Roger Norman Fowler: 12 September 1948 – 21 February 2026

Roger Fowler, an activist legend of social justice solidarity movements from Bastion Point to resisting apartheid and racist rugby tours and freedom for Palestine, has died after a long illness. He was 77.

Described by some as a “true Tāne Toa”, his protest warrior courage and his commitment to a bicultural and cross-cultural vision for Aotearoa New Zealand, was perhaps best represented by his “Songs of Struggle and Solidarity” vinyl album launched last year.

The first of 14 tracks on the album produced by Banana Boat Records, was “We Are All Palestinians”, which has become an anthem for the Gaza solidarity movement for the past 124 weeks of protest against the Israeli genocide.

Ironically, this was sung yet again by a group in Te Komititanga Square yesterday within hours of his death.

It was written by Fowler after the Viva Palestina solidarity convoy from London to Gaza in 2010.

Fowler led the Kia Ora Gaza team of six Kiwis who drove three of 135 aid-packed ambulances – funded by New Zealand donations — into the besieged enclave. This was followed later by two other land convoys and three Gaza Freedom Flotillas.

In April 2026, a massive new siege-breaking Sumud Flotilla to Gaza with 100 boats and carrying some 1000 activists is being planned.

Gaza solidarity rallies
In spite of failing health in recent months, Fowler was frequently seen at Gaza rallies, speaking and singing in his rousing voice.

Close comrade and friend, John Minto, co-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), paid tribute to his contribution in a statement today.

“Roger has been a legend of the solidarity movement for many decades as the founder and co-cordinator of Kia Ora Gaza which delivered aid to the besieged Gaza strip by land and by sea,” he said.

“He was a man of great integrity and character with passion for justice. He will remain a guiding light for the solidarity movement here.”

Co-chair Maher Nazzal presented Fowler an award for his contribution to Palestinian solidarity last September.

Another comrade, especially during Fowler’s activism in the 1960s and 1970s, Tony Fala, recalls his “dauntless courage, tireless optimism, boundless energy, and vast strategic capacity was profoundly inspiring.”

“Roger was one of the humblest and kindest people I have ever met. He could build coalitions and strengthen community bonds with ease. He sought what brought people together, not what kept them apart.

Belief in ordinary people
“He believed in ordinary people and possessed a deep, instinctive understanding of justice. He was strong yet carried no ego.”

Fala praised Fowler’s commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to Te Ao Māori community life, describing him as a “born oral historian”.

“He gave selflessly to every cause he committed himself to and would move mountains to achieve victory for the struggles he served.”

“We are all Palestinians.”                              Video: Banana Boat Records

In the weeks before his death, he and his whanau were working hard to complete a history of the socialist Ponsonby People’s Union, “Struggle and Solidarity”, due to be published soon. Fowler met his future wife, Dr Lyn Doherty (Ngati Porou and Ngāpuhi), then while they were activists campaigning to stop landlords evicting tenants.

Activist author Dean Parker once described Fowler as “the Great Helmsman of the legendary Ponsonby People’s Union, brave hero of so many struggles”.

Fowler had lived for almost four decades in Mangere East, a multicultural quarter of South Auckland.

He was manager of the Mangere East Community Learning Centre and an executive member of Out of School Care Network.

Impressive community tribute
In 1999, he was a recipient of the Queen’s Service Medal for his “services to community” and the people of Mangere East paid an impressive tribute to him with a daytime concert last November.

One of his best remembered local campaigns was the community coalition in 2010 that saved Mangere East’s Postshop.

A one-time bus driver, Fowler strongly campaigned for public transport.

He was also involved with amateur theatre for several decades, including Auckland Light Opera, “The Aunties” children’s theatre and Manukau Performing Arts.

Fowler was a founding member of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign in the 1970s and he was part of the anti-apartheid movement for 15 years.

In 1969, along with a large group of activists — including Alan Robson, Pat Bolster and Graeme Whimp — he opened the first Resistance Bookshop in Queen Street and he was co-director for a time.

During his lifelong protests, he was arrested and jailed four times and with colleagues he set up a free prison visiting service in 1972 for Paremoremo and Waikeria.

The last track on Fowler’s album is titled “The Final Song” but his music will be long remembered as the hallmark of the life of an extraordinary community and political activist.

• Roger Fowler’s life will be celebrated at Ngā Tapuwae Community Centre, 255 Buckland Road, Mangere, 10-2pm, Wednesday, February 25.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A former New Zealand prime minister, Dame Jenny Shipley, has warned the ACT Party is “inviting civil war” with its attempt to define the principles of the 1840 Te Tiriti o Waitangi in law.

