Minister Asks. For Commission To Consider Maori Problems

Wanganui Chronicle, 26 June 1948, Page 4

Minister Asks. For Commission To Consider Maori Problems

(P.A.) Parliament Bldgs., June 25. The Prime Minister (Mr. Fraser 1 has received the following telegram today from the Rev. blackwood Moore, of St. Matthews vicarage, Auckland: “The demoralisation of Maoris referred to in broadcast sermon of May 16 calls for an investigation bv a Royal Commission. Are you prepared to proceed along these lines?” Mr. Fraser has replied as follows: "Your telegram received today. It adds a further insult to the injury you have already done to the Maori people. Your reiteration of the terms ‘demoralisation of the Maoris; is as renrehensibte as it is foundationless. I have never known previously anywhere of a request for the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into any matters or charges without the request at least being based on some semblance ot fact to justify its consideration. I ask you now to produce the minimum of evidence to justify your statements m regard io the Maori people so your request, for an important and expensive Royal Commission may have some appearance of reason. Without such modicum of substance, your request is too flimsv and not entitled to even preliminary consideration. In tlte meantime, while I await from you the facts which can be ranked as evidence, you might consider the propriety of either proving the truth of or withdrawing and apologising for the statement to which you gate credence and wide publicity that ‘BO per eeni of the inmates of the Auckland prison were Maoris’ while at that date the number of Maoris in the prison was 82 out of a total ot 323 inmates, or 25 per cent."