FEUDAL CONCEPTION OF OWNERSHIP

Southland Times, Issue 23376, 7 December 1937, Page 8

FEUDAL CONCEPTION OF OWNERSHIP

TREATMENT OF MAORIS DEFENDED (From Our Parliamentary Reporter) WELLINGTON, December 6. The right of private individuals to receive royalties on petroleum found under their property was challenged by Mr J. Thom (Lab., Thames) during the debate on the Petroleum Bill in the House of Representatives today. , “We are rapidly abandoning the old feudal conception that the land-holder owns everything below the land to the centre of the earth and everything above it up to the stratosphere,” said Mr Thorn. The argument had been advanced by Sir Apirana Ngata (NatEastern Maori) that private individuals were entitled to royalties on petroleum, said Mr Thom. The main objection to the payment of such royalties was that petroleum was not static like other minerals. A bore could be situated on one man’s property and the flow . might come from properties held by hundreds of other people. It was virtually impossible to devise a procedure for the distribution of royalties to the people concerned. The only solution of the difficulty was to simplify the procedure by having the royalties paid to the State.

“If we are to admit the right of the Maoris to private royalties, that right cannot be denied to the pakeha,” Mr Thorn continued. “If that is done it will destroy the whole purpose of the Bill.”

Sir Apirana Ngata: And give them nothing. “As time passes and conditions change the Treaty of Waitangi will be subjected to new interpretations,” said Mr Thorn. “That has happened already in our history and it is quite easy to conceive that the Maoris themselves will come to regard the treaty as a dead letter because by other means they will have been secured in their rights. They will therefore have no need of the treaty any longer to protect them. We are not taking from the Maoris anything we are not taking from the pakehas.”