The Free Palestine Party was presented at a solidarity rally at the weekend as the new political group contesting the New Zealand general election in November.

But the plea was “don’t vote for us” — instead, use the party as a platform pressure the government to honour its obligations under international law over Palestine.

Organised by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), the rally — staged on the 152nd consecutive week since Israel launched its genocide on the besieged Gaza enclave in October 2023 — activist Anna Lee “unofficially” explained the party’s stance.

• READ MORE: New Zealand’s Free Palestine Party aims to turn solidarity movement into political force
• Palestine Free From the River to the Sea Party
• Global March for Palestine

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In an interview with Türkiye’s Anadolu news agency in July, party leader Paul Hopkinson declared: “The Palestinian issue has disappeared from public space. We will make sure that the Palestinian issue is front and centre in this election.”

Formally registered as a NZ political party on August 5, Free Palestine states on its website that it is “committed to justice, international law, and a democratic state with equal rights for all citizens”.

“My understanding is we don’t want you to vote for the Palestine Free from the River to the Sea Party,” said Lee, a PSNA organiser and a party member.

“The aim is to change public opinion and put sustained parliamentary pressure on the New Zealand government to uphold its obligations under international law with respect to Palestine.”

The party is centred on the Nakba — “the catastrophe”, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine — as the historical root of the ongoing crisis, directly challenging Western narratives that deny or minimise Palestinian evictions.

Anna Lee outlined the party’s aims — building a broad, democratic party that unites supporters of Palestine from all traditions, allowing different ideas and perspectives to be discussed in an environment of tolerance and respect.

It also seeks to pressure the NZ government to support the prosecution of war crimes and genocide, uphold UN resolutions, and exercise its independent voice in international forums.

The idea is to build links in solidarity with all those resisting inequality and injustice around the world, recognising that Palestinian liberation is bound up with the broader struggle against imperialism.

Lee also stressed the party’s founding principles. The first two are as follows and the full list is here.

• A just peace in Palestine depends upon the return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland and the dismantling of the Zionist structure of the state of Israel, recognising that the further partitioning of Palestine in order to create the so-called Two State Solution would only lead to further injustice and suffering.
• Acceptance of the primacy of international law and the United Nations resolutions as the basis for the ending of military occupation and all forms of ethnic discrimination in Israel.

The PSNA invited nine political parties and independent candidates to its “Make genocide an election issue” rally and public forum last Saturday in Auckland.

However, none of the three government coalition parties responded, nor did the fast-growing Opportunities Party (TOP).

Four opposition parties — Free Palestine Party, Green Party, Labour Party, Te Pāti Māori, and Dr Timoti Te Moke (independent candidate for Māngere) — agreed to take part.

Free Palestine Party seeks electoral voice in New Zealand    Video: Anadolu

Their presentations were reported by Asia Pacific Report here.

PSNA’s Neil Scott summarised a few of the government’s “positive” steps:

• Condemned illegal settlements: The government has stated Israeli settlements in the West Bank violate international law
• Sanctioned 3 extremist settlers: Travel bans were imposed on Itamar Yehuda Levi, Harel David Libi, and Eliav Libi for violence and expanding illegal settlements
• Supported two-state solution: Officially backs a negotiated two-state outcome (but does not recognise Palestine?)
• Called for ceasefire: Peters has publicly called for an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian access to Gaza
• Voted for UN resolution: NZ voted for a UN resolution demanding Israel end its unlawful presence in occupied Palestinian territory within 12 months.

But Scott also read out a long list of NZ government “negatives”:

• The coalition government had the chance to recognise Palestine alongside Australia, the UK, and Canada — but it refused. The government said recognition was a matter of “when, not if,’ but then chose not to act.
• Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick’s bill to sanction Israel has been blocked by this coalition government — denied even a first reading.
• Does not support the South African government’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
• Refuses to ban NZ holiday visas for members of the IDF: ”New Zealand’s Working Holiday Scheme arrangement with Israel was agreed to in 2010 in the spirit of promoting closer cooperation between Israel and New Zealand. We are not looking to alter this arrangement currently.”
• PSNA raised concerns with Judith Collins in November 2024 re Rocket Lab complicity in the war on Gaza. She refused to investigate.
• New Zealand continues joint military drills with Israel under RIMPAC – NZDF sent the largest contingent in a decade to RIMPAC 2026, alongside Israel and US.
• Under current coalition Holocaust education passed to become part of the NZ curriculum.