The party’s controversial Treaty Principles Bill passed its first reading in Parliament on Thursday, voted for by ruling coalition members ACT, New Zealand First and National.

National has said its MPs will vote against it at the second reading, after only backing it through the first as part of the coalition agreement with ACT.

Voting on the bill was interrupted when Te Pāti Māori’s Hauraki Waikato MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke tore up a copy of the bill and launched into a haka, inspiring other opposition MPs and members of the public gallery to join in.

Dame Jenny, who led the National Party from 1997 until 2001 and was prime minister for two of those years, threw her support behind Maipi-Clarke.

“The Treaty, when it’s come under pressure from either side, our voices have been raised,” she told RNZ’s Saturday Morning.

“I was young enough to remember Bastion Point, and look, the Treaty has helped us navigate. When people have had to raise their voice, it’s brought us back to what it’s been — an enduring relationship where people then try to find their way forward.

“And I thought the voices of this week were completely and utterly appropriate, and whether they breach standing orders, I’ll put that aside.

“The voice of Māori, that reminds us that this was an agreement, a contract — and you do not rip up a contract and then just say, ‘Well, I’m happy to rewrite it on my terms, but you don’t count.’

“I would raise my voice. I’m proud that the National Party has said they will not be supporting this, because you cannot speak out of both sides of your mouth.

“And I think any voice that’s raised, and there are many people — pākeha and Māori who are not necessarily on this hikoi — who believe that a relationship is something you keep working at. You don’t just throw it in the bin and then try and rewrite it as it suits you.”

Her comments come after Prime Minister Christopher Luxon called the bill “simplistic” and “unhelpful”, and former Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson — who negotiated more settlements than any other — said letting it pass its first reading would do “great damage” to National’s relationship with Māori.

The Treaty Principles Bill reading vote.    Video: RNZ News

Dame Jenny said past attempts to codify Treaty principles in law had failed.

“While there have been principles leaked into individual statutes, we have never attempted to — in a formal sense — put principles in or over top of the Treaty as a collective. And I caution New Zealand — the minute you put the Treaty into a political framework in its totality, you are inviting civil war.

“I would fight against it. Māori have every reason to fight against it.

“This is a relationship we committed to where we would try and find a way to govern forward. We would respect each other’s land and interests rights, and we would try and be citizens together — and actually, we are making outstanding progress, and this sort of malicious, politically motivated, fundraising-motivated attempt to politicise the Treaty in a new way should raise people’s voices, because it is not in New Zealand’s immediate interest.

“And you people should be careful what they wish for. If people polarise, we will finish up in a dangerous position. The Treaty is a gift to us to invite us to work together. And look, we’ve been highly successful in doing that, despite the odd ruction on the way.”

She said New Zealand could be proud of the redress it had made to Māori, “where we accepted we had just made a terrible mess on stolen land and misused the undertakings of the Treaty, and we as a people have tried to put that right”.

“I just despise people who want to use a treasure — which is what the Treaty is to me — and use it as a political tool that drives people to the left or the right, as opposed to inform us from our history and let it deliver a future that is actually who we are as New Zealanders . . .  I condemn David Seymour for his using this, asking the public for money to fuel a campaign that I think really is going to divide New Zealand in a way that I haven’t lived through in my adult life. There’s been flashpoints, but I view this incredibly seriously.”

‘Equal enjoyment of the same fundamental human rights’
In response, David Seymour said the bill actually sought to “solve” the problem of “treating New Zealanders based on their ethnicity”.

“Te Pāti Māori acted in complete disregard for the democratic system of which they are a part during the first reading of the bill, causing disruption, and leading to suspension of the House.

“The Treaty Principles Bill commits to protecting the rights of everyone, including Māori, and upholding Treaty settlements. It commits to give equal enjoyment of the same fundamental human rights to every single New Zealander.

“The challenge for people who oppose this bill is to explain why they are so opposed to those basic principles.”

On Thursday, following the passing of the bill’s first reading, he said he was looking forward to seeing what New Zealanders had to say about it during the six-month select committee process.

“The select committee process will finally democratise the debate over the Treaty which has until this point been dominated by a small number of judges, senior public servants, academics, and politicians.

“Parliament introduced the concept of the Treaty principles into law in 1975 but did not define them. As a result, the courts and the Waitangi Tribunal have been able to develop principles that have been used to justify actions that are contrary to the principle of equal rights. Those actions include co-governance in the delivery of public services, ethnic quotas in public institutions, and consultation based on background.

