Editorial: Is it time for the Pasifika Festival to move to South Auckland?

The Pasifika Festival was started in 1992 at Western Springs Park to celebrate the city's growing Pacific community. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

Anyone who knows Auckland well or grew up in the city in the early 90s and 2000s will know of the Pasifika Festival.

If you’re of Pacific descent, it is likely that you have many a childhood memory of going to the festival with mum and dad, your siblings, cousins or mates every year - eating colourful snow cones, keke pua’a (pork buns) and walking around Western Springs Park checking out the different villages.

The much-loved festival celebrates its 32nd birthday this weekend - a long time for an event of its kind to be going on, still, and so strongly at that.

The story goes that former Herald journalist Roy Vaughan - yes, a palagi man - dreamed up the idea after being inspired during his time as the newspaper’s Pacific Affairs reporter.

He went on to work alongside Pacific community leaders and local authorities for almost a year organising the event. When that first festival opened at Western Springs Park, it attracted about 10,000 people from around the city and was dubbed a huge success.

It has since grown into the festival we know today - the biggest Pacific cultural festival of its kind in the world - and which regularly attracts up to 130,000 people each year.

The festival is now a fixed event on Auckland’s and Aotearoa’s events calendar and Western Springs is known to be its home. Those who live in and around Western Springs and Grey Lynn also know it as theirs.

But is it time Pasifika moved to a new home?

The crowd at the Pasifika Festival held at Hayman Park, in Manukau, in 2015. Photo / Michael Craig

Its name says it all - what it is about, who it is for and why it matters. It is about all things Pasifika, for Pacific peoples and to celebrate our cultures and showcase our uniqueness to others.

Auckland is known to be the Polynesian capital of the world, with just over 300,000 Pacific People calling the city home. Many of those people call South Auckland their home.

There have been calls for Pasifika to move to the Southside in previous years - particularly in 2015 after the event was forced to move away from the central city because of the Queensland fruit fly scare.

That year, Pasifika opened for the first time in the Southside - at Hayman Park, in Manukau. It was deemed a success and many locals started to ask whether it was better for Pasifika to stay in South Auckland, where the majority of the Pacific population live. It makes sense.

Many in the community argued that it would also help to boost morale and even the local economy; because other than the Auckland Secondary Schools’ PolyFest, there are not many major events of its kind that happen in South Auckland each year.

It reached the local councillors and was discussed at the local boards level. But the calls to have it moved permanently to the Southside fizzled away and nothing eventuated from those discussions.

As the festival continues to grow, maybe it is worth talking about again.