“PSNA supports including Holocaust education in the compulsory curriculum,” said Scott.

“But this education must be delivered in the broader context of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the other components of customary international law.

“It is simply not appropriate for the curriculum to centre genocide of Europeans while bypassing the numerous genocides of people of colour throughout colonial history, including in Aotearoa New Zealand, and up to the present day.”

PSNA – along with other groups – is now organising its part in a major Hīkoi for Palestine: International Day of Action on October 10. New Zealand will be the first country in the world participating in this event for the people of Palestine.

There are some conversations a nation keeps postponing because they are uncomfortable. Changing Fiji’s flag is one of them.

We came close to having that conversation in 2015 and 2016. A nationwide design competition was launched, thousands of submissions poured in, opinions were fierce, and for a brief moment it felt as though Fiji was genuinely asking itself who it wanted to be. Then the conversation stalled.

After Fiji’s historic victory in rugby sevens at the 2016 Rio Olympics, the government announced that the flag would remain unchanged. Since then, the issue has largely disappeared from public debate.

• READ MORE: Two dates, one wound: What Girmit Day means for Fiji’s future
• Other Fiji flag reports

But postponing a conversation does not resolve it. If anything, it only leaves unfinished business for another generation. I believe that generation is ours.

I say this not because I dislike our current flag. Quite the opposite. Like millions of Fijians, I have watched it rise at schools, sporting events, military ceremonies and international competitions. I have sung the national anthem beneath it. I have seen athletes wrap themselves in it with tears streaming down their faces.

Those memories are real and meaningful. But memories belong to people, not pieces of cloth. Our love for Fiji does not live inside the Union Jack stitched into the corner of our flag. It lives in us.

The truth is simple. Fiji has been an independent nation since 1970 and a republic since 1987. For almost four decades we have chosen our own governments, written our own laws and determined our own future.

Someone else’s empire
Yet our national flag still carries the most recognisable symbol of the British Empire. I often ask myself a question that has never left me: If we truly believe we stand proudly as an independent republic, why does the first thing the world see on our flag belong to someone else’s empire?

For me, this question is deeply personal.

I am the descendant of girmitiya. My ancestors did not come to Fiji as tourists searching for opportunity. They came under the indenture system established by the British colonial administration after the abolition of slavery.

Between 1879 and 1916, more than 60,000 Indians were transported to Fiji under contracts that promised hope, but too often delivered exploitation, broken families, harsh labour and lives shaped by extraordinary sacrifice.

Many never saw India again. They built roads, cleared fields, harvested sugar cane and helped lay the foundations of the country we now call home. Their suffering was not an accident of history. It happened under the authority of the very empire represented by the Union Jack.

Every Girmit Day, May 14, Fiji rightly remembers those sacrifices. We honour resilience. We celebrate survival. We tell our children that our ancestors endured unimaginable hardship so future generations could stand taller than they ever could.

Yet we continue to fly a flag that still carries the emblem of the colonial power responsible for creating that very system. I have struggled to reconcile those two truths. Pride and pain cannot occupy the same symbol forever.

History never felt distant
Growing up in Kashmir, Lautoka, history never felt distant. It lived in conversations with elders, in temple gatherings, in stories shared over cups of tea, in the Fiji Hindi that flowed so naturally through our home.

I did not fully understand the scale of girmit as a child, but I understood sacrifice. I saw grandparents who measured wealth not by money, but by education. I watched parents work tirelessly because they believed their children deserved opportunities they never had.

