CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 237, 6 October 1944, Page 4

CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

MAORI HOUSING (To the Editor) Mr. C. <vR. Howell's letter succinctly describes the appalling housing conditions under which many thousands of our Maori people throughout New Zealand are contending against. This serious Maori social problem is accentuated by the definitely high birth rate. Hovels which no human beings—much less family groups—should live in are the result of official neglect of the various Departments whose duties embrace supervision of these matters. What has happened in the past cannot now be undone, and we must in this, as in all problems of sociology, go forward with a determination to give general Maori welfare our efficient attention. An absolute cessation of the acquisition cf native lands is pressingly essential— in fact, the acquisition of suitable areas owned by the Crown or otherwise, is needed, whereon to settle the unprovided for mass of Maori humanity. We will thus only be restoring to the native people what they should never have been denuded of—leaving the distressful position of the present time as the consequences. Actually, on the basis of security offered for finances provided for housing, farming, etc., much has been well and efficiently accomplished by a very capable staff in the Native Department, whose special duties are to see to such. But it is now necessary to extend those activities and provide the finances that a wider and more liberal provision be made for Maori welfare in housing and so on. To extend those activities in that way will only be meeting a responsibility that must be met—not as a policy of charity, but as an effort to ameliorate the present-day social evils effecting the Maori people, and due to misgovernment of the past. To solve these problems, the Native Department officers should be given all the elasticity of action that is essential, and be the first plank in native administration from now on. GEO. GRAHAM.