The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, JANUARY 10th, 1940. MAORI IRRESPONSIBILITY!

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 256, 10 January 1941, Page 4

The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, JANUARY 10th, 1940. MAORI IRRESPONSIBILITY!

PROBABLY the. most outstanding feature of the evidence taken at the recent sitting- of the Manpower Committee 'in Whakatane was the continued expression by farmerappellants of the unreliability of Maori labour. "I have one relieving- man, but he's a Maori and there's no knowing bow long he will stay." This expression was used by d.oz-> ens of short-handed farmers who were seeking exemption or extension of time for their employees. The unfortunate part of the whole position is that the Maoris will freely admit their own inability to accept a steady job and see it through. A Maori labourer last week informed a representative of this paper that to be a good worker the Maori must be bossed; left to his own devices he simply shed, all responsibilities and never hesitated to select pleasure, if it happened along, at the expense and the neglect of duties which meant his very livelihood. Here is a weakness which

cannot be blamed on the hereditary for the Maori prior to

the white man's advent was industrious to a degree asi ' testified by the observations of Captain Cook and all the early explorers. If therefore, ns alleged, this trait of unsettled indolence does exist, it is a legacy of the days of Hater colonisation when the Maor.i by dint of the easel whereby he was able to obtain the necesities of life; by the simple trading of a couple of thousand acres of native land, learnt to dispise the industry of cultivation by the ko, or the patient toil of canoe building or whare construction. The Maori women too forsook the weaving looms of their ancestors favour of the tawdry coloured cloth and geega.ws offered in profuse. abundance by traders in return) for curios, flax and land-right. It is from this period thajt most of the undesirable Maori features spring, and it is a self-made rod for the Pakehas back that he did not take steps to enlighten, the natives he had plundered, by teaching them the methods of agriculture, industry and production. The average Maori having squandered the Pakeha money over three, or four generations, now finds himself landless and with very little inclination to work on his own initiative. The Pakeha has successfully farmed and worked tihe Hand of his ancestors; it is therefore to the Pakeha that he looks for example and instruction. The efforts of the Government to introduce schemes, examples of which we have several in the vicinity of Whakatane, are laud t ablc enough but they do not apply to the type of young Maori who finds himself at a loose end, after leaving school, eligible to earn high wages and tempted by all the vices which will speedily undo his earlier discipline and training. A few years of this, and we discover him without ties to home or trade, picking up casual work when it pleases him, dropping it just as easily and generally leading a,, restless raving existence: with no sense of the morrow or, care: what ! itJ may bring. Thus the farmers impression of t/hjef Maori labourer; strong, husky and willing for just so long .as it pleases him to be so, but governed by that lack of balance and application which gives him no permanancy. It would be folly to say that there are not refreshing examples which disprove this rule, but they are in the minority, and it remains for these men and others like them to teach their fellows the lost art of initiative and progress. The Pakehas themselves coukl likewise do much but unfortunately the example of the average European w r ho contacts the Maoris is calculated to merely send them further down the negative track where drink and general loose ness combine to undermine the splendid characteristics of a physionlly perfect ancestry. Perhaps we can look for better things; when the men of the Maori Battalion, so nobly doing their loyal work overseas, return home again and apply the lessons of .their Military discipline to their occupations in Givil life. If this be so then we can regard it as one of the many things for which the war has not been . fought in vaifi.