Looking back now, I realise those values were inherited from people who had every reason to give up, but refused to. When I see the Union Jack on our flag today, I do not think first of constitutional history or Commonwealth ties. I think of those ancestors. I think of what they endured. And I wonder why their descendants should still carry the symbol of the empire that once denied them dignity.

Some people argue that the Union Jack no longer represents colonialism. They say it now represents history, friendship or tradition. I understand that perspective.

History cannot and should not be erased. Britain’s influence on Fiji is undeniable. Our legal institutions, parliamentary traditions and many aspects of our public administration evolved through that relationship. The Commonwealth continues to play an important role in Fiji’s international engagement.

None of that changes because a flag changes. Britain remains part of our history whether or not its flag appears on ours.

That is precisely the point.

Not about rejecting history
Changing the flag is not about rejecting history. It is about placing history where it belongs — in our museums, our classrooms, our books and our collective memory — not at the centre of our national identity. Mature nations are capable of acknowledging every chapter of their past without allowing one chapter to define them forever.

My own life has only strengthened that belief. I was born in Fiji. I migrated to Auckland in December 2011. Since then I have lived and taught in New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and now Japan. Every country has reminded me of where I come from.

Whenever someone asks me where home is, my answer is still Fiji. Not because I have lived there continuously, but because identity is built from childhood. It is the taste of chicken chop suey from Don’s Restaurant after family outings. It is buying futaa barfi for 20 cents. It is listening to Navtarang’s Top 100 Countdown while polishing black Bata school shoes.

It is Children’s Park in Lautoka, Ram Samy Reddy Rd, laughter with cousins, temple bells, tropical rain and neighbours who somehow knew everyone else’s business. None of those memories have anything to do with an empire. They belong entirely to Fiji.

Our flag should too.

I also reject the false choice that often dominates this conversation. Supporting a new flag does not mean disrespecting those who served beneath the current one. Soldiers who defended peacekeeping missions, athletes who won Olympic gold, teachers who stood before classrooms, nurses who cared for patients and ordinary citizens who loved Fiji under this flag deserve nothing, but gratitude.

Their achievements are not diminished because a future generation chooses a different symbol. The courage belonged to them, not to the fabric they carried.

Learn from the mistakes
If we do revisit this conversation, we must also learn from the mistakes of the last attempt. Too many people felt the process became about selecting attractive designs rather than discussing national identity.

A flag cannot simply be beautiful. It must be meaningful. It should emerge from genuine consultation with iTaukei communities, Indo-Fijians, Rotumans, Banabans, descendants of Pacific Islanders, Chinese-Fijians and every community that calls Fiji home.

It must reflect our ocean, our resilience, our cultures, our environment and our future — not because we want to erase difference, but because we want every child to recognise themselves within it.

I often think about the children I teach. One of the greatest privileges of being an educator is watching young people ask questions adults are often afraid to ask. They understand instinctively that symbols matter. School emblems matter. Family names matter.

National flags matter. They tell stories before anyone speaks a word. What story do we want Fiji’s flag to tell the next generation? That we are still defined by colonial inheritance? Or that we honour our history while confidently writing the next chapter ourselves?

Some will accuse people like me of reopening old wounds. I would argue the opposite. Healing begins when we acknowledge why certain symbols continue to hurt. As the descendant of indentured labourers, I cannot look at the Union Jack without remembering the empire that uprooted my ancestors from India and placed them into a system built on coercion and exploitation.

That history shaped my family. It shaped my language. It shaped my existence. I refuse to pretend that symbol is emotionally neutral simply because time has passed.

Fiji bigger than powers
Fiji has always been bigger than the powers that once ruled it. Bigger than coups. Bigger than politics. Bigger than race. Bigger than the labels that have too often divided us. We are the children of chiefs and farmers, of girmitiya and sailors, of island communities stretching across hundreds of islands, of people who chose Fiji and people whose ancestors had no choice.

Somehow, through hardship and hope, we built one nation together.

Our flag should finally reflect that truth.

