NATIVE LAND TENURE

Taranaki Daily News, 23 March 1934, Page 15

NATIVE LAND TENURE

PROPOSED IMPROVEMENTS.

TE KUITI PLAN ENDORSED.

Te Kuiti, March 21. The proposals of the ‘J'e Kuiti Native Land Settlement Committee, which have been forwarded to all interested locai bodies and members of Parliament, were considered by the Waitomo Electric Power Board at its meeting yesterday. After an animated discussion the board unanimously endorsed the scheme. The proposals include that all native land should be classed in three divisions: Land worked by natives (rateable); land capable of being profitably worked (responsible for rates on a section); land unsuitable for settlement (exempt from rates). Lands would be vested in the Maori Board with a fresh economic valuation and would be offered by ballot to settlers of both races on a 33 1-3 year deferred payment system. In existing leases there would be a just conservation of the right of lessor and lessee. Subdivisional and other costs would be added to the land, a condition of occupation being that the half-yearly payments to the Native Land Board should be held in trust for the native owner. Mr. Boddie said the object was to put the lessees with a valueless native tenure on a more satisfactory basis and to have the vacant Maori lands settled. The chairman, Mr. W. A. Lee, agreed that the principle underlying the proposals was sound. He wfts not, however, altogether in favour of the proposals. He suggested that consideration be held over until the next meeting. Mr. Simms said that the proposals appeared to be on sound lines. He had recently travelled all over his district in connection with the small farms scheme, and in many cases had found the very blocks of lands they were looking for—land suitable for close settlement—were native land and could not be touched. The chairman said he objected to the clause concerning the method of balloting for land. “I think that some proposal should be put forward whereby the native would not be divested of his land,” he said. “This is certainly an excellent proposal from the European settlers’ point of view, but the Maori, especially the old. Maori, if divested of his lands, will, become a charge on the European ratepayer.”