Maori loan row shows ‘huge under-financing’

Press, 5 January 1987, Page 2

Maori loan row shows ‘huge under-financing’

PA Wellington The Maori Affairs loan row has highlighted a huge under-financing problem in Maori affairs generally, Maori sources say. The head of Maori studies at Victoria University, Professor Hirini (Sid) Mead, and Mana Motuhakes deputy leader, Mr Amster Reedy, who is principal of Ngata Memorial College in Ruatoria, see the call for more money for the Department of Maori Affairs as a major result of the row. Professor Mead said Ma.oridom has found it necessary to look overseas for funds for Maori development because the department had been under-funded and fettered by successive governments. One of the direct results of this was the poor social

statistics now exhibited by sectors of Maori society. He said he believed that the Maori Affairs Department budget, which stood at $85.8 million in the last financial year and has been set at $111.9 million this year, should be doubled or trebled. “If the Government is not prepared to put the money in, obviously Maoridom is going to go abroad again searching for the funds,” Professor Mead said. “At the least, one of the developments we would want to see come out of this whole exercise (the loan affair) is an immediate increase in the budget of Maori Affairs,” Mr Reedy, speaking from his Gisborne home, said his Ngati Porou tribe was solidly in support of his brother, Dr Tamati Reedy, over the affair and felt that the row had exposed the fact that the

department’s budget was measly. An American Embassy spokesman in Wellington has described as “utter garbage” claims made by Mana Motuhake Party leader, Matiu Rata, about C.I.A. involvement in Maori Affairs. Mr Rata said on Wednesday that the Maori loan row could have arisen out of efforts by the United States Central Intelligence Agency and/ or France to destabilise -the New Zealand Government because of its antinuclear policy. United States Embassy public affairs counsellor, Mr Mike Gould, said that the claims were “absolute garbage.” “It is extremely unhelpful for a former member of the Government to make such an outrageous accusation,” Mr Gould said.