WHILE PAKEHA HUNGERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 719, 19 July 1929, Page 6

WHILE PAKEHA HUNGERS

MAORI STEPS BACK TO NATURE FACING UNEMPLOYMENT (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter) PARLIAMENT BLDGS., Today. In regard to the approach of problems to be faced in times of ' depression and unemployment, the Maori can exist better than the Pakeha, claimed the Minister of Native Affairs, Sir Apirana Ngata, in the House of Representatives today. He flips back a page or two in the Book of Time. All the native has to do, the Minister explained, is to step back half a generation, tighten up his belt and go on living with the natural resources at his disposal. The Minister reminded the House that although his race had suffered distress through general unemployment, not one member of it had been heard to “squeak” about it —not one. Unemployment, to the Minister’s mind, was due largely to the fact that New Zealand was past its pioneering stage. In regard to its development all the rough work had been finished, while the country was engaged in the process of clearing the surface for future scientific farming man. In the picture, but never in the Press, was the Maori who did the bush-whacking. The Maori had been one of the best pioneering farmers the world had ever seen, and it was the Maori who had done the rough work, directed by European brains and European finance, but the Maori had not received credit for it. "If unemployment, then, is due to the cessation of this pioneering work, who are among the chief sufferers?” asked the Minister. “I say the Maori.” The native, however, was equipped to face unemployment conditions. There was any amount of shell-fish and fresh water fish. The trouble with the Pakeha, under similar circumstances, was that he could not step back that distance and live in the same way. It was thus a good thing that the Maori had not been civilised to the extent that he need complain about living conditions in time of stress. The Maori had to take a back seat when the Pakeha sang about unemployment. If a gang were discharged from, say, a railway work consisting of 200 Europeans and 100 Maoris, the department would find fresh work for the 200 Europeans first. The Maoris could fish for themselves. Psychologically that was all right, because 100 Maoris could to a great extent live—exist —upon more slender sources than could the poor Pakeha. The Pakeha was out of tune with nature. If it happened that there was another 100,000 acres of first-class hush land required to be broken in one of the most helpless men would be the pakeha. Mr. W. E. Barnard (Napier): Question. The Minister said that the present generation was not of the calibre of its predecessor pioneering work. Mr. Barnard: What about 1914-1918? The Minister: That’s war. I don’t want to say anything about that. Mr. Barnard: Were they not the right stamp? The hon. member Is only guessing. Mr. Speaker called for order. The Minister strongly deprecated the practice of the State in not making any contribution to advances for Maori settlers. He said that attempts had been made with varying degrees of success by various Maori committees to carry out that policy, and that up to the present the whole of the finance had been paid by native accumulated funds which were administered by the Native Trust Office. On the average about a quarter of a million was available for loans from this fund to native settlers, and £50,700 had been advanced to natives on the East Coast, £19,000 to natives in the Bay of Plenty, and £34,757 to natives in the Bay of Islands. “But,” said sir Apirana, “let not the House flatter itself. It is not State money, but wholly Maori. The State has not put one penny into the advances to Maoris. Until Parliament supplements the funds it cannot ask the natives why they do not pay their rates, and why they do not assume their responsibilities.”