MAORI RIGHTS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIX, Issue 21957, 8 May 1941, Page 6

MAORI RIGHTS

Unfulfilled Promises Memorial To Privy Council (P.A.) ROTORUA, May 7. Leading counsel for the appellant before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the appeal of Te Heu Heu versus the Aotea Maori Land Board (Mr H. Hampson) has returned to Rotorua, but is reluctant to express an opinion on the judgment, which has not yet reached New Zealand. He agreed that the important question the committee had been asked to decide was whether the Maoris had been granted a right to the Treaty of Waitangi as they had been assured by Captain Hobson in 1840. “If such a treaty right never existed, or alternatively, if the people of New Zealand were authorised by the British Parliament to legislate in derogation of the treaty, then the Maori people have all been sold a pup. It became necessary for the Maoris to ascertain from the Judicial Committee what right, if any, the treaty gave them,” sid Mr Hampson. Acting upon the assumption that the committee might decide that the Maoris had no legal rights (as apparently had been done) the leaders of the Maori tribes throughout New Zealand, on February 6, 1940, signed a memorial to the Privy Council claiming that as by the treaty the Maori people had surrendered their sovereignty in return for a guarantee, then, if such guarantee were worthless, the present claim of the British Empire to defend the rights of small peoples was inconsistent. “Heavily Despoiled” “Through the breach of the treaty Te Heu Heu and his people were not only saddled with an admittedly unjust liability of £23,500, but the Crown, in parens patriae for the Maori people, had ‘purchased’ £1,300,000 worth of timber lands for £76,000. “Similarly, the Maoris of the South Island, Taranaki, Waikato, North Auckland, East Coast, Urewera and elsewhere have been heavily despoiled and have rested upon unfulfilled promises of redress. Moreover Maori legislation of the past 25 years in breach of the treaty has reduced the Maoris to a state of servitude.” Mr Hampson declared that the Maori people by their memorial, were seeking from the Empire with whom they had contracted by treaty, for a commission presided over by a British law lord to investigate the grievances. Mr Hampson was confident that Britain would grant the request. The Privy Council dismissed the appeal against the Aotea District Land Board heard before the New Zealand Appeal Court at Wellington on March 15, 1939, said a message of April 5. The effect of the decision was to confirm that the Treaty of Waitangi had not the effect of law, but was merely a “gentlemen’s agreement.”