More than $2M lost by Maori trust board

Press, 24 September 1987, Page 5

More than $2M lost by Maori trust board

By

JANE ENGLAND,

Maori affairs reporter

The Ngai-Tahu Maori Trust Board has lost more than $2 million through staggered payments of compensation awarded in 1944.

The Waitangi Tribunal, on the finial day of the second hearing of the biggest land claim in New Zealand, heard the findings of a study by the professor of economics at the University of Waikato, Professor John Ward. The study related to the five million hectares of land in Canterbury purchased from the Ngai Tahu by the Crown’s land purchase commissioner, H. Tacy Kemp in 1848. In 1944, after almost a century of dispute, the Crown agreed to compensation of 1600,000 to be paid a an annual rate of $20,000 for 30 years. In 1974 the Government agreed to continue the annual payment of $20,000 in perpetuity. In a report presented before to the tribunal yesterday, Professor Ward said that the case study had not been done to discuss the “rights or wrongs” of compensation but to estimate the effects of inflation on the monetary compensation granted in 1944. In periods of inflation the real value of compensation was eroded so that the amount of goods or services to be purchased with the money lessened each year. By 1985 the dollar was worth less than 6c of its purchasing power in 1944. By 1986 the $20,000 being paid annually to the board had a purchasing power which was worth only $ll2B in 1944, the study said. The annual losses over the whole period from 1944 to 1986 revealed a cumulative loss of $2,759,200. Tribunal members will study the report, which may be covered in more detail at another hearing. A Christchurch historian, Mr Harry Evison, yesterday said in his evidence that a money payment was never considered as having satisfied the requirements of the Tready of Waitangi, which placed lands, forests and fisheries at the highest level of importance. The terms of the 1944 Settlement Act under which the Ngai Tahu were awarded the compensation focused on the "purchase” of the land instead of the subsequent breaches of the treaty by the Crown, Mr Evison said. Historically, the outcome was as if there had been no purchase, he said ... “the benefits anticipated by Ngai Tahu at the time of Kemp’s Purchase and described by Sir George Grey and Commissioner Kemp at the Royal Commission in 1879

and 1880 entirely vanished.” “But Ngai Tahu are still entitled to these benefits not merely by virtue of Kemp’s Purchase but by virtue of the Treaty of Waitangi.” The Waitangi Amendment Act, 1985, has given the Waitangi Tribunal jurisdiction to hear claims under the act, which date back to 1840. Through hundreds of pages of documentation, much of which had not been presented in public for 100 years, Mr Evison revealed that the Crown had embarked on a series of actions which deprived the Ngai Tahu of their rights under the treaty. “It is clear from the evidence given at the Smith-Naim Royal Commission (1879) that Ngai Tahu wished to retain all their mahinga kai (food resources), including their cultivations, also the additional lands needed for their land rotation system and additional reserves large enough to enable them and their descendants to enjoy the same standard of living as European settlers.” In 1886 a Royal Commissioner, Alexander Mackay, inquired into the question and reported that the only way for the Crown to fulfil its obligations to the Ngai Tahu would be to grant them additional and adequate lands. “He amphasised that adequate land was the only thing that could provide Ngai Tahu with a secure future and satisfy their Maori spirit.” Mackay had said that the Maori relationship to their land had been one of “earth-love” .... “they felt keenly the parting of their rights over the land of their ancestors.” Mackay recommended that in Kemp’s Block each man, woman, and child should be awarded 20 ha. This would have meant awarding an extra 52,894 ha in addition to the reserves they already had. He reported that the people actually held 6386 ha. For the Ngai Tahu as a whole he found that 44 per cent did not have any land, 46 per cent had insufficient land, and less than 10 per cent had “sufficient, the European subsistence level of 20 hectares or more. He found “terrible suffering and despair,” but in spite of this harrowing report the Crown delayed for 15 years before providing additional land. In 1906 the area of land recommended was provided under the South Island Landless Natives

Act But the quantity and location was largely useless for settlement. None of the land was in the Kemp’s Block area. “Most was located in remote, bush-clad areas of Western Southland and Stewart Island, incapable of supporting agriculture in the 20ha allotments,” Mr Evison said. “The Crown’s ‘final solution* was for the Impoversihed Ngai Tahu people of Canterbury and North Otago to leave their homes and relatives and exile themselves to the wilderness. Needless to say, few wished to do so.” Between 1893 and 1909, 66 estates totalling well over 150,000 ha were given for the settlement of “landless Europeans” at a cost of about $2 million. “But the Crown allocated none of it to Ngai Tahu. This was an act of bad faith.” Through the Canterbury Association Lands Settlement Act, the Crown in 1850 disposed of lands and mahinga kai which the Ngai Tahu had never agreed to part with, and had been guaranteed under the terms of the purchase. These were sold or leased by the Crown to third parties. The act stipulated that rural allotments be not less than 50 acres yet Ngai Tahu rural holdings at Moeraki had been restricted to an average 10 acres. “This was contrary to Article 111 of the Treaty of Waitangi, which would not allow such discrimination.” In 1851, the Crown again breached the treaty by failing to see that a claim on behalf of the Ngai Tahu was filed through a commission which had been appointed to hear; claims under transactions through the New Zealand Company, under which Kemp’s Block had beep purchased. Mr Evison presented evidence which showed that the Ngai Tahu had never been fairly represented at the Native Land Court in 1868. When the Ngai Tahu took a case to the Supreme Court to challenge the proceedings, Chief Judge Francis Fenton’s judgment was removed out of the jurisdiction of the courts for ever. "It is my submission that the Crown committed an act of fraud and failed in its duty under Article 111 of the treaty aS the ultimate protector of the Maori.”