Maori land transfer cost questioned by Minister

Press, 28 November 1984, Page 12

Maori land transfer cost questioned by Minister

PA Wellington The Minister of Lands, Mr Wetere, wants to know why the Lands and Survey Department decided that the Maori owners of Raglan’s golf course should pay $9OOO on the return of their land. A spokesman for the Minister said that Mr Wetere had met one of the owners, Mrs Eva Rickard, and had agreed to look into how the figure was assessed. Ministerial briefing papers released yesterday by the Maori Affairs Department and the Maori Trustee said that a rehearing in the Maori Land Court of an application to vest the land in its original owners was set down for June 5 this year, but had not yet been dealt with. The land was taken by proclamation in 1941 for an emergency airfield. After the war it was declared to be Crown land, vested in the Raglan County Council, and leased to the local golf club. It was later vested in the Crown, which had retained rents paid by the golf club to be passed on to the Maori owners when the land went back to them. The spokesman for the Minister said these rents coincidentally amounted to about $9OOO. Other land grievances outlined in the briefing papers included: • A claim for compensation for loss of rent, and land or money in exchange for unoccupied site licences on Maori land in the Hauraki goldfields acquired by Lands and Survey in 1977. The High Court held that the Maoris were not entitled to the improvements on the site licences. Negotiations were continuing between the Maori Land Court, the Minister of Lands, and the Maori owners. ; “A large measure of agreement has been reached, but it will be some time before a final settlement,” the papers said. 9 A claim by nine Maori tribes for the return of the Wanganui River was difficult because they asked for tribal rights to the waters rather than full ownership or navigational rights. The Government had declined the claim but there was still a proposal for special legislation to recognise the spiritual significance of the river. x?

© Negotiations between the Crown Law Office and a Waiaku farmer, Mr A. J. H. Bath, were well advanced on conflict over a 100-acre block the Government was willing to vest in the people named by the Maori Land Court as successors to Ihaia Te Manga, one of two persons originally granted the land. 9 At least two of four claims by the Ngai Tahu Trust Board on behalf of Otago Maoris over land and fishing rights could be the subject of a commission of inquiry. A petition made in 1979 had been before the Maori Affairs Select Committee for some time, the papers said. • At Motueka, negotiations without Crown Participation were being considered for the return to the Ngati Rarua people of land given to the Bishop of New Zealand in 1853. ® Government departments were having trouble agreeing on a claim by Waiwhetu people for 23

State houses to be vested in them in compensation for the wrongful vesting of 47 acrer (Te Whiti Park) in the Lower Hutt City Council. Not much progress had been made in negotiations since consideration by the Cabinet committee in May, 1982. © Negotiations over the Putauaki Mountain had been arrangeed between the Ngati Awa Trust Board and the mountain’s owner, Fletcher-Challenge. A hearing in the Maori Land Court to have the mountain set aside as a Maori reservation had been adjourned. © A call had been made for an inter-departmental committee to review the effect of energy developments in Taranaki on Maori fishing rights, the subject of an application to the Waitangi Tribunal. “Establishment of such a committee should probably now be imminent, but the terms of reference need careful attention,” said the papers.