Changing it will not solve poverty. It will not lower food prices, improve schools overnight or fix every political disagreement. Symbols alone never transform nations. But symbols tell nations who they believe themselves to be. After nearly 40 years as a republic, Fiji has earned the right to carry a flag that speaks first and foremost of itself.

Not because we reject our past.

But because we are finally confident enough to stand on our own.

Ashneel Jaynesh Prasad is a Fiji-born New Zealand citizen working as a teacher in Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, Japan. This article was first published by The Fiji Times and is republished with permission.

By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist, and Scott Waide, RNZ Pacific PNG correspondent

As women and children seek hope of a future without tribal fighting, the cycle of killing continues in Papua New Guinea’s remote Highlands.

Tribal warfare dating back generations is being said to show no signs of easing and considered a complicated issue due to PNG’s complex colonial history.

Following the recent massacre of more than 70 people, community leaders in Wabag held mediation talks in an effort to draw up a permanent solution on Tuesday, with formal peace negotiations set down for yesterday between the warring factions.

• READ MORE: Other tribal warfare reports

A woman, who walked 20 hours on foot with seven children to flee the violence in the remote highlands, was at the meeting and told RNZ Pacific she wants the fighting to stop so she can return home.

In 2019, the then police minister said killings of more than two dozen women and children “changed everything”.

But a tribesman, who has asked to remain anonymous, told RNZ Pacific the only thing that had changed was it was easier to get guns.

Multiple sources have told RNZ Pacific the government appears to be powerless in such remote areas, saying police and security forces are sent in by the government when conflict breaks out, there is a temporary pause to the fighting, then the forces leave, and the fighting starts again.

There are also concerns about a lack of political will at the national level to enforce the law using police and military due to tribal and political allegiances of local MPs, as recommendations made decades ago by former PNG Defence Force commander Major-General Jerry Singirok are yet to be fully implemented.

While the government, police and community groups look at peaceful solutions, mercenaries are collecting munitions for the next retaliatory fight, multiple sources on the ground, including a mercenary, told us.

Killing pays
After “Bloody Sunday”, which left dozens dead in revenge killings, the men with guns were out of bullets.

Tribal fighting in Papua New Gunea’s Enga Province reached boiling point on February 18, fuelled by a long-standing feud between different clans, which resulted in a mass massacre.

The tribesman who spoke to RNZ Pacific said they did not want to fight anymore but believed there was no other option when someone from the “enemy” turned up on their land wanting to burn down their village.

“Prime Minister [James Marape] — we want development in our villages,” he said, speaking from a remote area in the Highlands after his village was burnt to the ground.

There is no employment, no infrastructure, no support, he said, adding that those were the things that would keep people busy and away from engaging in tribal conflict.

At the moment killing people paid, he said.

‘Hundreds of lives lost’
“Businessmen, leaders and educated elites are supplying guns, bullets and financing the engagement of gunmen,” Wapenamanda Open MP Miki Kaeok said.

The MP is worried about the influence of money and guns, saying they have taken over people’s lives especially with the increase in engagement of local mercenaries and availability of military issued firearms.

“Hundreds of lives have been lost. Properties worth millions of kina have been ransacked and destroyed. I don’t want this to continue. It must stop now,” Kaeok pleaded.

Meanwhile, men in the Highlands are paid anything between K3000 (NZ$1300) to K10,000 (NZ$4,400) to kill, the tribesman claimed during the interview.

Then, he called over one of the men involved in that fight, an alleged killer, to join the video interview.

“Um this is the hire man,” he introduced him. “If they put K2000 (NZ$880) for him and say go burn down this village — he goes in groups — they clear the village, they give him money and he goes to his village . . . ”

The “hire man”, standing slouched over holding a machete, looked at the camera and claimed 64 people were killed on one side and eight on another pushing the total death toll to more than 70.

Wabag police told RNZ Pacific on Tuesday that 63 bodies had been recovered so far.

“A lot of people died,” an inspector from Wabag told RNZ Pacific.

The killings have not stopped there; a video has been circulating on social media platforms of what appears to be a young boy pleading for his life before he was killed.

