NATIVE LAND COURT MATTERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13631, 28 June 1906, Page 7

NATIVE LAND COURT MATTERS

"CHAOS AND CONFUSION."

(Faou Oub Own- Correspondent.)

WELLINGTON, Juno 27. "Perhaps the worst-managed department in the p'ubiio service is that partaining to tho Native Land Court." So write a correspondent of tho Post under the signature of "Anglo-Maori," "No eystem whatever exists," he says, "and all is chaos and confusion. Courts are advertised to be held at certain places and on given dates. Hugo 'cause' lists, containing obsolete claims to land that havo been dealt with finally many years previously wo printed at vast. expense, tnd oftener than otherwise when the Natives assemble from alt ■parts of the island to proscouto their respective claims they are told that the courti has been adjourned for a few d»jß, weeks, or months, as tho case may be. They again assemble only to be informed of fresh! adjournments, and so tho fajoo goea on tjll the suitors, having spont their moneji and .'wasted their time in" vain, gc away ill despair. Numerous appeals, several hundred in faot, some of which are over a dozen years old, are still outstanding, and thus the progress of the North Island is retarded through valuable Native lands being kept idle, and tho unfortunate owners in a state of semi-starvation." Reforrinjj to the appointment of judges, the correspondent. says: "For many years the judges ha.vo been too few in 'number to cope with the .ever-incrcasing work, hampered as they j havo boon by perpetual interference, hilt it is now proposed to appoint three 'sucking lawyers' as jmlees. The miserable salaries hitherto paid will never attract solicitors or barristers of any standing, in the profession. Moreover, as tho ownership of Native land is entirely ruled by 'Maori and usage.' there is something Gilbert ian in tho new proposal of appointing men to deal with real estate valued at many millions who are absolutely strangers to the Maori language or the intricate forma of tenure under which the Natives have inherited their ancestral fowls. II is rather | singular, moreover, that most of the glaring errors in ihe nasi, and the rondtant ruinous litigation and expense alike to Native a.nd European suitors, have all been caused l-.v 'lawyer jn<lg.>s.' Yet the Government. with a fatuous disregard of 'past experience, s»eni_« bent upon carrying out this fatal policy."