HOLIDAYS OVER

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLI, Issue 20308, 6 January 1936, Page 8

HOLIDAYS OVER

MINISTERS RETURNING TO WORK

MAORIS MAKE GIFT TO MR SAVAGE

By Telegraph—Press Association

AUCKLAND, January 5.

To attend meetings of the Cabinet which will recommence on Wednesday, the Prime Minister (Hon. M. j’. Savage) and several Ministers of the Crown left for Wellington by the Limited express to-night. Mr Savage was accompanied by Mr and Mrs French, with whom he lived in Herne Bay for many years and by his chief private secretary, Mr C. A. Jeffery. Other Ministers who left were the Hon. R- Semple. Minister of Public Works, who has been on a brief visit to Auckland, the Attorney-General, Hon. H. G. R. Mason, and the leader of the Legislative Council, the Hon. Mark Fagan, who has been on holiday in the city. Mr J. A. Lee, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, will leave for Wellington to-morrow.

Mr Savage and his colleagues were all kept busy during the week-end with official business. Mr Semple also made a brief trip through the Auckland Suburbs electorate, Mr Mason’s constituency.

As “captain of the great canoe known as the Labour Party.” the Prime Minister received a traditional Maori welcome when he visited the village of Drake! this afternoon. It was the first time that Mr Savage had visited the Maoris in his capacity of Minister of Native Affairs. Representatives of tribes in the North and South Islands and other Maori organisations were associated in the welcome to him. Mr Savage receive from the Orakei Maoris and representatives of tribes as far south as Taranaki an inkstand and pen on a native carved base, while Hlahira. paramount chief of the Tamaki district, handed to him a Bible brought to New Zealand by Samuel Marsden and a copy of the Treaty of Waitangi bound in book form.

“I promise you that the letter and spirit of the Treaty of Waitangi will be kept by the first Labour Government that has had the privilege of honouring its contracts with the Native race,” said Mr Savage in reply.