Government wants to unite faith and community leaders

Mr Mitchell spoke to 200 ethnic community leaders from throughout the country on Saturday at a gathering in South Auckland. He said it is important that people in Aotearoa New Zealand did not let geopolitical tensions impact domestic social cohesion.

“I would like better ways to bring faith and community leaders together to build bridges and unite communities,” he said.

“The Ministry for Ethnic Communities is actively fostering social cohesion through community engagement and a faith dialogue, and targeted funding, and I’m committed to continuing these efforts and identifying further ways to strengthen ties between our communities.”

Mr Mitchell said issues such as harassment, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism had to be confronted directly.

Speaking about emergency responses, Mr Mitchell said that the support provided “often was not responsive to language, cultural or religious needs and important information in different languages was slow in getting to the people who needed it”.

He said he had asked the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to make sure the support role of ethnic communities was recognised and codified in the new emergency management legislation.

“NEMA have also told me that they’re close to completing a resource about what support is available and where to find it,” he said. “This resource could be distributed to communities and multiple languages as soon as an emergency happens, rather than taking days to develop and translate.”

Mr Mitchell used the South Auckland event to highlight the significant economic contribution made by New Zealand’s ethnic communities, which was estimated at $64 billion in 2021.

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Mark Mitchell unveils foreign interference resource tools (By Liu Chen/Radio New Zealand)