“The principles of the Treaty are not going away. Either Parliament can define them, or the courts will continue to meddle in this area of critical political and constitutional importance.

“The purpose of the Treaty Principles Bill is for Parliament to define the principles of the Treaty, provide certainty and clarity, and promote a national conversation about their place in our constitutional arrangements.”

He said the bill in no way would alter or amend the Treaty itself.

“I believe all New Zealanders deserve tino rangatiratanga — the right to self-determination. That all human beings are alike in dignity. The Treaty Principles Bill would give all New Zealanders equality before the law, so that we can go forward as one people with one set of rights.”

The Hīkoi today was in Hastings, on its way to Wellington, where it is expected to arrive on Monday.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Joe Hawke — the prominent kaumātua and activist who led the long-running Takaparawhau occupation at Auckland’s Bastion Point in the late 1970s — has died, aged 82.

Born in Tāmaki Makaurau in 1940, Joseph Parata Hohepa Hawke of Ngāti Whātua ki Ōrākei, led his people in their efforts to reclaim their land and became a Member of Parliament.

He had been involved in land issues in his role as secretary of Te Matakite o Aotearoa, in the land march led by Dame Whina Cooper in 1975, before Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei walked onto their ancestral land on the Auckland waterfront in January 1977 and began an occupation that lasted 506 days.

He was among the 222 people arrested in May 1978 when police, backed by army personnel, ejected the protesters off their whenua.

In archival audio recorded during the protest, he exhibited his relentless commitment to the reclamation and return of whenua Māori — his people’s land — and for equality.

“We are landless in our own land, Takaparawha means a tremendous amount to our people. The struggle for the retention of this land is the most important struggle which our people have faced for many years. To lose this last bit of ground would be a death blow to the mana, to the honour and to the dignity of the Ngāti Whātua people,” Hawke said1977.

“We are prepared to go the whole way because legally we have the legal right to do it.”

In 1987, he took the Bastion Point claim to the Waitangi Tribunal and had the satisfaction of seeing the Tribunal rule in Ngāti Whātua’s favour] and the whenua being returned.

He was a pou for protests and demonstrations thereafter — a prominent pillar in Māori movements.

In the 1990s Hawke became a director of companies involved in Māori development, and in 1996 he entered Parliament as a Labour Party list MP, before retiring from politics in 2002.

In 2008, he became a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to Māori and the community.

Hawke’s tangi will be held at Ōrākei Marae this week. Wednesday marks the 44th anniversary of the Bastion Point eviction. His nehu will be on Thursday.

E te rangatira, moe mai rā.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

So the Parliament protest goes on, the first protest I can recall having absolutely no sympathy for. I’ve been on marches protesting lack of education funding, nuclear testing, abuse of GCSB [Government Communications Security Bureau] powers, the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] etc.

All of which I cared about, but this protesting against health measures – yeah nah.

People have been through a lot during this covid-19 pandemic; some have lost loved ones, and some have endured serious illness. We’ve all missed events or time with family and friends by following restrictions for the greater good.

But these people? No they don’t want to comply with mandate restrictions to help others, no they don’t want to do their bit for herd immunity like the other 95 percent

Sure a small number have suffered as a direct result of mandates although unless there is a genuine medical reason you can’t be vaccinated I have no sympathy, choices have consequences.

You’re entitled to not get vaccinated, despite your placards this isn’t a fascist state. But if you want to be able to do certain jobs then get vaccinated, it isn’t hard, it is well tested, the science is out on this one.

There is a false equivalence between “no jab no job” restrictions put in place to reduce the spread of a virus with the persecution of people based on race or sexual orientation. How ridiculous.

Heavy machinery regulations comparison
A better comparison is of someone being outraged at regulations where because you work with heavy machinery you have to pass a drug test to check you’re safe to do so for the benefit of others around you.

Even that falls down, you’re not a danger to others if you turn up to work on Monday having smoked a joint on Friday evening, but if you refuse to get vaccinated to perform a role where you come in to contact with vulnerable people, for example in a retirement village or on a hospital ward, you present an additional risk to others.

It may be a small risk but it is an additional risk that you are happy to impose on others for your “freedom”.

There is also the additional, and unnecessary, cost to the health system of people not being vaccinated — the hospitalisation rate of the unvaccinated versus those with at least two doses is many many times higher. If our health system becomes overwelmed leading to the need to increase restrictions ironically it will be disproportionately down to people who want to remain unrestricted by regulations.

