Case based on Crown’s alleged broken promise

Press, 22 September 1987, Page 7

Case based on Crown’s alleged broken promise

The Crown, through Kemp’s Purchase, failed to set aside the "thousands and thousands of acres” it promised to the Ngai Tahu people, said counsel for the claimants, Mr Paul Temm, Q.C., in his opening address at the second hearing yesterday.

“We have obtained evidence which shows Governor George Grey said that if ever a race deserved to be generously treated it was the Ngai Tahu,” Mr Temm said.

"There is no room for doubt, when a bargain was made by Kemp (Henry Tacy Kemp, the land purchase commissioner), the Ngai Tahu were promised something they never got.” The £2OOO price for Kemp’s Purchase took into account large areas of land, thousands of acres to be set aside for

the Ngai Tahu’s use. But this was never done, he said.

Mr Temm said the Ngai Tahu people had been like beggars receiving “a pittance in compensation” which even the Government had recognised was insufficient. Through the evidence of Mr Harry Evison, a historian, and Professor J. T. Ward, professor of economics at the University of Waikato, the breach of the Treaty of Waitangi and the inadequacies of the revised compensation of $20,000 a year would be shown, he said. : It would be shown that the annuity (now $20,000) granted to the Ngai-Tahu Trust Board in 1944 had by 1986 a purchasing power equivalent to only $ll2B in 1944, he said.

Mr Evison yesterday gave evidence of acts and

omissions by the Crown over transactions in the area known as Kemp’s Purchase, bounded on the north by the North Canterbury block, on the east by the sea coast excluding Banks Peninsula, on the west by the Arahura block, and on the south by the Otakou and Murihiku blocks.

By the time of the purchase the Ngai Tahu in the area had adopted European agriculture. But from 1850 the Crown wrongfully deprived the Ngai Tahu of their mahinga kai (food resources) which was necessary for them to continue successfully while developing their pastoral farming, he said.

“The Crown has so far failed to provide effective remedies for the wrongs suffered by Ngai Tahu from the breaches of the

By the time of Kemp’s Purchase in 1848 the official position of the Crown as regards Ngai Tahu land rights was to protect the Maoris and scrupulously observe the conditions of the treaty.

The Maoris were to retain not only their existing cultivations but ample additional blocks of land in places of their choice, he said.

“In place of the protectorate department a Native Secretary had been appointed ‘whose duty it was to watch over the interests of the natives.’ “It was acknowledged that the Maoris were entitled to ‘wild land’ for mahinga kai, in addition to ample lands for cultivation. The Governor was responsible for all land purchase negotiations.”