Labour leader ‘vote-catching’ on Maori land

Press, 19 April 1980, Page 23

Labour leader ‘vote-catching’ on Maori land

PA Masterton The Minister of Maori Affairs (Mr Couch) has castigated the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Rowling) for what he calls “vote-catching” on Maori land issues/ The policy chairman of the independent Maori movement Mana Motuhake (Mr Pat Hohepa) says the Labour Party’s new Maori policies miss the point, and have been outdated by recent events and legislation. Speaking to the National Party’s Wairarapa electorate executive in Carterton, Mr Couch said that most Maori land grievances would be settled long before any Labour government came to power. Mr Rowling’s promise that a Labour government would settle all Maori land grievances showed at least he had courage, said Mr Couch. “Most of the other fairly thin planks in his policy should be easy to implement because the Government is already carrying them out, not only in theory as in Labour Party policy but in practice. “National does not need to guarantee a Maori voice in its Cabinet — it has one already. National has marae subsidies; Maori Language Week; the Tu Tangata programme to

encourage the preservation and use of Maori language, culture and individ* ual tribal identity; marae housing, including kaumatua housing to bring elders back to their maraes; and improved and expanded programmes of trade, educational and, soon, business training. “The whole statement is plainly a vote-catching effort by the leader of a party which has so forfeited Maori confidence that its former Minister of Maori Affairs has resigned in disgust,” said Mr Couch. The member of Parliament for Northern Maori and Mana Motuhake candidate, Mr Matiu Rata, said the new policies missed the point, but anything that advanced the Maori people would get his vote in Parliament. However, the Maori people would have preferred instead a solid pronouncement by Labour that it would stand behind them in their struggle to achieve self-reliance, he said. Mr Rata said the Labour policies looked only at material matters, but he praised the party for doing what he hoped it would in focusing attention on Maoris. “That was the purpose of the exercise of my resigning from the Labour Party,” he said.