Changing faces - the new NZ

Call it the new face of New Zealand - an Indian welfare agency, a Chinese film festival and a Sikh temple.

When Prime Minister Helen Clark and Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel visited Auckland yesterday, they met not just the groups that have mattered in New Zealand society for years, such as life members of the Pt Chevalier Returned Services Association, but the representatives of our new peoples.

At a meeting of Fiji Indians, Ms Dalziel was applauded as she waded into hostage-taker George Speight - "That man is a terrorist."

Earlier she had been presented with submissions from the Sikh community on its immigration concerns at the Sikh temple in Otahuhu, even as, a few kilometres away, Helen Clark spoke to the Shanti Niwas Centre, an Indian welfare agency, before heading to the opening of the Chinese film festival.

The message of the day: New Zealand isn't changing, it has changed.

Today, the Herald begins a four-week series on the immigrants who have shaped our land and those who are doing so again. We look back to the 10-pound Poms from the "Old Country," and forward to our new sources of people from diverse lands like Iraq and Somalia.

The series comes as statistical models show our population likely to rise to 4.6 million in the mid-century, before declining to 4.2 million as our people age.

We will look at the role of immigration - who comes and why, the challenges they face and the problems of attracting migrants.

Last night, the questions were laid bare as Ms Dalziel spoke to 150 Fiji Indians about who might come and how after the May 19 coup.

Nobody would be forced back to Fiji in the uncertain political climate, she said, but it would be a good time for overstayers to go to an immigration office.

After being shut for three weeks after the coup, the New Zealand immigration office in Suva was back in business, but operating behind closed doors for security.

"The door isn't open but the mailbox is."

Afterwards, one of the meeting's organisers, the publisher of Indian Newslink, Ravin Lal, said the audience appreciated Ms Dalziel's straight talking - the kind of talking we need to do as we plan a new future.

The immigrants - a Herald series

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