INTERPRETATION OF TREATY

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

INTERPRETATION OF TREATY

EXTENT OF MAORI RIGHTS

(From Our Parliamentary Reporter) WELLINGTON, December 6.

“If the Opposition claims that the Treaty of Waitangi meant that the Maori was to have all below the earth to its greatest depth and all above it to highest heavens, then I say that such an interpretation is impracticable and absurd,” said Mr W. M. C. Denham (Lab., Invercargill) during the debate on the Petroleum Bill in the House of Representatives today. Mr Denham claimed that the present Government had done more for the Maori than any other in the history of the Dominion and did not intend to injure their rights in the existing Bill but to see them treated in exactly the same way as the European. On the basis of the Opposition arguments, if a company tried to take nitrates from the air, there would be an outcry about the Treaty of Waitangi. He suggested that the Opposition speakers who had opposed the Bill because of the effect it might have on native rights, were arguing simply to get the sympathy of the natives. The fundamental principle underlying the Treaty of Waitangi was to bring the pakeha and Maori together and the Bill before the House did not infringe that principle.