MAORI ONTRIBUTOR URGES ABOLITION OF ELECTORAL BOUNDARIES

Wanganui Chronicle, 8 November 1949, Page 7

MAORI ONTRIBUTOR URGES ABOLITION OF ELECTORAL BOUNDARIES

(Contributed.) I From the time of Maori migration, I Maori history is mostly a record - mixed with undoubted barbarism that characterises the strife of tribal wars, his intelligence, habits, customs, and traditional history. The changes induced by the coming of the pakeha, a new life and a new environment, had to be built up, a mere existence at first, in time, developing their own characteristic social organisations and peculiarities. Both races struggled for an independant life, both experiencing different difficulties and trials. Social medium was different. It was a people of one moral code trained in civilisation, meeting a people with quite a different rule of life. The Maori's destiny as an ancient race hung in the balance. Representation to Parliament, in 1867 gave the Maori his first civil rights and political privileges, a most generous policy, a Magna Charta to their liberties, and laid the foundation of all his political struggles, his wars, his lands and his treatment. Merging from the early eighteenth century, to early nineteenth century, through uprisings of rebel wars, in Hokianga, Waikato, and Taranaki, and the influences of Tohunga and Spiritualism, the need for education was felt more, and more, and in the struggle for existence the Maori has become an observer to the hard realities of life. Political struggles are neither so inI tense nor so prolonged today, but (social questions, as distinguished from political loom large. To those who nave to live in the same country and under the same Government, the stern realities of truth must give away to calm consideration and the immense advantages exercised, to seek the comnjpn good and to promote that common prosperity which should be the end and aim of all political and social efforts. The Maoris’ need is great. The urge for immediate attention is greater, for the few to carry the burden is comparatively small. Few changes have ever been more complete, more extreme and more disastrous, historically, politically and constitutionally in less than a century than the administration of Maori affairs. The adoption of proposals by Sir George Grey and the re-adjust-ment of such proposals by the present Labour Government brought into force the Maori Welfare, Social and Economic Bill, embodying a complete system of local self-government controlled by principal of Ministerial responsibility. The Maori must throw off his cloak of yester-years and march with the progress of civilisation, for quality and progress march hand in hand, and he cannot have one without the other. One of the most important questions of the present day is his right to abolish the election boundaries of Western, Eastern, Northern and Southern Maori, and the adoption of proportional representation of the Maori population whereby they could elect men and women of highest integrity and of greatest abilities, responsible to their constitutions and capable of far-seeing support to anything found to represent Maori interest in all its various stages. Will he merge from out of his glass case as exhibit No. 1 in the annals of N.Z. history, or will he slumber on and leave the burden to the comparative few, as of old. I wonder?