For about 40 years, the Fiji government had a scheme, whereby they sent two Indian boys and two Fijian boys to secondary school in New Zealand. Schools like Palmerston North Boys' High and Napier Boys' High.

My dad went to Wanganui Tech, which later became Wanganui Technical College.

And he went on to do medicine at Otago University, where he qualified in 1938.

Then there was a set of unusual circumstances.

He was working as house surgeon and then as registrar at the Auckland Hospital when war broke out on the 3rd of September, 1939.

He had finished his contract at Auckland Hospital at the end of August, and my mother (Tara Tillak) had come from Fiji.

They were engaged to be married and were going to return to Fiji.

But two things happened.

War broke out, and the man in charge of the A&E at Auckland Hospital died unexpectedly.

So the hospital superintendent asked my father to fill in as a replacement — which he agreed to. And he started the following week.

Then, in early 1940, something called "manpower regulations" came into force.

That meant that if you were doing important jobs like being in charge of a coalmine, or a transport service, or a hospital department, even in an acting capacity, you were locked in to that job.

My father didn't mind because it was good experience and Auckland Hospital was a great place to work as a doctor in the 1940s.

He remained there and, at the end of the war, he got a letter from the government, I think from Walter Nash, offering, because of his service, to make him a permanent resident.

And, to cut a long story short, he and my mother decided to accept the offer, partly because their children had started to arrive — and partly because they were performing a role a wee bit like voluntary vocational guidance advisors.

There were people coming to them for advice about what course they should do, or where they should live, or whether they should board.

That sort of thing.

By the end of the war, Fijian and Indian parents were sending their children to New Zealand, and my father was especially helpful because he could speak Fijian as well as Hindi.

So they accepted permanent residence and, a few years later, became New Zealand citizens.

I had become a New Zealand citizen by having been born here in 1944, at the Bethany Hospital in Dryden Street, Grey Lynn.

You have a neat name, although I guess it would've been mispronounced and butchered over the years. Would you be kind enough to tell us a little bit about that name?

Well, Anand means joy and Satyanand means truth.

So you could say that my name, Anand Satyanand, means through truth comes joy.

Of course, it's not a common name in New Zealand but, if you and I were in India today, particularly central India, we would come across repeats of it.

Not just Anand and Satyanand, but also Ananda and Satyananda.

You and your siblings grew up here at a time when there weren't so many people from Fiji here. Did being different mean you were subject to much prejudice?

Well, I was born and raised in Ponsonby, and then, by the time I became a teenager, we shifted to Glen Innes.

So I went to Richmond Road School Primary and then Sacred Heart College.

In both of those suburbs and those schools, there were some Maori and Pacific Island people, although at both schools I would be among less than half a dozen non-Europeans.

But, from an early age, my parents brought up myself and my brother Vijay to think that it was a positive thing to be different — and that we were in a country which rates people by the quality of their work, and that we ought never to feel uncomfortable or awkward about being a different colour and about coming from a different background.

When did you realise that, in some ways, Maori were being disadvantaged in New Zealand?

That's a good question.

I think I always knew that there were issues developing under the surface.

In Ponsonby, for example, there were people who'd come in the first wave of Pacific Island migrants to New Zealand, in the 1950s.

People with family names like Sanft and Kohlhase and Williams.

Then, in Glen Innes, where my father had become the local GP, we had Maori neighbours and friends on West Tamaki Road.

Our neighbours two along were Brownie Puriri and his wife and family.

Across the road from us was Bill Brown. And the local policeman was Alec Farmer.

So there were discussions, and as youngsters we heard our parents and friends talking about this matter of Maori needing to have a more equal footing in the country. Continue reading

• Image: ABC

In an interview with Mike Wesley-Smith on The Nation, Sir Anand Satyanand said he discussed the matter with the country's senior Anglican and Catholic bishops meeting together recently in Wellington.

"I raised with them the prospect that the churches could use their combined resources to mount a commission of their own and deal with issues in a tailor-made fashion so far as the churches are concerned."

Satyanand said there are obvious crossovers, and the two investigations could assist each other while maintaining confidentiality around specific cases.

"There could be capacity for exchange of not necessarily information, of course, because that would be confidential and we will have a big store on confidentiality.

"But there could be processes, there could be headings, there could be issues which the two commissions might share."

When asked if the Churches expressed any willingness to do this Satyanand said: "The churches have expressed a willingness to be engaged with, so there's a little time yet for all of this to work itself out.

"But in the end, I also have to stress, I think, that the decision about what this Royal Commission will do, whatever I recommend, at the other end, it will be a political decision made by the Cabinet, based on the information available to it."

Source

• Scoop
• newshub.co.nz
• Image: newshub.co.nz

On 26 March the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said she stood by her belief that the inquiry should look primarily into what happened to children while in the care of the state.

However, the Royal Commision does have the power to recommend changes to the draft terms of reference.

It is obliged to listen to submissions from those seeking to broaden the scope of the inquiry and to take them into account when making recommendations to parliament.

But last week in an interview on RNZ's Nine to Noon, the Commission's chairman, Sir Anand Satyanand, reiterated that the focus of inquiry is likely to be on those who were abused while in state care.

"The view so far is if it is restricted to the state as we've been seeking, there is a clarity of purpose and the ability to start in the middle of this year and look at people who were involved in those institutions at that time," he said.

"There may be spin-offs. There may be at the end of that a need to think of those other people, but there is clarity of purpose that makes this piece of work manageable within a relatively limited period of time."

Satyanand said that to take the inquiry beyond state institutions and to do something like that which was done in Australia would mean a much longer commission, much more time and much, much more money.

This is the first time a Royal Commission had asked for the public's feedback on terms of reference.

The legislation governing Royal Commissions passed in 2013 stipulates that parliament first draws up draft terms of reference.

The Royal commission then invites interested parties to make submissions on these draft terms of reference.

After hearing all the submissions, the Commission recommends definitive terms of reference to parliament for its approval.

It is parliament which makes the final decision.

Listen to the whole interview with Sir Anand Satyanand

Source

• radionz.co.nz
• nzherald.co.nz
• Inquiries Act 2013
• Image: thespinoff.co.nz: Marty Melville/Getty Images)

The Church hopes the appointment of the committee is a step that will lead it out of the impasse over questions involving in same gender relationships.

The committee met for the first time on 9 June to begin the task of clarifying the choices the church faces - and identifying the implications of those choices.

The commission was instituted by the Standing Committee of the General Synod, which resolved at its November 2011 meeting to ask a small group of eminent people "with ability, credibility and a commitment to work in prayerful collegiality" to convene to do this work.

The commission's task is to summarise the Biblical and theological work done by the church over 30 years on these matters - and to present a final report which outlines the various options, and suggests the implications of each of those options, to the 2014 General Synod.

The members of the commission are:

Sir Anand Satyanand, who was a lawyer, judge and ombudsman before he was chosen as New Zealand's 19th Governor General.

Ms Mele Tuilotolava, a Tongan New Zealander lawyer who is also involved in a wide range of health, legal and Pacific Island advocacy work.

Professor Paul Trebilco, head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Otago.

Justice Judith Potter, a High Court judge, and former president of both the Auckland District and New Zealand Law Societies.

Sir Tamati Reedy, an educationalist who was the founding Professor of the University of Waikato's School of Maori and Pacific Development, and who has also served as the head of the Maori Affairs Department.

Source

• Anglicantaonga
• Image: 3News