Handling Of Maori Bill “Tactless”’

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31522, 9 November 1967, Page 26

Handling Of Maori Bill “Tactless”’

I New Zealand Press Association)

ROTORUA, November 8,

A former Maori Land Court judge today described the handling of the Maori Affairs Amendment Bill as “the worst exercise in race relations since Culloden.”

Judge B. Sheehan, of Rotorua, who retired in Gisborne last year after five years on the bench and 40 years in Maori affairs, said, that the haste with which the bill was being pushed through Parliament was a flagrant act of tactlessness. “If the bill has merit there is no reason why it cannot be adjourned for a year to allow compromise on the offending parts,” he said. “One aspect of the bill which causes concern to the Maoris is something which, to me. savours of compulsory aggregation of uneconomic units. “This was accomplished by persuasion in my time in the Gisborne district and I see I no reason why, with the correct liaison in the field, it can’t be accomplished without a pistol at a man’s head.” Judge Sheehan said he felt that hurrying the bill was a face-saving gesture on the part of the Government and one that would lose New Zealand many friends in the Pacific. Judge Sheehan said the correct thing to do was to establish a Royal commission to investigate land reform. | Another retired Maori Land i Court judge, Judge J. Harvey, | of Rotorua, associated himself with Judge Sheehan’s criticism of the handling of the I bill.