MEMBERS OF FAMILY

Northern Advocate, 9 November 1934, Page 6

MEMBERS OF FAMILY

PURPOSES BOARD GRANTS. SON A SPECIALIST TEACHER. LFrom Oivr Parliamentary Special.! WELLINGTON, This Day. Frankly admitting that members of his family had received grants from the Maori Purposes Board for educational purposes, Sir Apirana Ngata declared that the fact that a teacher who was retained by a grant from the board as a specialist was his son did not come into the matter at all. Sir Apirana said that from 1924 to 1928, when he was a private member of the House and yet a member of the Maori Purposes Board, resolutions went through meeting after meeting distributing assistance to Maori students all over New Zealand, including his own children. The commission had dealt with the period from 1929 to 1934, but the board had not allowed the fact that the students were children of members of Parliament to deter them from granting assistance where it was needed.

There was one item in the report which dealt with a member of his family, continued Sir Apirana, and the circumstances occurred entirely during the time that he was Native Minister. The authorities had taken his son away from Canterbury College for the purpose of teaching Maori at Te Aute College. Financial considerations forced the Te Aute authorities to dispense with the services of some of their staff, and the Maori Purposes Board gave a grant to enable his son to be retained as a specialist in the teaching of the Maori language. The fact that the teacher happened to be the Minister’s son did not come into the matter at all. FUTURE OF THE MAORI RELATIONS WITH PAKEHA. HARMONY WILL CONTINUE. [From Our Parliamentary Special.] WELLINGTON, This Day. Future relationships between Maori and Pakeha will not lack the harmony which has characterised them in the past, according to the concluding observations of Sir Apirana Ngata in his speech to the House, when he replied to the criticism of his administration of the Native Affairs portfolio. “As to the future,” said the Minister, “we say that the whole of the schemes are for the benfit of the Maori people. The day of spoon-feeding and Maori landlordism is past. We don’t want that to disappear and not to replace it with something better, and we don’t want something the Maori people cannot hold on to. We have a proverb: ‘Divorce the Maori from the land and you will make him a slave.’ We don’t want the Maori to drift into association with Chinese and Hindus.”

Sir Apirana commented that economic stress had pressed unduly on areas like Auckland, and said that only the other day £IOOO had been voted for the establishment of dwellings at Pukekohe for the accommodation of Maoris all over the Auckland Province who had no other resources than work on the potato fields. Those who had been compelled to seek work in the Chinese gardens could not be blamed. After all, the first law of nature was survival, but where was that survival for the native? It was undesirable that he should drift into or near to the cities and take up an undesirable mode of living. A permanent solution was wanted, and Parliament had denied that solution and the assistance of the State funds until 1929. Prior to that, Treasury advice had been rigidly against expenditure out of the Consolidated Fund, and the bogey of increasing the public debt had been raised.

Departmental Rule.

“It is not the Ministers'* who rule New Zealand,” said Sir Apirana. “It is the heads of Departments. I know. The business is bossed about one-tenth by the Ministers and nine-tenths by the Department. Yet it is direct action by the Minister that the Opposition is condemning. I don’t think any mortal in New Zealand could have handled the Native problem except by tackling it face to face, going on to the field and making decisions on the spot. Perhaps I went too far and created the impression of lavish expenditure, although among my own people I have the reputation of being rather mean.”

Sir Apirana said the Maoris were now urging that a housing scheme should be undertaken by the State, but the Treasury view would be that expenditure should come out of Native funds. The Maoris, however, demanded that the State give them all the money required to help them out of the problem, stating at the same time that the money would be paid back. However, in districts like the Waikato, where all the lands of the Maori had been taken away from them —the Pakeha called them rebels, but they thought they were patriots—the State might have to provide a minimum of accommodation without any expectation of repayment. Parliament was supposed to be the supreme body, so it was well to remember that at present Treasury was “digging its toes in.”

“The future is all right.” Sir Apirana concluded. “The House need not worry about the relations between the two races. We say in Maori: ‘The dispute is between two neighbours leaning on the wall between their houses.’ Let us have a broadminded, sympathetic administration of Native affairs at the points wherein individualities come into contact with us.”