A friendship not always so cosy

THE LONG VIEW - BY RICHARD LONG

OPINION: That tidal wave of Kiwi sympathy for Samoa after the tsunami tragedy was a touching development in relations with the Pacific island nation which New Zealand once administered in somewhat maladroit fashion.

Prime Minister John Key and Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully surveyed the tsunami damage, revisiting the devastated areas which hosted them just a few weeks ago, and pledged full support for Samoa's rebuilding process.

That was a symbolic change from earlier times and the sometimes heavy-handed Kiwi colonial administration which ruled the islands, after ousting the German garrison during World War I, until independence in 1962.

Our cavalier colonial health controls allowed Spanish flu to be introduced in 1918, devastating the population of an island nation which was completely unprotected from such viruses.

And Samoa has never really forgiven New Zealand for the death of a paramount chief, Tupua Tamasese Lealofi, and 11 others in an independence protest march in 1929.

In 1982, the citizenship protocols row erupted when the Privy Council ruled that all Samoans and their descendants born between 1924 and 1948 were entitled to New Zealand citizenship because of faulty law- drafting following independence.

To settle the resulting political uproar here, prime minister Robert Muldoon legislated to overturn the Privy Council decision. That left Samoans aghast. Betrayal and racism charges were levelled.

I recall sitting down with the legendary Aggie Grey at the time, proprietor of the Apia Hotel which still bears her name and which is run today by her granddaughter. "You tell my sweetheart Rob to meet Samoa halfway," Aggie said.

That was reasonable advice. Samoan leaders had no wish to see their communities drained of their brightest and best in a sudden migration surge to New Zealand, and were aware that New Zealand could not sustain this, politically or economically, but they still felt there was room for reasonable compromise.

Mr Muldoon was less than impressed, especially as he considered the comment implied that his relationship was more than one of hotelier to visiting leader.

The colourful Aggie Grey was widely assumed to have been the model for the infamous Bloody Mary character in James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific.

After the tsunami and poignant accounts of communities losing their entire extended families, several commentators touched by the extent of the tragedy have declared: "We are all Samoans now."

If that sounds familiar, then it is. It is a paraphrase of the words of Le Monde columnist Jean- Marie Colombani, who declared solidarity with America in the aftermath of the New York twin towers 9/11 terrorist attack.

"We are all Americans. We are all New Yorkers," he wrote then.

The political pledges of aid and assistance and the overwhelming New Zealand sympathy for Samoa is a welcome change from colonial times past. But what we also need to do, in the aftermath of this tsunami, is learn from the shortcomings of the Civil Defence warning processes in terms of New Zealand coastal alerts.

Warnings are never going to be perfect. In the early stages it is often not clear which earthquakes are tsunami producing. Warnings can be flagged as possibilities, cancelled, and reinstated, with each step adding to potential confusion.

But Radio New Zealand and Television New Zealand, which must be regarded as primary transmission vehicles for alerts, were not well served by the information process this time.

Low-lying Wellington Airport, which could easily be swept by a tsunami, reportedly did not receive an alert but residents of the Coromandel settlement of Pauanui, which is a densely settled sandspit only a metre or so above sea level, were all evacuated to higher ground, an impressive feat.

Mind you, this happened at the socially acceptable time of just after nine in the morning. The reaction of residents at 3am in midwinter might not be as enthusiastic.

Then there is the question about how to cope with the rubberneckers who hear the alerts and respond by wandering down to the beach with their children to have a look at the tsunami close up.

They must drive Civil Defence and police to despair, while distracting them from emergency duties.

One way to deal with this would be to warn that such wayward parents could face charges of reckless endangerment.

- © Fairfax NZ News