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Maori and the State: Crown-Māori relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa, 1950-2000

The Committee System under the National Government

page 25

The Committee System under the National Government

Following National’s victory at the polls in late 1949, the new Cabinet lacked both expertise in matters Maori and any great sympathy with many Maori aspirations. For the first time since the provincial period of the third quarter of the nineteenth century, New Zealand had a government with no Maori support in Parliament. National, moreover, made no arrangements to appoint any Maori to the political executive, ending six decades of political tradition, and declined to place any of the Maori MPs on the Board of Maori Affairs, which oversaw the principal activities of the Department of Maori Affairs. An historian has noted of National’s leader, Sidney Holland: ‘No Prime Minister since William Massey had come to office with so little contact with Maoris and so little interest in Maori affairs’.

Many Maori were understandably dismayed. Before long, the new government’s attitudes were to have serious repercussions for Crown–Maori relatinons. Labour had nourished ambitions of building state housing on ancestral land of Ngati Whatua in the Orakei/Bastion Point area of Auckland, but this had been stymied as a result of strenuous tribal opposition. National, however, now began plans to develop the area and compulsorily acquire land. Rather than assist the improvement of the ‘unsightly’ and unhealthy Ngati Whatua settlement and meeting house at the Okahu Bay marae, where tribal visitors to Auckland had traditionally been hosted, the government destroyed them and relocated the inhabitants. Such actions created new, and eventually high-profile, grievances.1

But the committee system kept operating, whatever the new tensions induced by harsher Crown policies and practices. Some Maori had predicted that the system would be run down or even discontinued, given that National’s assimilationist messages were even stronger than those from within the Labour camp. Certainly, the MWO system had to prove itself to a government whichpage 26 initially viewed it as too accommodating to the tangata whenua. However, the country’s new political leadership quickly came to appreciate that there was a wide gap between theory and reality, and that it was in fact beneficial to keep the committee system going for the foreseeable future. It heeded advice from its district welfare officers that the MWO’s marae projects provided for ‘healthy group life’ – social health among a significant sector of society could only contribute to the public good. More broadly, while the government shared its predecessor’s belief that Maori discontent was best addressed by socio-economic improvements, it was increasingly forced to come to grips with Maori priorities – as, indeed, was ‘the Maori Affairs’. Officials, for example, might report on poor quality housing and assume this was the primary concern of local Maori, but then find that people were more concerned with securing a tribal community centre. Only with this built, thereby enhancing their collective identity, would Maori leaders seek improved housing.

In some ways the official tribal institutions actually strengthened in power and activity under National, partly because they were seen by increasing numbers of Maori as potential tools to help counteract the government’s brashly stated policies of assimilation. Often the system worked well for Maori to this effect, in spite of the unpromising political environment. A Maori anthropologist doing field work with Huria Tribal Committee, in the area covered by the Ranginui Tribal Executive, reported that its leaders were ‘recognized members of the community … including a few kaumatua [elders] and a majority of young men’. The committee focused on matters within its official brief, such as regulating alcohol, eliminating gambling from within village confines, working on by-laws, presiding over the local peace and calling up offenders for ‘admonition’. It also took responsibility for rebuilding the meeting house. All of this benefited some of the tribe’s aspirations as well as several state objectives.

Problems were rife, however. There was, for example, a heightening of paternalism within the Department of Maori Affairs, despite an increasing number of Maori staff. Maori widely perceived a ‘department knows best’ attitude, and resented the way in which officials went about their tasks. Staff paternalism was encouraged by assimilationist attitudes that found reinforcement in a context of welfarist politics, urbanisation and economic boom. At a large intertribal meeting of leaders at Raukawa Marae in March 1950, Ngata was selected as spokesperson. He questioned whether Maori Affairs, ‘with its complicated organisation and the inquisitorial attitude of some of its officials’, was ‘best fitted’ to oversee the Maori Social and Economic Advancement Act. Too many in the DMA were ‘doubtful of the ability of representative Maori committees to administer the functions vested in them by the Act’. There was much ‘deliberate obstruction and the appropriateness of Maori projects [was] questioned at every term’ by officials. When would officials ‘let Maori peoplepage 27 have a say in their own affairs?’ The marae, it seemed to the Maori leadership, was ‘the only place the Maori could rule’. Leaders were ‘most emphatic’ that they did not want all things Maori to be governed by Maori Affairs.2

Te Rangiataahua (Rangi) Royal, Controller of Maori Social and Economic Advancement, had similar concerns. It was anticipated in 1950 that before long ‘some of the more advanced Executives and Committees [would] be self-reliant bodies able to solve their problems on the spot as they arise’. But even Royal felt constrained in his ability to assist committees in their quests for autonomy. He believed that he was ‘being reduced to a figurehead’ within the department. In 1951, he declared that his welfare officers had experienced ‘hostility manifested in various ways and forms’ in the public service. The ‘present set-up’, he concluded, was ‘a failure’. While various Maori working within the welfare system did not fully agree, joining or staying precisely because it offered possibilities for progress for their people, the bleakness of Royal’s assessment was understandable.

1 King, Michael, Te Puea: A Biography, Auckland, 1977, p 268 (for ‘No Prime Minister’ quote); Kawharu, I Hugh, ‘Urban Immigrants and Tangata Whenua’, in Schwimmer, Erik (ed) The Maori People in the Nineteen-Sixties: A Symposium, Auckland, 1968, p 176; Walker, Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou, pp 215–7; Winiata, Maharaia, The Changing Role of the Leader in Maori Society: A Study in Social Change and Race Relations, Auckland, 1967, p 144.

2 Winiata, The Changing Role, p 131 (for ‘recognized members’ quote), p 132; Notes supplied by Eric Ramsden for Major Rangi Royal from a direct statement dictated by Sir Apirana Ngata, Otaki, 17 March 1950, MA, W2490, Box 57, Part 1, 35/1/3, MSEA Act 1945 subsidies, policies, 1947–50 (for ‘complicated organisation’ quote); Notes from discussion at Raukawa marae, 17 March 1950, AAMK, 869, Box 1051a, 35/1/1, Maori Welfare Legislation, 1956–62 (for ‘doubtful’ and ‘deliberate obstruction’ quotes); Notes of representations made to Minister of Maori Affairs at Raukawa Marae, 300Otaki on Saturday 18 March 1950 by Sir Apirana Ngata on behalf of the assembled tribes, MA, W2490, Box 56, Part 2, 35/1, General Policy and Admin – MSEA Act 1945, 1947–50 (for ‘let Maori people’ and ‘the only place’ quotes); Hill, Richard S, ‘“Social Revolution on a Small Scale”: Official Maori Committees of the 1950s’, Paper Presented to the New Zealand Historical Association Conference, 24–27 Nov 2005, http://www.victoria.ac.nz/stout-centre/research-units/towru/MaoriCommitteesJan06.pdf, p 5 (for ‘emphatic’ quote); Lange, Maori Well-Being, pp 33–7, 45.