KEY POINTS:
This year's carefree Pasifika festival again promises its usual sounds, smells, sights and, er, the heavy debate over Pacific Island trade agreements.
The popular festival, which delights crowds each year with its laidback, cruisy Pacific style, will also offer an opportunity for visitors to turn their minds to more serious stuff.
This weekend Oxfam will be at Pasifika, encouraging festival-goers to add their voices to a "Make Trade Fair" campaign for New Zealand's Pacific neighbours.
Petition forms have been formed in the shape of traditional garlands - both here and in the Pacific Islands - and organisers hope to eventually join the garlands into one huge protest lei. Barry Coates, Oxfam executive director, said unfair trade rules that were being pushed on Pacific countries would make the lives of their people worse.
"Trade can reduce hardship ... but Pacific trade negotiators must not be forced into signing away the jobs, lands, traditions and rights of Pacific people."
Mr Coates was referring to negotiations by the European Union over Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with 77 of its former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.
EPAs are free trade agreements designed to replace the Cotonou preferential trade regime that had been deemed incompatible with World Trade Organisation rules.
Mr Coates said EPAs had important implications for development because they would overhaul the entire way in which trade relations were structured.
The EU claimed to be committed to using trade to promote development but Mr Coates warned of a potentially damaging impact on agriculture, fisheries, land rights, small business and local communities.
The Pacific has to negotiate an EPA by year's end as the WTO requires the phasing out of trade preferences at the start of 2008, and the progressive removal of trade barriers leading to reciprocal trade liberalisation.
"We are beginning to mobilise support in New Zealand because it's really important that the public [is] aware of how current negotiations are likely to affect the Pacific."
Mr Coates said the protest lei would be presented to Pacific trade ministers later in the year to show support, and to EU negotiators to request fair trade.
While current trade between Europe and the Pacific is minimal, the EPA is important as it would set the standard for future trade agreements.
It could trigger negotiations with Australia and New Zealand under another agreement called the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (Pacer).
Mr Coates said Pacific nations feared that Pacer would enable Australia and New Zealand to dominate Pacific trade even more than at present.
"[The Pacific nations] expect intense pressure to extend any concessions they give to the EU under the EPA to Australia and New Zealand under Pacer, with far more devastating consequences for tariff revenue and domestic business."
For those who find such Pacific politics too much to digest over the weekend, they can instead distract themselves on a "tropical island" complete with sand, palm trees, coconuts and bures.
It has been constructed by Air New Zealand, which trucked more than 15 cubic metres of sand to Western Springs.
Norm Thompson, group general manager short haul airlines, said Air New Zealand had a long and colourful history in the Pacific. Its first service to Fiji took off more than 50 years ago, followed shortly afterwards by the launch of the Coral Route.