The video, seen by RNZ Pacific, shows the child being hit by a machete until he falls to the ground.

The man who allegedly carried out the brutality was introduced to RNZ Pacific by the tribesman via video chat.

“They recognise that this person was an enemy,” the tribesman — translating for the killer, who was standing in a line with other men holding machetes — told RNZ Pacific.

“This small guy (referring to the dead child) came out of the bush to save his life. But he ended up in the hands of enemies.

“And then they chopped him with a bush knife and he was dead.”

“In revenge, he killed that small boy” because the killer’s three family members were killed about five months ago.

Asked whether they were saddened that children have died in the violence, the killer said: “No one can spare their lives because he was included in the fight and he’s coming as a warrior in order to kill people,” our source translated.

Killing people — “that’s the only way”, they said.

He said that while fighting had been going on most of his life, military style weapons had only been in the mix for the last decade or so.

He said getting a gun was relatively easy and all they had to do was wait in the bush for five days near the border with Indonesia.

“We are using high-powered rifle guns that we are getting exported from West Papuans.”

He added the change from tribe-on-tribe to clan-to-clan fighting has exacerbated the issue, with a larger number of people involved in any one incident.

Mediation underway
A Wapenamanda community leader in Enga Province Aquila Kunza said mediation was underway between the warring factions in the remote Highlands to prevent further violence.

“The policemen are facilitating and meditating the peace mediation and they are listening,” Kunza said.

Revenge killings had been ongoing for years and there was no sign of gunmen stopping anytime soon, Kunza said.

“This fight has lasted about four years now and I know it will continue. It occurs intermittently, it comes and goes,” he said.

“When there’s somebody around (such as the military), they go into hiding, when the army is gone because the government cannot support them anymore, the fighting erupts again.”

Kunza has been housing women and children who fled the violence and after years of violence and watching police come and go, he is calling for a community-led approach.

At a large community gathering in Wabag the main town of Enga on Tuesday people voiced their concerns.

“The government must be prepared to give money to every family [impacted] and assist them to resettle back to their villages to make new gardens to build new houses,” Kunza said.

He said formal peace negotiations are taking place today as residents from across the Enga Province are travelling to Wabag today for peace talks between the warring factions.

‘Value life’
Many Engans have lamented that the traditional rules of war have been ignored as children have not been spared in the conflict and societal norms that governed their society have been broken.

A woman who was kidnapped last year in Hela in the Bosavi region — a different area to where the recent massacre took place — and held for ransom said PNG was on the verge of being a failed state.

“I’ve gone through this,” Cathy Alex told RNZ Pacific.

“People told us who gave them their guns in Hela, people told us who supplied them munitions. People told us the solutions. People told us why tribal fights started, why violence is happening,” Alex shared.

She said they managed to find out that killers got paid K2000 (NZ$880) for killing one person, that was in 2017.

“For a property that’s worth K200/300,000 [up to NZ$130,000] that’s destroyed, the full amount goes to the person who caused the tribal fight,” she said.

“How can you not value the life of a person?”

Government help
With retaliations continuing the “hire man” who claims to have killed more than 20 people from warring tribes, said he is staring down death.

“He would have to die on his land because…when they come they will fight…we have to shoot in order to protect my village,” the tribesman explained.

“He said he’s not scared about it. He is not afraid of dying. He got a gun in order to shoot, they shoot him, and that’s finished.”

“He’s really worried about his village not to burn down.”

The tribesman said that without government committing financial support for infrastructure, jobs and community initiatives the fighting will continue.

He also wants to see a drastic change in police numbers and a more permanent military presence on the ground.

“We don’t have a proper government to protect us from enemies in order to protect ourselves, our houses . . . and to protect assets we have to buy guns in order to protect them.”

Parliament urged to act
Last week, the PNG Parliament discussed the issue of gun violence.

East Sepik Governor Allan Bird, who is on the opposition benches, has called on the government “to respond”.

He said the “terrorists in the upper Highlands” needed their guns to be stripped from them.

“We are a government for goodness sake — let’s act like one,” Bird said.

