Some examples can be given of the effects of Consolidation, viz.: District Scheme Whangarei Waiapu North Auckland Pukemoremore Gisborne Waihaua Consolidation may look impressive on these figures but unhappily it is a treadmill effort, endless and hopeless. As soon as consolidation is completed, the ownership starts to proliferate again by death and succession, so consolidation is never really completed at all. Conversion is the latest device to be tried. It Interests Bought Purchase Price Average Value 10,874 £109,936 £10 The amount held in the Maori Trustee's Conversion Fund is £110,000 (revolving) but the conversion procedure is not usually resorted to unless there is a prospective purchaser in sight. (Interests bought up in “reserved lands” cannot, however, be sold.) Recourse to conversion should be stepped up, as will be shown. Through misconception, conversion has, in some districts, been called confiscation. In its aim of retaining Maori land in Maori ownership, it achieves the very opposite of confiscation. Conversion is a form of consolidation but is much simpler and speedier than the old-style consolidation. “Convert and hold; fragment and lose!” might well be the slogan of all who wish Maori land to be retained for the Maoris. Another device known as “the £10 Rule” was brought in by legislation in 1957. It enabled the Court to vest the whole of the interest of a deceased person in any one or more beneficiaries to the exclusion of any other, without payment, provided the excluded beneficiary's share does not exceed £10. One Judge has said it is a good rule but would be better still if the £10 limit were “pushed right up”. Again, there is statutory authority for “live buying” by the Maori Trustee; in other words, buying from living owners by agreement. It is not done casually, but with some utilisation motive in mind. It offers the greatest scope of all for simplification of titles. There is ceaseless conflict between the forces of integration and the forces of disintegration of Maori land titles, with the opposing forces lined up as follows:— Owners Completed Area Before Consolidation After Consolidation 1956 1,350 1,023 59 1958 11,000 694 400 1960 110,790 53,327 5,478 was introduced by statute in 1953 and is the process whereby the Maori Trustee buys small “uneconomic interests” (under £25) in Maori land and sells them to individual Maoris or to Maori incorporations. The progress with conversion so far is briefly this: Interests Sold Sale Price Average Value 5,930 £74,764 £12 ½ For Integration For Disintegration Consolidation Conversion Partition £10 Rule Succession Live Buying and the forces of integration are fighting a losing battle. It is a battle, however, that could be won with these same forces and methods if only they were reorganised and employed with more determination Dowson and Sheppard, in their book Land Registration (in the British Commonwealth) have this to say: “The evolution of tenure must be controlled by statute, and, if the best interests of the rightholders are studied, it must be a gradual process…