A year ago this week, the strongest cyclone in recorded history to make landfall in the South Pacific Basin hit Fiji. Unicef NZ’s Lachlan Forsyth travelled to the tiny village of Rakiraki to see how a devastated community is slowly rebuilding. It’s a modest collection of buildings. A couple of classrooms, some homes for the … Read more
Community worker Ngaiterangi Smallman argues that the Moana movie is an opportunity Pacific communities should be grasping with both hands. First published on September 28, 2016. Two years ago I visited a Kohanga Reo (Māori-language preschool) in Tāmaki (Auckland) and enjoyed time with the mokopuna and teachers. The whanau had decorated the walls with cut … Read more
Disney’s Moana has had sold-out screenings across New Zealand since its Boxing Day release. Emmaline Matagi writes about what it was like to watch the film as the mother of a child of the Pacific. I am a woman born in the Pacific Islands, raised in the Pacific Islands, a migrant to Aotearoa and a … Read more
Community worker Ngaiterangi Smallman argues that the Moana movie is an opportunity Pacific communities should be grasping with both hands. This column was submitted as a letter to the editor (info@thespinoff.co.nz); we decided it deserved its own post. For more letters and reader comment, on this and other topics, click here. Two years ago I … Read more
When John Key flies out to Fiji today, one journalist who won’t be joining the delegation is old Pacific hand Michael Field, who is banned from entering the country. He explains how he got added to Bainimarama’s blacklist. I’ve a long history of being banned in the Pacific. The reason why I’m unable to join … Read more
Michael Field, whose book The Catch helped expose the labour and human rights abuses in New Zealand’s fishing industry, says a report out today reveals a decades-long abuse of our much-vaunted quota system, with more than twice as many fish caught as declared. New Zealanders know the power of national utterances; we live by “clean and green” … Read more
Outside the arcane world of tax havens few had noticed Mossack Fonseca creeping into the South Pacific, but New Zealand journalist Michael Field was one. He recalls how he confronted the co-founder of the law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers data leak. Jürgen Mossack came to Auckland to shut me up. For … Read more
Illegal fishing, much of it by China, is costing some of the world’s smallest and poorest nations hundreds of millions of dollars. Why isn’t New Zealand doing more about the blatant theft in its backyard, asks Michael Field. It would have been a tense moment or two for Captain Wang Chang Fu when, in the … Read more