MAORI LAND WORKERS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 57, 8 March 1930, Page 11

MAORI LAND WORKERS

"WILL EXCEL PAKEHAS"

SIR A. T. NGATA'S PREDICTION

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

GISBORNE, This Day.

Visitors are still arriving for the Waiomatatini Hui which will become the largest assembly of educated young Maoris yet held. . The Acting-Prime Minister (the Hon. G. W. Forbes) is journeying there to-day. .

The Hon. Sir Apirana Ngata' (Minister of Native Affairs) addressed the assemblage, reviewing the operations of his Department under the Native Land Adjustment Act of last year. Under that Act he was empowered to spend £25,000 to dev-elop the idle ■• Native lands. Tho Act overrode the hitherto slow and tedious formalities of the Native Land Court and empowered the !•' '.nister to deal direct with the owners and place tho Natives on the land, paying wages and supplying huts and implements, etc. The Minister expressed the opinion that the day would come when the Maori workers would excel the pakehas for the reason that their life was more simple and 'he Maoris loved country life; the pakehas tended to drift to the cities. He said that the Maoris must show industry beforo expecting help, and that the Waikato Tribe was now working well a 16,000-acre block.