NATIVE LAND COURT ADMINISTRATION.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 153, 10 June 1884, Page 2

NATIVE LAND COURT ADMINISTRATION.

The supreme administration of this department has for some time past been most peculiar and erratic, in nautical parlance, “ Backing and filling,” and “ traverse sailing,” when a straight course was the best. In the Gazettes just issued, we find a Court notified for Hastings, near Napier, making the fourth Court in that district within a few months, with a few non-important cases to investigate. At each of these two Judges presided, and yet the complaint is “No Judges.” A further remarkably circumstance is the notifying all the Wairoa claims for the same Court at Hastings, with a notice, “ That, if the claimants so desire, the cases can be adjourned to Wairoa for hearing,” such a course as this is a most unreasonable one to say the least of it, as why should claimants from Poverty Bay and Wairoa have to go to Hastings to get their claims heard. The expense of attending Court, payment of the numerous fees demanded from the Natives in many cases far exceed the value of the land to each claimant admitted as an owner. The extreme inconsistency of the present Chief Judge’s conduct of his department shows one of two things, That either he is deficient in knowledge of the requirements of that department, or that the Government exercise too direct a control over his actions. Let the Government clean their own stables, ere they attempt to cleanse that of others.