THE FATAL POLICY OF"TAIHOA."

Evening Post, Volume LXXII, Issue 67, 17 September 1906, Page 4

THE FATAL POLICY OF"TAIHOA."

"Tell us where we are !" was the cry of th? member for lirnce during the discusgjon of the Estimates for the Native Department on Friday night, and on be* half of the department the Native Minister might fairly have answered : "We axe in for the roughest handling that has fallen to cur lot for many a long day.' 1 During xecent, years native affairs havo attracted a good deal of vigorous criticism from time to time, but it. has .usually been of the skirmishing and free-lance order, and only a very smal} minority of the House has taken part in it. The hopeful feature of last Friday's discussion was that it was shared in by a wider circle, and that it attained sufficient proportions to make a serious impression, nob only upon the imperturbable placidity of the Native Minister, but also upon the ignorant indifference of the Tlouse as a whole The want of organisation, the miserably inadequate enwriee, and the snail's pace at which work that is absolutely essential to the' settlement of the country is proceeding, wore the leading features of a very powerful indictment of tho department, and the Minister's general answer was of tho kind which wo seem to have heard from him a good many dozen times before, viz., "that he hoped great things from his department inthe immediate future, and sincerely trusted thai, its development would take place." _ Mr. A. L, D, Fraser made an entertaining point by referring to tho strong opinions on the reform of the department which Mr. Carroll had cypressed before he took charge of it, yet at the present time, oiler yearß of Mr. Carroll's administration, the Chief Judge of we Native Land Court gets £200 a year hss than he did in those days, and the special experience and special knowledge of the manners, customs, and language of the Maori which were then declared by Air. Carroll tho member to be essential quali fications of a judge, have been ignored by Mr. Carroll the Minister just as consistently as by nny of hig predecessors. With salaries ranging from £400 to £600, and with the highest office in tho court recently bestowed as a reward for political service, there is little to --justify the sanguine hope expressed by tho Nativo Minister. A strong point was made by Mr. Herries of the delay in sotting up the Maori Laud Boards, which are taking up the functions of tho Maori Land Councils under the Act of 1900— a delay described by Mr. Herries as "almost criminal" j and .the Minister's reply was a confession of guilt with tho plea, of mitigating^ circumstances added on account of tho difficulty of finding suitable men. Some who had been found wore conceded to be unsuitable as being "related by ties of marriage or descent to tribes over which they would have to sit in judgment" ; and it is satisfactory to get the Minister's nssnrance that these members will bo transferred to other districts. On the same clay when the House was engaged in this di.scussion, the Legislative Council was induced to consider the question of native landa from the &tandpoint of JiJurop&jin settlement, and the matter was properly deemed of sufficient importance by the Council to justify adjournment of a- very inteiesting debate. If the average member of Parliament and tho average elector coald begot to see that the question touches their own interests jiut us closely as does the land question proper, they would cease to tolerate the fntal policy of "T\iihoa" whioh is keeping Homo millions of acres of good land out of cultivation.