By Tess Bartlett - Rethinking Crime and Punishment

increasingly heterogeneous population, particularly Asian immigration, which wasseen by some politicians as representing the threat of ‘foreign control’ (New ZealandParliament, 1996a: 10923).As detailed previously, by far the largest group of immigrants to New Zealand in thepost­war years had been British. By the late 1980s, however, the Asian populationwas the fastest growing group of immigrants to New Zealand (Statistics NewZealand, 1996a: 10). Between 1991 and 1996, for instance, numbers from NortheastAsia increased threefold, ‘accounting for over half the increase in the total number ofoverseas born’ (Statistics New Zealand, 1996a: 10). Over this period, there was alsoan increase in the number of New Zealand residents born in Southeast Asia (anincrease of 29.2 percent) and Southern Asia (an increase of 53.3 percent) (StatisticsNew Zealand, 1996a). As a result of the increasing Asian population, anti­Asiansentiments resurfaced revealing strongly entrenched racism (Bedford & Ho, 2008).For example, National Business Review polls conducted in 1992 revealed that overhalf the respondents believed there were too many Asian immigrants in New Zealand(cited in Kelsey, 1997). The high rate of individuals who held anti­Asian sentimentssuggests that the government, which had allowed these changes to take place, waslosing the trust of major sections of the New Zealand public.The rising popularity of the highly populist New Zealand First Party (a minorpolitical party that became increasingly significant, due to electoral reform that isdiscussed below), led by Winston Peters, with its anti­immigration andanti­establishment policies further highlighted a declining public faith in the leadingorganisations of government (Pratt, 2007). New Zealand First had chosen to be a keyplayer in the politicisation of immigration in the run up to the 1996 election (Trlin &Watts, 2004). Leading his party’s political campaign, Peters focused his attentionspecifically on Asian immigration with a series of speeches referring to the ‘Asianinvasion’ that had taken place in New Zealand, followed by a series of speechesentitled ‘Whose country is it anyway?’ (Mark, 2004: Headline). In the October 1996election, New Zealand First emerged as the third largest party, gaining support fromvoters who looked to populist leaders for salvation (Trlin & Watts, 2004) andindicative of the lack of trust citizens now had of the political establishment andorganisations of government.34