Some suggest we could run parallel systems for the unvaccinated so the odd nurse or teacher who doesn’t want to get vaccinated can continue working. Our public services have limited resources, they are already under pressure, to think that we should run a parallel system for the 5 percent of people who choose not to be vaccinated is absurd.

In addition to those opposed to health measures there are people at the protest for many different causes. According to their placards they oppose Jeffrey Epstein — which seems a reasonable thing to do if a little weird to include in this protest, fluoridation, 1080, Three Waters, and support Groundswell, Trump etc

Some refer to “Jewcinda”, paint swastikas on statues and carry placards of the PM as “Dictator of the year” with a toothbrush mustache, or talking about Nuremburg trials. But those are just a few bad eggs, like the ones that threw, err eggs, at a child for wearing a mask.

Not wanting others to wear masks
Apparently their desire for freedom extends to not wanting others to be allowed to wear masks.

Yes many people are there simply to oppose health measures rather than support these other causes, but the nutjob quotient, the thug element, even allowing for media sensationalism, seems incredibly high. I note the local Iwi have called for an end to the abuse and the threats at the protest.

If Philip Arps or Kyle Chapman turned up at many protests they would be made very unwelcome to say the least. Seemingly this group is quite tolerant of them, tolerant of white supremacists. Nah — you’re supposed to be intolerant of fascists. Not protest alongside them and pretend you can’t see them.

I don’t know if the other protesters are intimidated by the far right elements that are there with them, or happy that they have a common enemy in the government and content to co-exist.

What is not plausible is any claim that says they are not aware of them, of the abuse and the death threats by those around them. I call BS.

The Speaker of the house, Trevor Mallard, playing repetitive songs and covid health messages to the protesters, has outraged some people — many of us think it is rather funny.

New Zealand has seen protests where people have really endured hardship for causes, be it Ihumātao, Bastion Point, the Springbok marches. Honestly the people outside Parliament have been there in the middle of summer, had some rain, probably don’t have enough toilets, and listened to some annoying music — its not much compared to getting battoned on Molesworth Street by the Red Squad.

No return to Red Squad
I would certainly not want to see a return to the approach of the Red Squad, but the police, as they have at other protests against covid health measures, have really lost credibility with the lack of action, at least against those intimidating people. The failure to tow, or at least clamp, illegally parked vehicles has become a joke.

The mandates will eventually be gone of course; the government has already acknowledged this. When they go it will be based upon health information, one would hope, and not a relatively small group of people protesting.

Not protesting, it should be noted, when these health measures were introduced a year ago when border workers became the first workers who had to be vaccinated in order to stop more spread into Aotearoa, but when the end is likely already in sight.

Barring of course the unforeseen, the unknowable, that protesters demands would have ignored.

I’ve been on protests of 10,000 people, and boy that feels like a big protest when you’re on it. These people though look to have maybe 400-500. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say there are a thousand protesters. That is still a very small number to be getting this level of media coverage, making demands the majority are opposed to, or to be claiming to speak on behalf of others.

Don’t claim to be standing up for my rights, put down the placard and stop holding the good folks of Wellington — who would like their city back — to ransom. As one old fellow interviewed on the news said: “Go home — and take a bath.”

These people do of course have the right to protest, not erect tents or park illegally mind you, but certainly to protest. I also have the right to think and say they’re a bunch of selfish idiots, a view I suspect is shared by a very large number of people.

Nick Rockel is a “Westie Leftie with five children, two dogs, and a wonderful wife”. He is the author of the Daily Read where this article was first published. It is republished here with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Late-morning light bathed the landscape in bold colors. It’s early summer here, and the sun was already very strong, broiling. It’s also the season in which the pohutukawa trees burst into crimson blossoms along the roadside.

The view from the heights of this Auckland suburb of Orakei is breathtaking, like almost every place in the beautiful country of New Zealand: an azure bay, endless green meadows, homes, boats and of course sheep.

Only a few skyscrapers spoil the horizon, on the other side of the bay.

The sound of birdsong sliced through the silence. An Australian magpie was perched on a structure atop a hill, singing a song unlike any I’d ever heard in my life. The landscape was equally inimitable. The colours of the magpie, black and white, blended with the black and white of the structure, which serves as a marker for ships at sea.

Soon another magpie arrived, and the two began singing to each other, a serenade for two magpies, a hypnotic duet, before flying away.

Unavoidably, Israeli poet Nathan Zach’s “A Second Bird” leaped to mind: “A bird of such wondrous beauty I shall never see again / Until the day I die.”

Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy’s message for New Zealanders. Video: PalestineHumanRights

Father of social welfare
On the slope below, close to the waterline, is the tomb of New Zealand’s 23rd prime minister, Michael Joseph Savage, with a large stone obelisk rising over it. Savage, who served as the country’s first-ever Labour prime minister, from 1935 to 1940, is considered to be the father of its social-welfare policy.

He was laid to rest here in 1940, at Bastion Point on the coast, a gesture of esteem for someone who became a beloved figure to his nation. “The New Zealander of the century,” The New Zealand Herald called him.

But the hill above the grave site of the adored premier is fraught with a more recent, different and painful history. Forty years ago, hundreds of people barricaded themselves here for 506 days. They were Māori from the Ngahi Whatua tribe, and were joined by white human-rights activists who came to show solidarity with them in what was called an “occupation” but was actually a liberation.

It was an indigenous display of protest and independence, revolving around ownership of the land on which we were now standing, above Bastion Point. The so-called occupation lasted from January 5, 1977, until May 25, 1978, when the protesters were evicted, ending 17 months of a determined civilian, nonviolent struggle.

Some 230 people were arrested during the eviction, but no one was hurt. The event became a milestone in New Zealand history.

A television report broadcast here on that May day when the occupiers were evacuated carries the voices and the images. On film, the site looks more like Woodstock than like Umm al-Hiran, the Bedouin town in the Negev where a villager and an Israeli policeman were killed last January.

In the footage, hundreds of unarmed New Zealand police and soldiers are seen quietly removing the demonstrators, who had camped here for almost a year and a half in order to restore the land to its Māori owners. No blood is shed, no violence erupts; there’s only singing and weeping.

Model of nonviolence
The activists later claimed that the police had orders to open fire at them, but that didn’t happen: The officers were unarmed throughout the eviction. The reporter likened the convoy of police vehicles arriving at the site to a military convoy in World War II, no less, but to Israeli eyes, which have seen violent evictions in the Negev and in the territories, the Bastion Point incident is a model of nonviolence and civil resistance.

The only fatality was little Joanne, a 5-year-old Māori girl who died in a blaze caused by a heating stove that the protesters on the hill lit on a cold winter night in one of the makeshift structures they lived in – tents, trailers and huts.

Near the place where she died, on the lower slope of the hill, stands a memorial to Joanne Hawke – a Māori sculpture and a commemorative sign that tells her story.

The Negev Bedouin have reason to be envious of the Māori achievements and of the solidarity that some of the white European population, known as Pakeha in the Māori language, have demonstrated for them. In the end, the land in question was returned to its Māori owners, even though they are not permitted to build on it.

Bastion Point is now the greenest hill in the vicinity of Auckland, a nature reserve and a national heritage site for the country’s indigenous people. Atop the hill today is a small Māori village with well-kept homes in a uniform style, among them the house of the leader of that protest 40 years ago, Joseph Hawke, the uncle of Joanne. He was a two-term Labour member of Parliament, serving until 2002, and is now a homebody. His son, Parata Hawke, told us the story of the hilltop protest his father led. He was a boy then, and thought his dad was taking him on a picnic.

The younger Hawke, a social activist who has nine daughters, is a handsome man in his fifties, head shaved with only a ponytail in the back, adorned with a traditional wooden ornament. Barefoot and wearing shorts, Parata Hawke first speaks in the Māori language before switching to English. His family’s original surname was Haka, but his father anglicised it, like many other Māori.

The television in the guest room in his parents’ home, where he’s now staying, is tuned to Al Jazeera in English. He serves his guests homemade bread with butter. A magnificent Māori singer, named Paitangi, with a tattooed chin, will accompany him in her powerful voice, at a solidarity rally with the Palestinian people (where I was speaking).

Collection of Māori weapons
Parata Hawke is active in that movement and is well informed about events in the Middle East. He has a collection of ancient Māori wooden weapons, including a 300-year-old spear, which he forbids strangers to touch.

Roger Fowler, who was active in New Zealand’s large-scale movement against the Vietnam War in the 1960s, was present during the entire “occupation”. He married his Māori bride, Lyn Doherty, on the hill in the midst of the protest. In recent years he’s been a vigorous and determined activist for Palestinian rights.

Last weekend he took part in a demonstration of hundreds of people outside the American consulate in the city, against the decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. When the Israeli tennis player Shahar Pe’er took part in a tournament in Auckland some years ago, Fowler threw a tennis ball onto the court in an attempt to disrupt the match.

