MAORI MINISTERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21949, 5 November 1934, Page 12

MAORI MINISTERS

Sir, —In your issue of November 1, under the heading of Native Affairs Commission, is a paragraph: "After what has happened, and what the commission has found, it can be said, indeed must he said, that this department should not be administered by a Maori member." Are the Maori peoplo to be held in this suggested subjection. and all to suffer through the misdeeds of the ex-Native Minister, who. no doubt, in his late capacity exceeded his powers? Are the careers and ambitions of our present and future representatives to be judged to-day on tho wrong standard of one? He is first of the Maori members to be wrongfully extravagant with public funds. Is the Parliamentary machine as a whole immune from similar faults? I myself have no faith in our present Western member, but the others who persevere in their duty to the people they represent should emphatically not be hampered by the outstanding faults of another person. To the high sense of British justice which we have not found wanting in the past we look for fair treatment, and the debarring of our members, present and future, as suggested, will positively tend to sever the happy relations existent between the two races. Jane Waiteti Emery.