Raglan move upsets Maoris

Press, 12 April 1979, Page 10

Raglan move upsets Maoris

PA Hamilton Raglan Maoris are furious about the latest move by the Minister of Lands (Mr V. S. Young) to settle the Raglan golf course dispute. He has directed the Maori Land Court to let him nominate to whom the golf course will be returned and to set his own conditions for that return. He also wants the nominated owners to pay $61,000 for land which they will not be allowed to occupy until the year 2035. This is the date of expiry for the Raglan Golf Club’s lease of the land, which the Minister is demanding the owners validate as a condition of a proposed vesting order. The lease was found to be invalid last year by Mr A. D. Richardson, S;M. when he decided trespass charges against 17 supporters of the Tainui-Awiro owners. They had been arrested during a protest of 150 people calling for a return of the land, which was confiscated for the war effort in 1941, but never returned as promised in a verbal agreement. If the Tainui-Awiro people refuse to validate the lease, the golf course land could be offered to the Tainui Trust Board and, failing that, to any other party that the Minister nominates. A T a i n u i-Awhiro spokesperson, Mrs Eva Richard, has begun preparing to contest the terms of the proposed ves-

ting order, but has said that, failing this, there would be a larger confrontation than any yet held over a land issue. “I am having difficulties restraining the young people from acting now,” she said. Te Matakite O Aotearoa’s chairman, Mr Doug Sinclair, has promised to take the issue to a world court if the TainuiAwhiro people do not get justice in their own country. “We are going to make this into a case why New Zealand should not be allowed to compete at the next Olympic Games,” he vowed. “They are using the Maori Land Court to rubbish the Maori people — the only difference between what is happening in New Zealand and South Africa is that here they do things under a cloak of goodwill, equity and conscience,” Dr Sinclair said. Mrs Rickard said she discovered only recently the Minister’s intention to have the lease validated. This was a complete “about face” from his offer in July to resite the golf course, she said. She is angry that Mr Young chose to stipulate the conditions of return when the Maori Affairs Act empowered him to put the matter entirely in the hands of the Maori Land Court Judge. She would have been quite happy to “battle it out with the Judge,” she said, but instead her hands

were tied as the Minister had directed the court to “rubber stamp” his vesting order application when it next sat in June. She said it was the Tainui-Awhiro who should be paid $61,000 in compensation for damage caused by delinquent tenants and the loss of use of ancestral lands over 35 years that had scattered her people away from Raglan.

Mrs Rickard intends io take the issue to the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. After the legal battle she intends to carry out threats to plough up the golf course and occupy the urupas (sacred burial grounds). She will call all Tainui Awhiro descendants back to Raglan next month to decide on action.