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

Bureaucracy under Scrutiny

Bureaucracy under Scrutiny

But the DMA remained the key agency for Maori, and its performance fell short of the hopes which official statements had aroused. There had always been a generalised Maori disillusionment with ‘the Maori Affairs’, but this was now becoming even more widespread. The government, too, was frustrated at the DMA’s incapacity (or unwillingness) to engage fully with the new policies and ethos. In 1985, a ministerial review of the department had found that it had not adjusted sufficiently to the new political environment. It was still seeking to ‘do everything’ for the tangata whenua rather than give communities the resources to forge their own futures. No one familiar with the evolving ‘Maori policy’ discourse would have been surprised at the report’s recommendation that departmental policy should refocus to promote Maori self-development rather than state-provided welfare. This clearly required the widespread consultation which the NZMC and other organisations had long called for. Even if ministers failed to listen to Maori leaders on the need to protect their workers against the worst effects of deregulation and privatisation, consultation on many other issues did increase enormously as the fourth Labour government’s term progressed.20

Rangatiratanga was at the fore of these. June 1986 saw the release of another significant document in the history of the long Maori struggle for autonomy. This report, Puao-Te-Ata-Tu/Day Break, has been depicted (despite its official status) as putting forward ‘perhaps the most direct proposition to date from Maori to the government about power sharing’. It was the work of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Maori Perspective for the Department of Social Welfare, headed by Tuhoe kaumatua John Rangihau. The committee had been established in 1984 following accounts of institutional racism and other problems in the Auckland district office of the Department of Social Welfare. It carried out extensive consultation and travelled widely. Its report pulled no punches in its detection of a ‘major crisis’ if Maori socio-economic deprivation was not addressed adequately. Contextualising the department’s difficulties on racial issues within the history of colonisation, the reportpage 211 identified monocultural institutionalisation as a major modern impediment to progress.

The report prescribed ‘greater government recognition of Maori forms of social intervention and care giving’. Focusing on the welfare of children and young people, it recommended sweeping changes in departmental philosophy and practice. In calling for the use of Maori ways of resolving conflicts, it argued that the kin group was ‘an ideal site for conflict resolution’. The report emphasised that the department needed to recognise both the value of kinship and the role of kaumatua, and that Maori children fared best in their customary environments. Recognising that urbanisation had weakened traditional kin linkages, the report urged government assistance for strengthening them and reconnecting young Maori with the tribal structures of iwi, hapu and whanau.

The report’s conclusions also addressed wider issues which were reflective of general Maori concerns expressed during the committee’s consultations. The overall theme was that Maori communities needed to be integrally involved in addressing Maori problems and issues. Puao-Te-Ata-Tu argued that Maori were willing and able to assume responsibility for many of the disparate programmes and policies still primarily handled by officialdom, and pressed the government to work through, empower and resource Maori networks. Under the heading ‘Guiding Principles and Objectives’, the report recommended the government ‘attack all forms of cultural racism in New Zealand that result in the values and lifestyles of the dominant group being regarded as superior to those of other groups, especially Maori’. To this end, it was imperative that the Crown incorporate ‘the values, culture and beliefs of the Maori people in all policies developed for the future of New Zealand’.

The committee’s call for the incorporation of tikanga Maori into all government policies was to have considerable ramifications in the public sector. So, too, did its stress on the need for consultation with Maori groupings. But it noted that even if all its recommendations on these matters were to be followed, the results would still be inadequate. Consultation should only be seen as a prelude to meaningful negotiations. These should lead in turn to Maori collective organisations, large and small, retaking control of their own destinies in partnership with, rather than in subordination to, the state. What was particularly needed was ‘tribal responsibility’ for tribal affairs, as well as other forms of autonomous control by Maori of their own lives. The report, which discussed the Treaty of Waitangi at length in an appendix, essentially urged the Crown to negotiate partnerships with traditional Maori structures, ‘[s]haring power and authority over use of resources’. The Minister of Social Welfare, Anne Hercus, accepted the report’s findings regarding her own department,page 212 initiated a programme of change within it and set in motion processes which would result in legislative reform in 1989. These developments created, in turn, a precedent for other departments and heightened Maori expectations of fundamental change.21

There were, however, boundaries beyond which the Crown would not go. The rhetoric of ‘equality before the law’ and the realities of urbanisation which had fed into the rundown of the ‘Maori courts’, for example, precluded any serious chances of reviving parallel judicial institutions. In 1986, an advisory committee on legal services suggested that the Maori Land Court be restructured with a view to returning decision-making to tribal groupings. In 1988, Maori Land Court judges themselves supported tribal-based courts in a submission to the Royal Commission on Social Policy. Later that year the second part of a report commissioned by the Department of Justice, Moana Jackson’s The Maori and the Criminal Justice System: A New Perspective/He Whaipaanga Hou, proposed an autonomous parallel justice system for Maori, using both traditional tribal concepts of justice and social management techniques. These and similar proposals current at the time were all ignored or rejected.

20 Durie, Whaiora, p 60, p 85 (for ‘special significance’ and following quotes); Williams, More Power, pp 32–7; Henare, Denese, ‘The Ka Awatea Report: Reflections on its Process and Vision’, in Wilson, Margaret A and Yeatman, Anna (eds), Justice and Identity: Antipodean Practices, Wellington, 1995, p 55 (for ‘do everything’ quote).

21 Williams, The Too-Hard Basket, p 47 (for ‘perhaps the most direct proposition’ quote), pp 21, 47–9; Keenan, ‘The Treaty’, pp 213–4 (p 213 for ‘greater government recognition’ and ‘an ideal site’ quotes); McClure, A Civilised Community, pp 224–5; Metge, New Growth, p 25; Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Maori Perspective for the Department of Social Welfare, Puao-Te-Ata-Tu, Wellington, 1986, p 9 (for ‘attack all forms of cultural racism’, ‘the values’ and ‘[s]haring power and authority’ quotes); Orange, An Illustrated History, p 161; Nightingale, ‘Maori at Work’, pp 240ff.