He also took part in a raucous demonstration against the apartheid regime in South Africa when that country’s rugby team played at Eden Park, Auckland’s largest rugby stadium, in 1981. It was the South African team’s last game in New Zealand before the regime changed. And speaking of rugby – every match here begins with the haka, the Māori war dance.

About 750,000 residents of New Zealand are Māori, 17 percent of the population. In most realms of life, the Arab citizens of Israel, whose proportion within the population is roughly the same, can only envy them. There are no Māori ghettos, Māori are well integrated into society, mixed marriages are a matter of routine, and at Auckland’s international airport visitors are greeted by typical Māori artwork and murals. There are also five Māori universities in New Zealand.

Nevertheless, Parata Hawke says that his people are still in the midst of a battle for their land, their heritage and their national honour. It’s a war of attrition, he says.

“They stole our land and killed our people,” he explains, “and until the occupation of the hill, no one even talked about it.” For the Palestinians, he suggests nonviolent resistance. “If we take another route, we’ll lose.”

Elections defeat
The Māori Party sustained a defeat in the last election, in September, not managing to get even one seat at the House of Representatives, the country’s legislature, which, like Israel’s, has 120 members; most Māori vote Labour. But Winston Peters, the deputy prime minister and foreign minister in the new centre-left Labour-Green-NZ First government, is the son of a Māori father and a mother of Scottish origin.

The road to having an Arab foreign minister in Israel is still very long.

The foreign minister of New Zealand’s “big sister”, Australia, is not an aboriginal. Julie Bishop is white, industrious and ambitious. She receives the guest from Israel warmly and courteously in her office in the Parliament building in Canberra. She even plies the stranger who has come to meet her with gifts: stuffed kangaroo and koala bear toys.

Our conversation takes place off the record, but her position on the Palestinian issue wouldn’t shame any Israeli right-wing leader. It’s easy to see why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu felt so comfortable on his visit to Australia last February. Hard-right MK Bezalel Smotrich (Habayit Hayehudi) would feel equally at home here.

Australia’s Jewish lobby wields dramatic influence. Almost every new MP is invited on an “informational” trip to Israel, along with many journalists. And signs of the Israeli propaganda machine are hard to miss here.

Former Foreign Minister Bob Carr, who has changed his views since leaving office, also points to the large donations that Jewish activists make to the two big parties when explaining Australia’s one-sided approach.

Carr is one of the few politicians in Australia to have a balanced approach to Israel and the Palestinians, who is not a member of the Greens.

Coalition anomaly
Mark Coulton, deputy speaker of Australia’s House of Representatives, a member of the National Party that is part of the ruling centre-right coalition, is an anomaly here. He tells us that he returned a few months ago from a visit to the occupied territories – very different from what is seen on the Israeli information tours – and has since become one of the independent, exceptional voices in the House against the Israeli occupation.

Coulton, himself a farmer, was especially shocked by the attitude of the occupation authorities toward Palestinian agriculture. He won’t forget the farmers he met from the Qalqilyah area of the West Bank who can’t access their land because it’s on the wrong side of the security barrier, or the shortage of water they suffer – in contrast to the abundance of water in the Jewish settlements – and the butchered olive trees.

In Australia, in any event, the Israeli occupation can go on celebrating. Its only opponents, pretty much, are the Greens.

Beautiful Australia, with its beaches and its affable people, is occupied with other matters. A major furore erupted here recently when it emerged that some members of the House and the Senate hold dual citizenship, sometimes even without being aware of it. Now they have to resign.

On the margins of that storm there were also some who asked about the question of dual loyalty of Australia’s Jews, although that question did not come up for public debate. The Jewish establishment there can go on activating its effective, aggressive pro-Israel lobby without interruption. “Israel, right or wrong,” is its slogan, I’m told.

All of that is forgotten as though it’s air on Karekare Beach, about an hour’s drive from Auckland. The sand here is black with bits of glittering iron; the landscape is rocky and wild. This is where Jane Campion’s film The Piano, with its unforgettable landscapes, was filmed.

Now, in early summer, the beach is empty. Here, on the shores of the Tasman Sea, between Australia and New Zealand, opposite the cliff and the rocks, the waves and the black sand, almost everything is forgotten amid nature’s ravishing beauty.

Gideon Levy is a Haaretz columnist and a member of the newspaper’s editorial board. He joined Haaretz in 1982, and has won many awards. He recently visited Australia and New Zealand on a lecture tour.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz