Election 2020: Q&A with Greens candidate Lawrence Xu-Nan

Green Party candidate Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan immigrated from China with his parents in the 1990s. Settling in Pakuranga, Xu-Nan grew up in a diverse Auckland community. He attended the University of Auckland, and has a doctorate in Ancient History, specialising in Egyptology. It was the systemic issues he saw in tertiary education – a lack of funding and prioritising certain degrees over others – that spurred him to get involved with politics.

As a first-time candidate, he's standing for the Pakuranga electorate and took time out of campaigning to answer a few questions for the Asia Media Centre.   

What are you most passionate about campaigning for?

Education and immigration are the two areas that I'm most passionate about.  

Within that we're looking at tertiary education from both the staff and student side, because the prevailing narrative we see with government is they tend to talk about the student side – important but the staff side often gets neglected. 

Green Party candidate Lawrence Xu-Nan is standing in the Pakuranga electorate for the 2020 election.

In terms of the education side, it ties into immigration: firstly, with international education. It's something that I work in and care deeply for, and in terms of immigration particularly, we're looking at working with temporary migrants. As we can see, with the pandemic and the closing of our borders, it's become obvious that Aotearoa doesn't care about our temporary migrants. They've been basically shut out and these are the people who are on temporary visas, work visas, and student visas. 

From an international education perspective, we need stronger support from the government, particularly when it's a multibillion-dollar export. It’s kind of New Zealand's dirty little secret in international education: they want the student's money, but they don't want to put any effort into it. Something that will help is getting proper support from both NZQA and the Minister of Education.  

International students are often exploited in several ways, because of a lack of understanding of the system and the fact that there are certain eligibilities that they think they don't have. This is particularly when you're looking at employment relations. A lot of international students get exploited and there’s the same thing with people on work visas getting exploited by their employer. 

We're also looking at mental health: I always say that international students are incredibly brave. These are young people travelling far from their home country so something that could help them, and this is something that the Green Party is pushing for, is having that free counseling and mental health service for everyone under the age of 25.  

Dr Xu-Nan also pointed to the Green Party's Vision documents encompassing policies related to education and immigration 

What issues do you see Asian communities in New Zealand facing?  

With the Christchurch massacre, and now Covid-19, the fact is we can't confidently say we're not a racist country. What you often see as casual racism is now coming out as a more active form of racism towards not just Asian communities, but all migrant communities, our Pasifika community, and our indigenous Māori community.  

Systemic racism is something that we need to start addressing properly within Aotearoa and that will require all these communities to come together. 

One of the proverbs I've grown to love in Chinese is 'when the crane and clam fight, the fisherman wins’. Particularly for our newer generation, Asian migrants were often pitted against indigenous Māori communities, because of the fact that we get fed from a predominantly Pākehā media saying how bad the other community is, whereas none of us have been the cause of the systemic issues that we're currently seeing in this country. 

We need to address the root of the issue. 

That's an issue that is applicable in a broader sense, but within Asian communities another issue is lack of representation. 

Xu-Nan and a fellow teacher with their students at a Sports Day.

There is simply not enough Asian representation within all areas of industry, particularly at higher levels. 

Look at Parliament: Asians make up about 15 percent of the population. If you extend that to Parliament, we should have roughly 20 MPs of Asian descent but if you look at major parties from a top 10 perspective, very rarely will you see someone of Asian descent.  

Diversity is nothing without proper representation. Otherwise it's just tokenism. 

Another issue is our health sector is not migrant-friendly. It doesn't take into consideration cultural backgrounds. Using mental health as an example, it's not something talked about within the East Asian community.  

But the way you approach mental health within the Asian migrant population will be different from a predominantly Western community. 

Is there anything else you’d like to add? 

In an interview a couple of months ago, the interviewer said to me 'We're really trying to push people to vote, because I'm on a work visa, I'm not eligible. Whereas people who are eligible, they hold our lives in their hands.'  

That made me realise how invisible temporary migrants are in New Zealand. 

For major parties, much of the temporary migrant population is useless to them in terms of voting. But that's not how we think in the Green Party and that's certainly not how I think. So, my message would be for the migrant community, if you're eligible, please go out and vote. 

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. 

Banner image: Lawrence Xu-Nan (far right) with Lourdes Vano, Luke Wijohn, both Green Party candidates, and Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson.

- Asia Media Centre