Deputy Prime Minister John Rosso agreed with Bird’s sentiments and acknowledged that the situation was serious.

He called on the whole of Parliament to unite to fix the issue together.

RNZ Pacific has contacted the PM Marape’s office for comment with no response yet.

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

By David Robie

One of the champions of the South Pacific’s nuclear-free and independence campaigners, Oscar Manutahi Temaru, is expected to make a guest appearance tomorrow in a retrospective webinar about the impact of the Rainbow Warrior bombing 35 years on.

The webinar, titled “The Rainbow Warrior Incident: 35 Years On”, features several protagonists, analysts and authors speaking about the sabotage of the Greenpeace flagship by French secret agents in Auckland harbour on 10 July 1985.

Temaru, five times president of “French” Polynesia and the anti-nuclear mayor of Faa’a, the airport city on the fringe of the capital of Pape’ete, is likely to make some challenging comments.

READ MORE: French nuclear tests ‘showered vast area of Polynesia with radioactivity’

• From nuclear refugees to climate justice – the Rainbow Warrior legacy

Four years ago, he told Tagata Pasifika’s John Pulu that a half-century legacy of nuclear tests in Polynesia was to blame for the at times toxic relationship with the coloniser.

“The French government, through its President, General De Gaulle decided to use our country for the French nuclear testing,” Temaru said.

“They came down here with their private enterprises – the French army – and they have dismantled the whole life of this country. They pulled it upside down.”

Temaru knew what to expect, as during the Algerian War of Independence he was in the French navy and he was deployed to the conflict at a time when France was conducting its early nuclear tests in the Sahara Desert.

Early years of devastation
Temaru was later a customs officer in Tahiti and saw at first hand the early years of the devastation of the military machine in Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls in the southern Gambier islands as they became the new host for French nuclear tests.

France conducted 193 nuclear tests – 46 in the atmosphere – in the 30 years between 1966 and 1996, but the legacy of the testing was still felt for 50 years with the medical and environmental consequences and lawsuits continuing to this day.

Temaru’s rallying cry has been to seek independence from France.

With a Cook Islands mother and Tahitian father and having worked on school holidays in freezing works in Auckland, he has long had a strong affinity with the “independent” nations of the Pacific and aspires to Tahiti one day becoming a full member of the Pacific Islands Forum.

Thanks to strong support of several Pacific nations and the Non-Aligned Movement, the UN General Assembly voted on 17 May 2013 to put the country back on the UN list of non-self-governing territories.

Since then he has been a marked man for vindictive elements in the French establishment who see it is payback time.

Last month, he was on a hunger strike over his treatment by the French judiciary. A prosecutor has seized his personal savings of US$100,000, in an act described as illegal by his defence lawyers, in a case which he is being accused of political “undue influence”.

‘Scandalous’ legal action
One of the two Tahitian politicians in the National Assembly in Paris, Moetai Brotherson, branded the action as “scandalous”, claiming prosecutor Herve Leroy had exceeded his powers.

The judicial controversy is over the local pro-independence station Radio Tefana which the prosecution claim is benefitting his pro-independence party Tavini Huiraata (People’s Servant Party), founded in 1977.

“As a Mangarevian, I see Oscar Temaru as our only voice for indigenous sovereignty and it starts – as he has said so many times – by making the French accountable for what they have done,” says Ena Manuireva, an Auckland-based Tahitian researcher studying the loss of cultural identity among his Mangarevan community, its origin and impact.

“Temaru has has always fought the same fight – we, the local population, must be the masters of our own destiny. The French coloniser needs to leave if they don’t want to give us independence.”

Manuireva is one of the speakers at the webinar tomorrow, hosted by Canada’s Simon Fraser University of Vancouver with support by Massey University and the University of Auckland is part of a “France and Beyond” joint conference of the Society for French Historical Studies and George Rudé seminar on French history and civilisation.

A doctoral candidate at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), Manuireva was born in Mangareva (Gambier), the smallest archipelago in Ma’ohi Nui (French Polynesia) in 1967. He left the island after the first nuclear test on July 2, 1966.

