Lockwood Smith - Asians good with small hands, Pacific workers need to learn to shower

ONE NEWS: National MP Lockwood Smith regrets causing any offence after saying Asians have small hands that make them more productive and Pacific workers need to be taught to use toilets and showers.

However, he said his comments were taken out of context.

Dr Smith, National's immigration spokesman, was campaigning in Blenheim on Tuesday when he talked about expanding the Recognised Seasonal Employer Scheme (RSE) to include workers from Asia.

The RSE enables employers in horticulture and viticulture to recruit up to 5000 overseas workers a year to meet labour shortages.

Last year 78% of the 4681 workers were from Pacific Forum countries, which are prioritised under the scheme.

"There are some skills in the vineyard that some people are perhaps better at," Dr Smith was reported as saying.

"For example some of the pruning...some of the Asian workers have been more productive...because their hands are smaller."

Dr Smith says employers should not be solely responsible for teaching or funding training that prepared workers for life in New Zealand.

"Some of them are having to teach them things like how to use a toilet or shower...I don't think the employer should have to pay for that work."

"I think if this is partly an aid scheme, the Government has to address how it's involved in that."

In a statement Dr Smith said his remarks were taken out of context.

"My comments, regarding the extent to which employers, under the RSE scheme were being required to provide life skills training to RSE workers, were simply reporting the strong concerns expressed to me by many employers," he says.

"These reported concerns have been expressed in the media previously, and there has been strong advocacy for future changes to the scheme to deal with them.

"Presented in the way they were, I can see that my reported comments may have caused offence. I sincerely regret that because it certainly was not my intention."

National supported the RSE scheme and wanted to expand and improve it.

Victoria University senior lecturer and programme director for Samoan studies, Va'aomanu Pasifika, Galumalemana Alfred Hunkin told Radio New Zealand that while Dr Smith may have been repeating concerns put to him by others he was responsible for his own comments.

"He's the one that should have been very careful in repeating them particular at this time of the election campaign... I think there's quite a bit of stereotyping going on in that statement."

The academic said the comments were ridiculous and foolish.

"They bring back shades of the sorts of comments that happened in the 1970s (during the dawn raids under former National leader Rob Muldoon)."

The comments may make it difficult should Dr Smith be made immigration minister, he says.

"It doesn't help race relations in New Zealand."