The answer is to promote citizenship

Stuff reports:

Senior ministers are emphatically rejecting claims from Māori, including actress Keisha Castle-Hughes, that Māori should be eligible for citizenship to Aotearoa New Zealand.

The Waitangi Tribunal held an urgent hearing into the issue of citizenship, with many overseas-born Māori saying it is unfair and unconstitutional that Māori are being denied citizenship to the country they whakapapa to.

I will be amazed if the Waitangi Tribunal doesn’t agree with the claimants, as they have long since left behind any pretence of not being an activist body. But they will be terribly wrong.

What Castle-Hughes and others are arguing for is literally two standards of citizenship – a superior one for those with a Maori ancestor and an inferior one for everyone else.

There is a case to be made that citizenship eligibility should be extended to having a NZ citizen as a grandparent, not just a parent. But that must apply for everyone.

But there is a larger issue – people eligible for NZ citizenship do not take it up. If Castle-Hughes had bothered to become a NZ citizen in the last 30 years, she would not have a problem now.

But to be fair to her, there is little reason to do so. NZ is almost unique in that we give permanent residents almost all the rights of citizens. This means many people living here never apply to become NZ citizens. I want them to do so. I think citizenship is vitally important to a country, and promotes unity. As many of our residents as possible should be citizens.

One change I advocate is that we should restrict voting in elections to NZ citizens (grandfathering in all current residents who are not citizens). This is common to almost all other developed countries. We should proactively promote citizenship through publicity campaigns.