Nuclear panel speakers
Moderator is Dr Roxanne Panchasi, an associate professor at Simon Fraser University who specialises in 20th and 21st century France and its empire. She is the author of Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France between the Wars and her recent research has focused on French nuclear weapons and testing since 1945.

Also featured on the panel are:

Stephanie Mills, who is currently director of campaigns at NZEI Te Riu Roa, New Zealand’s largest education union. She worked in the 1990s as Greenpeace’s Pacific nuclear test ban campaigner until France declared an end to testing in 1995.

Dr Rebecca Priestley is associate professor at the Centre for Science in Society at Victoria University in Wellington. She is the author of several publications on science communication with an emphasis on climate change and is the author of Mad on Radium: New Zealand in the Atomic Age.

Dr David Robie is professor of Pacific journalism and communication studies and director of the Pacific Media Centre-Te Amokura at AUT. As a journalist, he has reported on post-colonial coups, indigenous struggles for independence and environmental issues.

He was on board the campaign ship in the weeks leading up to the bombing and has written several Pacific books, including Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior.

• More information about the webinar, 9am on Thursday, July 30, on Zoom.

One of New Zealand’s best-selling and most-respected historians and social commentators, Professor Paul Moon, has been acknowledged for his contributions as a researcher, academic and teacher.

The AUT Excellence Awards recognise and celebrate excellence in the university’s community.

Professor Moon was awarded the top accolade – the AUT University Medal – this week for sustained and exceptional academic achievement, especially in Māori, Treaty of Waitangi-related issues and early New Zealand history.

The award at Auckland University of Technology comes as Te Ara Poutama’s Professor Moon prepares to launch a new online course, focusing on the Holocaust.

The paper is the first of its kind in New Zealand and will be delivered entirely online, enabling people to study from all over the world. It is anticipated that the course will be available next year.

Surveying the Holocaust, from its historic origins in European anti-Semitism, through to its implementation during the period of the Third Reich, the course will centre on the preconditions of the Holocaust in Europe, its subsequent implementation and scale, and recent historiographical issues relating to its enduring significance.

Students will have the opportunity to investigate in detail a specific case study relating to the Holocaust, and to examine the relevance of the Shoah in the contemporary world.

Interactive learning
There will be lecturer support, tutorials for students to participate in, interactive learning, regular feedback on students’ work, and a comprehensive range of resources. The technical aspects of the paper will be supported by AUT’s Centre for Learning and Teaching.

“Now, more than ever, it’s important to remember the uniqueness of the Holocaust, and to understand the mentality that led to it,” Professor Moon says.

Professor Moon also received the Teaching Innovation award. His innovative approach to increasing student engagement has resulted in a number of fully online papers focusing on New Zealand history.

These four papers have formed the basis of AUT’s minor in history.

In his 24 years at AUT, Professor Moon has built an international reputation in the field of New Zealand history.

His innovative approach to learning has led to the development of online history papers and delivery of history based treaty seminars, resulting in a new undergraduate history minor at AUT in 2016.

Professor Moon has published 26 books, including Encounters: The Creation of New Zealand, which was shortlisted for the international Ernest Scott Prize in History.

Biographies, Treaty claims
Other titles include This Horrid Practice: The Myth and Reality of Traditional Maori Cannibalism, A History of New Zealand in the Twentieth Century, a trilogy of volumes on the Tūhoe tohunga (expert) Hohepa Kereopa, as well as biographies of Governors Hobson, FitzRoy, and the Ngapuhi chief Hone Heke,

His works have been published by some of the biggest international publishers including Penguin, Random House and HarperCollins.

He has worked on several Treaty of Waitangi claims and with numerous government agencies on Treaty-related issues. He is one of only a few historians whose work has been cited favourably in Parliament by MPs.

“The award is recognition of the growing role of history as a discipline at AUT, and of the contribution of all the people involved in teaching the subject,” Professor Moon says.

• Professor Paul Moon’s page