery system. This is the system for some US Green Card allocations but is relatively uncommon in general. I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other on this, but it feels unnecessary. A well-managed waitlist, where participants need to reregister their interest in a space regularly, is probably sufficient. Of course, with a waitlist we would see the true extent of the backlog, which may not be politically pleasant. But it is probably a good idea anyway.


Related:

David Farrier: The problem of returning home


By this point, readers may be wondering why I haven’t discussed the supply-side. Why don’t we simply increase our MIQ capacity (particularly for paying travellers)? My understanding is that the key capacity constraint is actually the personnel availability of our defence forces. As someone currently experiencing MIQ (I managed to get myself trapped in Sydney – entirely my own fault), I can assure you that they indeed do an excellent job. A system without the current level of defence force oversight would be more vulnerable to breaches. But this is perhaps something that could be considered for travellers from low-risk countries who are fully vaccinated. Something to consider going forward.

Indeed, the current restrictions on spaces are causing a lot of pain, both small and large. On the small side, my husband would love to attend his sister’s 50th birthday in the US, but that is not likely to happen, which is probably OK in a global pandemic. More significantly, my university has overseas employees we have hired but can’t get into the country because they don’t make the salary threshold for a special visa. Our students are not very impressed about being taught by people on Zoom, yet hiring locally is simply not practical in these fields. Then there are all the students who would love to study with us but can’t enter the country. Those opposed to international students may not realise just how much they subsidise high-quality education for domestic students and also allow for a much greater variety of choice in subjects that would not be viable to offer for just the domestic market. There are no easy answers here.

The final option, of course, would be to move away from the government’s strategy of elimination. While perhaps appealing, it is too early. My view is that the “live with the virus” proponents don’t understand exponential growth. There is no “living with” a virus with an R0 of 6 where most of the population has no immunity. It would continue to spread and infect, and vulnerable people would be stuck self-isolating indefinitely; a good number would die. I’m sure you all join me in hoping that vaccines change the equation on this.

So while we wait for the harsh realities to change, I would call on the government to show compassion for those stuck overseas by changing the MIQ booking system to something fair. In addition, adding visibility and providing estimates of waits, even if very very long, would help provide a degree of certainty, and therefore comfort, to those currently suffering from our necessarily closed borders.

Professor Tava Olsen is Director of the Centre for Supply Chain Management at the University of Auckland Business School

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