Oscar Kightley: Dawn Raids

Playwright Oscar Kightley sits down with Q+A's Jack Tame to talk about the 25th anniversary performance of his show Dawn Raids, and the place of Pasifika in New Zealand.

Kightley told Tame that when his play about the Dawn Raids was first staged 25 years ago, they weren’t talked about publicly by most New Zealanders.

“There was no attitude towards it. There was no one discussing it. There was no one feeling bad about it. There were no politicians."

Instead, it was something that mainly the Pacific community talked about, especially those from Samoa, Tonga and Fiji, he says.

"'Cause we were the ones who were deported. We just had to deal with it on our own as a bad memory that we just had to put to the past. And that's why I wanted to write it.”

While the Government’s apology last year brought more attention to the raids, Kightley, who was at the ceremony, argues the compensation for what had happened fell short.

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