About Andre Afamasaga

Andre Afamasaga is humorous, fun-loving, and generous. His working style can be described as appreciative, congenial, diplomatic, energetic and expressive. He is idealistic, loyal and organised. He is family orientated and spiritual.

Andre is also a well-known face and advocate for human rights, inclusivity, and social cohesion (bridge building). Through his advocacy, he has appeared in media in Australia such as ABC, SBS and Sydney Morning Herald, and in New Zealand - 1News, RNZ, Breakfast, Stuff, and many more.

Andre is Samoan (villages: Afega, Fasito‘otai) and was born in Lower Hutt , Aotearoa New Zealand. For more than two decades, he has worked across government, community, youth, public health, education, and faith/religious sectors in Australia and New Zealand. He has been nominated for awards in acknowledgement of his community work, such as Australia Day Citizen of the Year, for his local council awards, and NSW Pacific Community Worker of the Year. His professional experience notably includes working at Te Kahui Tika Tangata | NZ Human Rights Commission, in roles such as a GM and a senior/lead advisor to the previous Chief Human Rights Commissioner Prof Paul Hunt, and former Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon. He helped lead anti-racism and social cohesion campaigns like Voice of Racism (Give Nothing to Racism), Racism is No Joke (COVID-based racism towards Asians) and Dial it Down. Andre’s last role was Group Manager of the Advice, Research, and Engagement teams. His team looked after human rights for SOGIESC, and Pacific peoples, as well as projects like the Pacific Pay Gap Inquiry, the Housing Inquiry, and many more.

He also had secondments at the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet working on Unite Against COVID-19, and Ministry of Justice. Before that, he was at Te Hiringa Hauora (Health Promotion Agency), where he worked on several award-winning public health awareness and behaviour change campaigns in public health for Pacific and Māori such as Rheumatic Fever, Stroke FAST and Quitline. This followed 11 years as a Pastor and Chaplain in Sydney and Wellington. A job he loved, but one he voluntarily resigned from to fully accept himself and his sexual orientation.

His belated self-acceptance sadly came after enduring 15+ years of conversion practices (or ‘conversion therapy’). Wanting to prevent others from self-hate and other harms, Andre subsequently began publicly advocating for Rainbow/LGBTIQ+ peoples to be accepted in religious and cultural settings. At the end of 2019, at a time of intense homophobic debate in the ‘Israel Folau saga’, he came out publicly as gay, in a viral opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald that was also published in The Age (Melbourne), Stuff (NZ), and the Samoa Observer. His lived experience of being a church Pastor, and surviving conversion practices would become invaluable to his human rights work. He worked on the team that developed the policy for the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Act before New Zealand’s Parliament passed it into law. And, he subsequently became the senior manager overseeing the establishment of the Human Rights Commission’s civil redress scheme.

This has been one of many full circle moments for Andre — where he was able to apply his lived experience insights of a human rights issue, to inform policy development and design systems and processes, that would eventually help improve services and minimise negative outcomes for lived experience groups.

In 2022, Stuff did a National Portrait Piece (feature story) on Andre that appeared in appears in their nine daily newspapers across Aotearoa. He appears in the media and speaks at conferences regularly, and a short documentary about his life will be broadcast on Australian TV in September 2024. See Media section for Andre’s advocacy and Speaking section for issues he offers keynotes on.

Now that he is no longer a public servant, he is recommencing his governance work. He has since taken up Board/Trustee positions for two national youth development/community organisations - Zeal, and another soon to be formalised.

Since 2021, he has been a Judge for the prestigious BEST Design Awards Social Good Category, and in 2024, he joined the Diversity Awards as a judge in the Respectful Culture category.