MAORI LAND WORKERS

Feilding Star, Volume 8, Issue 2497, 10 March 1930, Page 7

MAORI LAND WORKERS

“WILL EXCEL PAKAHAS” SIR A. T. NGATAS PREDICTION (Per Press Association). Gisborne, March 8. Visitors arc still arriving for tile Waiomatatino Hui which will become tlie largest assembly of educated young Maoris yet held. The. ActingPrime Minister (the Hon. G. W. Forbes) is journeying there to-day. Tlie 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 develop tlie idle. Native lands . The Act overrode the hitherto slow and tedious formalities of the Native. Land Court and empowered the Minister to deal direct with the owners and place the 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 the Maoris loved country life; the. pakehas tended to drift to the cities. He said that the Maoris must show industry before expecting help, and that the A\aikato Tribe was now working well a 16,060 acre block.