'Report On Maoris Quoted By Minister Is Explained

Wanganui Chronicle, 29 June 1948, Page 6

'Report On Maoris Quoted By Minister Is Explained

(P.A.) Dunedin, June 28. The report on the East Coast Maoris prepared by the Waiapu branch of the New Zealand Educational Institute and quoted by the Rev. Blackwood Moore, of St? Matthew’s Vicarage, Auckland, was the subject of comment by Mr. J. S. H. Robertson, Dominion president of the institute, who is visiting Dunedin. "Mr. Moore is correct in stating that this report was compiled by the sub-committee of the Waiapu branch of the N.Z.E.I. and issued by the executive of that branch in 1941,” Mr. Robertson said, "it was issued without the sanction of the Dominion executive of the N.Z.E.1., which can accept no more responsibility for the report than that the Waiapu nranch was one of its affiliated branches. On discovering that the report contained statements which it believed to be exaggerated, and in some cases wholly inaccurate, and on discovering further that the report had given offence to the East Coast members of the Maori race, the Dominion executive of the institute immediately and voluntarily, and after discussion with and receiving the consent of the Waiapu branch, tendered its sincerest apologies to the Maoris concerned and instructed the branch to withdraw the report. The Maori people generously accepted the assurances of the Dominion executive that the institute as a whole was not responsible for the report, and that it did not agree with parts of it under consideration.

“That was seven years ago,” concluded Mr. Robertson, "and we believed that the incident was closed. I deplore the action of Mr. Moore in resurrecting this, discredited and long buried report and in apparently basing charges on it, and I sincerely trust that this statement will result in the report being now reinterred for all time.”