MAORIS URGED TO LEARN TRADES

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27636, 18 April 1955, Page 12

MAORIS URGED TO LEARN TRADES

OPENING OF ROTORUA HOSTEL

ADDRESS BY MINISTER OF HOUSING

(New Zealand Press Association, AUCKLAND, April 17. A plea for more Maori boys to take up the skilled trades, especially carpentering, was made on Saturday by the Minister, of Labour and Housing (Mr W. Sullivan), when he officially .opened the new Maori apprentices’ hostel at Rotorua.

The hostel will be the only one of its kind, in New Zealand to be run by the Maori section of the National Council of Churches. Thirty Maori boys are in residence. Mr Sullivan said he hoped that the ihostel would prove as great a boon to ■the Maori race as those in Wellington ahd Auckland. The Government was now considering future expansion of the Maori boys’ hostel scheme. “In a young place like New Zealand, unlimited opportunities for skilled men,” said the Minister. “It. is up to us to supply this labour, instead of importing men from overseas.” Mr A. M. Linton, Mayor of Rotorua, said he wished the hostel would hold 300 boys, instead of 30 —and most of them carpenters to help with the development of the rapidly-growing town.

The Very Rev. J. G. Laughton said that one of the aims of the hostel was to give the boys an opportunity to join with the pakeha in a pattern of joint citizenship. “Todfiy there are no longer any closed doors to the Maori people,” he said. “The Maori was once a craftsman, with his traditional crafts, but now he must keep his reputation as an artist by learning new trades, as well as keeping up the old ones.” It was a disaster that so many Maoris were employed as unskilled workmen, Mr Laughton said, but it was by opening such hostels as the Rotorua one that the Maori people could overcome their handicap of ignorance, and not be hewers of wood and carriers of water for the pakeha. The hostel was dedicated by the Bishop of Aotearoa (the Rt. Rev. W. N. Panapa).