Maori Affairs ignored recommendations

Press, 26 November 1987, Page 8

Maori Affairs ignored recommendations

The Maori Affairs Department has been accused of disregarding specific recommendations of the Waitangi Tribunal. This follows a decision by the Tribunal on June 2 that the department appoint a negotiator in a dispute with the Evdns family over Crown leasehold land on Waiheke Island. Mr Evans had taken the dispute to the tribunal after he had got into difficulties with the department on his leasehold property. The department moved to repossess the land a week ago without a negotiator having, been appointed. A

The Government sent the tribunal’s decision to the Solicitor-General for an opinion and the Secretary of Maori Affairs, Dr Tamati Reedy, said the opinion had not yet been received. In the meantime, the property had had to be repossessed, said the department’s director of Land Development, Mr Peter Little. He said the lessee was significantly in arrears on mortgage payments. The property was infested with gorse and manuka, and no superphosphate had been spread for three years. Dr Reedy said the Board of Maori Affairs, as the agent dealing with this

land, had an obligation to maintain the public interest in it. However, the Opposition spokesman on Maori affairs, Mr Winston Peters (Nat., Tauranga), accused the department and the Government of ignoring the tribunal’s recommendations. “The department is persecuting a man with a good farming record, and doing so in defiance of what the tribunal recommended,” Mr Peters said. If this was its attitude to tribunal recommendations, then there was no point in the Waitangi Tribunal sitting or delib-