This same interest overlaps into the realm of the church of which he is so active a member, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints. He serves on the New Zealand Advisory Board of Church College, the splendid educational institution established near Hamilton. Dr Paewai stands high in the councils of his church, serving on many of its constitutent bodies and carrying its precepts into his daily life. He was the moving spirit in the erection of the church's fine new building at Kaikohe. Kaikohe knows him as a leading member of the town's Rotary Club, of which in turn he has been a director, vice-president and president. Let's move into the field of Maori affairs, particularly welfare. With Dr Paewai this is not a mere interest, this is a crusade.

Advice and Guidance Society An obvious avenue of service is through his profession. One expression of this is his membership of the New Zealand Maori Health Committee. But his concern for the well-being of his people stretches far beyond his doctor's work. Perhaps his most significant contribution to Maori advancement has been the Kaikohe Advice and Guidance Society which he founded in 1960. This remarkable organisation does exactly what its name implies, it advises and guides. In particular its attention is directed to establishing sound economic principles in the home. Indeed it has meant for many the actual establishment of the home itself. Those who belong to the society are shown how to budget, how to keep the pay packet ahead of the bills. For many it has meant the gradual lifting, after years in some cases, of crippling burdens of debt. In this Dr Paewai has been assisted by public-spirited friends who have acted as sponsors for families which have come to the society to find a way out of their financial troubles. Characteristically, he acts as sponsor himself for quite a number of people. Official recognition of the worth of the scheme was shown when its principles and much of its detailed operation were adopted as part of the welfare policy of the Maori Affairs Department. Thus the idea that was tested at Kaikohe spread to Maori communities all over the country. In his own words: ‘It is a form of practical adult education. We are trying to curtail the expenses of the Maori people, trying to teach them the value of money and the need to stay out of debt.’ Recently Dr Paewai has given much thought to an extension of these principles so that a wider section of the community. Pakeha as well as Maori, can receive some form of economic advice. He has also expressed his ideas on the obligations of trade and professional organizations of assisting those who over-reach themselves financially. This is by no means a ‘hand-out’ policy. Rather it is enlightened self-help, helping a man to face up to his responsibilities, showing him how to be an economic asset to his community.

Opposition to ‘Hand-outs’ ‘Hand-outs’ are anathema to Dr Paewai. Advancement through work and thrift is what he advocates. Paradoxically, because he once sought nomination as a Labour Parliamentary candidate, he is the personification of rugged individualism and is on record with some stinging criticisms of the welfare state. It was his opposition to what he conceived to be a ‘hand-out’ which led him to become an outspoken critic of the Maori Education Foundation. He saw the foundation as something which cut across his concept of reward and success based on effort and determination. ‘The Maori must be taught as the Pakeha has already learnt, that he has to work for what he gets,’ he told me when I asked him why he was rocking the Education Foundation boat. It is a measure of the man's essential fairness and honesty that later, after a closer look at the foundation's aims and methods, he modified some of his views and said so very handsomely. Looking at the controversy after three years, it seems clear to me that his bluntness did much good, if no more than to make the architects of the foundation examine their structure with critical eyes. ‘What I am trying to do is to provoke people who may have misgivings to speak up so that those who are going to administer the foundation will jolly well look carefully at it,’ he said. And that is exactly what happened. More recently Dr Paewai has taken a more active part in purely Maori organizations, for instance, he was chairman of the Kaikohe Maori Welfare Committee and secretary of the Taitokerau District Maori Council. So in the practical field of help to the Maori