MAORI BENEFITS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 19, 22 July 1939, Page 14

MAORI BENEFITS

GOVERNMENT COMMENDED

! The Government was commended by Mr. P. K. Paikea (Northern Maori) for the benefits it had conferred on the Maori race. The figures showed that the Government was mindful of the fact that it had a duty not only to the pakeha, but to the Maori. Today the Maori people took off their hats to the Labour Government. Even though the Government might spend thousands on Maori education, he considered that there was s+ill a danger point, the age of adolescence. If a boy or girl did not have any encouragement to go into the industrial world or any other sphere, then the money would be wasted.

Mr. Paikea said that rapid progress had been made with Maori housing, but he would like to draw attention to the fact that the Department was building houses .without regard to the number in a family.

The Centennial Exhibition would be opening in Wellington this year, said Mr. Paikea. He would remind the House that there would not have been a Centennial year had not the Maoris signed the Treaty of Waitangi. While the Maoris appreciated the western culture and western improvements which had been brought them by the pakeha, at the bottom of their hearts there were grievances which had lasted over a hundred years. As a Centennial gesture, said Mr. Paikea, he would ask the Government and people of New Zealand to settle these outstanding Maori grievances, so that when the actual Centennial celebrations arrived the Maoris could join with the pakeha and sing "God Defend New Zealand."