Maori “Laziness” Report Denied

Press, Volume C, Issue 29502, 2 May 1961, Page 6

Maori “Laziness” Report Denied

(N.Z. Press Association) HAMILTON, May 1. A denial that he said at Rotorua that Maoris were too lazy to reach higher positions in the Public Service and in the professions as was reported from Rotorua, was made today by Mr K. Paramalingam, deputy Public Trustee for Malaya. Mr Paramalingam said he would like to correct the reported statement He had not at any time since his arrival in New Zealand two months ago noticed any signs of laziness on the part of the Maori people. What he said was that as a visitor he would be happy indeed to see the Maoris taking more advantage of the glorious opportunities that their country offered to them to reach the higher positions available. Mr Paramalingam added that he said this because he had found the Maori people whom he had met most charming and intelligent. He had thoroughly enjoyed his contact with them. He did hope that the Maoris would eventually achieve all that they desired and deserved .' and occupy positions of responsibility in New Zealand. He wished them the best of success in their aspirations. Mr Paramalingam said as a visitor it would be morally wrong for him to express any adverse opinions about the people he met in New Zealand. Tribal Executive “We don’t deny that some of us are lazy and that others have not taken proper advantage of opportunities, but our critic ought not to forget there is a proper perspective to take into account,” says a statement released today by the chairman of the Wellington district Maori Tribal Executive (Mr P. T. Watene).

The executive met at the week-end and resolved to reply to the deputy Public Trustee of Malaya. Mr Ki Paramalingam, whose reported “laziness” criticism last week of the Maori race came before the meeting. The executive in its statement says it supports the reply of the Minister of Maori Affairs (Mr Hanan) to Mr Paramalingam, who is in New Zealand studying administration methods affecting Maori land and ownership matters.

The statement adds: “Laziness is not the inheritance of the Maori, Malayan or European races, although individuals do possess that deficiency in their character. “The Maori is a minority race in New Zealand, the Malayan predominant in his country and still in the process of building on the administration formed during the colonial period which ended in recent years. "It follows, therefore, that

opportunity must be greater in his country for the Malayan who has been educated, or is a skilled or partly -skilled worker, than for the Maori in New Zealand, Here opportunities are more restricted in an administration which is not predominantly Maori. "Nevertheless, to gauge Maori ’laziness’ by Malayan standards is hardly reasonable. Would Mr Paramalingam say the Malayan was less ‘lazy’ than the Chinese Malayan?

“No-one is more conscious of the shortcomings of the Maori than the Maori people themselves, but to measure the progress the race as a whole has made even in the comparatively short -postWorld War II period by the ‘laziness,’ which Mr Paramalingam says exists today, fails to show an adequate graps of all the circumstances, and the differing circumstances, in which Maori and Malayan live,” the statement says.