Cabinet agrees to new Maori claims scheme

Press, 5 December 1989, Page 3

Cabinet agrees to new Maori claims scheme

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

The Cabinet has agreed to a paper setting out a different way of dealing with Maori claims, but the scheme will not be known for the next few weeks.

Restructuring of Government machinery would be part of the change, the Prime Minister, Mr Palmer, said at a press conference after the Cabinet meeting yesterday.

A week earlier, Mr Palmer had announced that the Cabinet would consider a paper of Maori claims.

He had said the Government did not intend the Courts to have the final say on Maori issues, and would fix public confusion about the claims and whose job it was to resolve them. The public had been alarmed over Maori claims, with Maori expectation

and non-Maori fears rising to unreasonable levels.

Mr Palmer said if Maori grievances were to be addressed there should be institutional mechanisms for dealing with them.

The necessary restructuring of the machinery was now being considered by a special Cabinet committee.

He denied that the Government’s difficulties over dealing with Maori grievances were of its own making. “If Maori grievances are not addressed they will smoulder and take root,” he said. The Government had to try to be fair, as governments had not always been fair in New Zealand’s history. But in the end, when a decision was needed, it was the Government that would decide, he said.