Our mission of enriching Aotearoa with thriving, resilient and prosperous Pacific communities is brought to life through five key areas:

• Policy advice - providing expert policy advice to Ministers and partner agencies supporting the development of effective strategies and programmes targeted at Pacific communities
• Innovation - co-designing and delivering innovative programmes with our communities and identifying valuable policy, research and implementation insights
• Pacific knowledge and expertise - gathering intelligence on Pacific issues and opportunities and using this to inform our policy advice, enhance engagement practices with our Pacific communities, and influence decision making regarding Pacific peoples across government
• Communications and engagement - working with, and for, our Pacific communities to ensure Pacific stakeholders and audiences shape and have access to information and support available to them from the Ministry and other government agencies
• Partnerships and leadership - partnering with a wide range of organisations across the private and public sectors to identify and promote future Pacific leaders and Pacific success.

Through engagement with wider Pacific communities, four priority areas have been identified to achieve our vision.

Our current work programme priorities reflect these priorities outlined in The Ministry’s Pacific Aotearoa Lalanga Fou report, including:

• Thriving Pacific languages, cultures and identities
• Prosperous Pacific communities
• Resilient and healthy Pacific peoples
• Confident, thriving and resilient Pacific young people.

Our strategic direction aims to generate opportunities for Pacific peoples in New Zealand to prosper.

Due to an increasing diversity of our Pacific peoples in New Zealand and the flexibility with which we must operate, no one-size-fits-all approach or strategy will realise success. 

Our approach is about harnessing our relationships, knowledge and expertise – to better connect Pacific peoples and government.

By focusing our resources and interventions into areas that make the greatest difference and by working with others, using a partnership approach, and facilitating knowledge and expertise between groups, we can provide more value from the Government's investment.

The PERHL or the Policy, Evaluation, Research, Languages and Housing Unit provides high quality evidence-based advice, research, evaluation to inform and influence policy which improves the wellbeing of Pacific people in Aotearoa. 

PERHL has a leading role in influencing the strategic direction of MPP through its direct support and advice to Tautua, our executive leadership team.

The PERHL Unit oversees the Strategic Policy, Operational Policy and Housing, Research and Evaluation, and Languages teams at the Ministry: 

• The Policy team advise and influence decision making on key issues and opportunities to improve the medium to long-term wellbeing of Pacific people. 
• The Research and Evaluation team undertake Pacific relevant research and evaluation to provide evidence, data, insights, and knowledge to inform and influence All-of-Government policies.  
• The Languages team ensures the aspirations of our Pacific communities and families for their languages, cultures and identities are realised.  
• The Housing team advises, and influences outcomes related to the Pacific Housing Initiative, and the growing housing needs of Pacific people in New Zealand.  

Our Regional Partnerships is our community connections team that engages and builds relationships with our Pacific community and partner organisations across Aotearoa.  

The Regional Partnerships team captures what the community is thinking is saying and supports important Pacific stakeholder groups towards achieving Lalanga Fou goals from our Pacific churches, youth groups our LGBTQiA+, non-government organisations, women's groups, people with disabilities, community leaders and the arts, some of our priority groups. 

The team shares information to our community stakeholders on key findings from our community insight activities, Pacific focused policies, and initiatives.

Contact details for our regional offices

The government has committed to eliminating the gender pay gap within the public service and has made substantial progress so far. In 2018, public service agencies were asked to focus on the following actions and milestones:

1. Equal Pay
2. Flexible work by default
3. No bias or discrimination in remuneration systems and human resources practices
4. Gender balanced leadership

Our Journey 

The Ministry's February 2020 Gender Pay Gap Action Plan showed that the gender pay gap was favourable to women in most salary bands in 2018. Efforts to eliminate the small gender pay gap through reviewing salaries and more awareness of gender pay principles allowed MPP to close the pay gap between women and men, meeting its commitment to the government's pay gap elimination goals.

Analysis in 2020 showed no gender pay gap within the Ministry, with 71% of leadership roles at Tiers 2 and 3 held by Pacific/Māori women. At this time, there were 64 staff within the Ministry and included a highly diverse workforce, with representation from six Pacific Island nationalities and Māori.

Addressing the Gender Pay Principles has allowed MPP to set objectives to increase awareness of bias and discrimination. We have made great progress from 2018 through to 2020 in achieving these milestones. 

Ministry for Pacific Peoples' Gender Pay Gap Action Plan

Ministry for Pacific Peoples Kia Toipoto Action Plan 2021-24

Te Kawa Mataaho | Public Service Commission Kia Toipoto Public Service Pay Gaps Action Plan 2021-24