Ad firm leads campaign to fight racism towards immigrants

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

An advertising campaign starting this week will challenge racist stereotypes and encourage tolerance.

Done in the name of the Human Rights Commission, the $1.5 million campaign to persuade people to be more kind to immigrants has been put together at the expense of media and advertising firms led by McCann-Erickson.

The television, radio, newspaper and poster campaign will be launched at Parliament on Wednesday night.

It starts in the same month that Government statisticians predicted the number of Asians living in this country will more than double in the 20 years after the 2001 census.

Statistics New Zealand said there would be 604,000 Asians in the country by 2021 - 13 per cent of the population.

The commission had been considering asking the Government for money to run a racial tolerance campaign, so was enthusiastic when this one was offered for free.

McCann-Erickson managing director John Roberts said yesterday he was ashamed to find last year, after returning from five years of working in Singapore, that many New Zealanders were intolerant of Asian immigrants, contrary to what he had told people in Asia.

The source of his information was his advertising agency's twice-weekly discussions with new groups of people from all over the country, designed to discover public opinions and trends.

He said he was surprised by incorrect generalisations made by people in the groups that he had thought were well informed and educated.

He said one person, talking about severe acute respiratory syndrome, said: "We'd expect Sars to come from China because look at the way they live and eat."

And it was not only Asians who were targeted: white South Africans "got a real bashing", Mr Roberts said. "[People said] they don't mix all that well, they are arrogant and all live in one area, which is all rubbish.

"People are making these very stereotypical comments about people because they don't understand them and then labelling them, which is no way to build a society.

"We need migrants. If you look at the statistics, there are more New Zealanders leaving than coming back. We've got an ageing profile. We're going to have a skill shortage.

"Somebody has to pay the taxes to fund the other end. I think the problem is that people haven't thought about it that way.

"What we're trying to say is a person's country of origin might be China, but they have chosen to become a New Zealander, so give them a chance."

Chief Human Rights Commissioner Rosslyn Noonan said the campaign would be a timely reminder of New Zealand's diversity.

She said the McCann-Erickson research reflected some of the commission's. A survey finding in February was that 70 per cent of respondents thought Asians were the group most vulnerable to discrimination.

Earlier work found that people with foreign names or accents faced significant difficulties in getting a foot in the door with job applications.

Ms Noonan said New Zealand lagged behind Canada and Australia on the degree of resettlement help for immigrants, such as second-language English programmes or extra help at school. Such programmes helped ease tensions.

"I think we're going through a learning curve about how we ensure that we nurture, accept and value the diversity [brought by immigration] while also maintaining and asserting those things that are really important about what it is to be a New Zealander."