THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, MARCH 8, 1909. THE MAORI MYSTERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14003, 8 March 1909, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, MARCH 8, 1909. THE MAORI MYSTERY.

Were it not of such deadly importance to the people of this Dominion, to workmen employed and unemployed, as well as to business and professional men, to the over-

burdened taxpayers who look

anxiously for some prospect of relief, as well as to disappointed-vland-seekers who vainly ask to be allowed to turn waste and idle lands intj wealth-producing farms, we , could enjoy the sardonic humour ri that Gilbertian comedy, the Maori Land Mystery. For it "is, indeed, one of those astounding mysteries which arise only where the acts of human beings are utterly unreasonable and where there is quite no intelligible ! explanation of their actions. v In Taumarunui, for example, we have a state of government which would disgrace the Esquimaux and puzzle the Chinese. At an immense expense, by virtue of heavy taxation, unlimited credit,* and the ~ practical abandonment of the dozen other Northern railway schemes so urgently called for, we drove a railway through the King Country and made connection between'. Auckland aid Wellington. By so doing we transformed millions of acres ,of inaccessible country into " railway land ',' and made it possible for our British settlers to,. turn the., interior :of our North Island into fertile field, thriv- , ing township, ' a populous* country- i side. Yet we left great tracts 'of j country immediately '" adjoining the railway in the hands of the natives and subject to the amazingly illogical" law" which the folly of our legislators has imposed. In Taumarunui, which is only one point of the huge, area similarly affected, Pakeha settlement is being carried on wholly for 5 the •benefit of Maori owners and without any power of rating upon any land excepting that leased to Europeans.' The British settler who steams out of Auckland or Wellington to be left by the train in that extraordinary country finds that his fate is to pay rents to Maori Boards, for short-term leases, at values made by the national expenditure, to be subject to a Department in which Maori influences are dominant and to be utterly. unable to carry on the local government which is the instinct of British people or to build up the prosperity and progress which is the laudable British ambition. Nor. does it ap-pear-that the individual Maori benefits in the 1 slightest degree by this pernicious and unpardonable policy. For the Maori who wants to work hard and to take all. possible advantage -of European civilisation finds himself denied all right to r

upon his own initiative and seems not to be able even to obtain his share of the rents thus filched 'from the Pakeha.

In Orakei, close to Auckland City, we have an equally r preposterous state of affairs, the Native Minister actually telling us that*the proper course to pursue is to lease the land upon short-term leases for suburban residence sites—thus for the per petual benefit of a mere handful of Maori owners, who form a strange local blend between millionairedom and pauperdora: And" at the . very moment when the King Country is locked against settlement, when ! Taumarurmi cannot levy rates or provide decent township ; conveniences, when Orakei is being planned by Cabinet Ministers as a suburban gold mine for idling natives, the cry of the unemployed has been raised in the streets of Auckland, and the Prime Minister has been explaining the attitude of the Government in encouraging immigration. And why is it that we cannot encourage British immigration 1 Why is it that in this sparsely-populated country less than a million British settlers are found too many? The reason ; is plain. There are unemployed in Auckland because in the Northern Peninsula and on ; the East Coast, in the '_ Waikato and in the King Country, vast areas of Native Land, - situated on railways built by the Government, on roads for which settlers have been rated, are locked up against j that production - of raw* materials which is the very life blood of the towns. And there will be unemployed 1 in

Auckland and all over the Dominion so long as we accept the preposter- . ous idea that the British settler has no rights in New Zealand, and that he exists here, with his 'roads and his railways and all his civilisation, merely to enable Maori landowners to live in idleness upon rents and charges. We have;no, illwill whatever to the Maori people, who have no worse friends than the misguided individuals, who are so sedulously following a modified form of the old Kingite tactics of locking up the land. • But v the time has come when plain speaking is necessary in order that the rising feeling -of the country may be understood by those who are responsible for the present state of affairs. Nothing but evil can come of any deliberate locking up of the Native Lands; and nothing but illwill can come of any attempt to make the British settler a mere tenant of Native landlords. Workmen who have no work have only -} to j exercise their intelligence .to see l that were these locked-up lands brought into Aise, there would be work for all for many years to come, apart from all other industrial, questions. Every j taxpayer in ■ the Dominion ought to realise that, the railways built from loans'and calling for annual interest, and the roads built by heavy local rates v and Government subsidies, are largely wasted owing to the Native Lands they pass through, which pay no rates, I. are held for State-made values, and lie as an incubus upon the prosperity of the Dominion. The mistakes of the past we cannot easily rectify, but the mistakes of the present we can i end at once, particularly that fundamental mistake which allows Native" Land to block settlement -in districts made accessible by great public expenditure, and which makes the British settler, even in " railway townships, practically the bondsman •of the Maori. ' ,