I.—3a.

W. PERRY.

39

of the total claims put down as £330,000. That opinion was given by him to the Board. He says there, " I do not think that the Board can consider any claims by creditors of the company as distinct from a claim by the company itself." And in the last paragraph he says, "In view of my opinion in regard to what claims the Board can deal with, I will now review the various claims made, and when I denote the words ' claim against the company only ' I mean that they are not claims that should be considered by the Board at all, but may be considered if put in as part of the company's claim,." That is the reason why the Tongariro Company in the first place made a claim for £330,000. I wish to say here that the Tongariro Company, of course, has no objection whatever to creditors coming before the Committee, either personally or by their representatives, and putting their claims before it individually. On the contrary, the company is obliged to my friends, Mr. Cooke, Mr. Mackenzie, Dr. Chappie, and others, who have come here and personally advocated their claims. The Tongariro Company was bound, in my opinion, by Mr. Izard's opinion to include all those claims in the one sent to the Board, and to include them all in the claim which they have put before the Committee this morning. Although the Tongariro Company has not included in its claim that of the Duncan syndicate for £13,800, I wish it to be clearly understood that the company has no quarrel with the syndicate. On the other hand, the company appreciates to the full the great, and almost successful, efforts made by the Duncan syndicate to rescue the company and its assets. Under the scheme as formulated by the Duncan syndicate the company would have received £60,000 worth of fully paid up shares of £1 each in the new company to be formed, which would have recouped practically the whole of its original capital of £60,000. So that the company, although it cannot include in the list of its creditors the Duncan syndicate's claim, desires me to express to the Committee its sense of obligation to the Duncan syndicate for the work that syndicate did. Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen, all those who have come before you in this Committee have agreed that they do so as suppliants, and that they have no legal claim. The Tongariro Company entirely adopts that attitude, and we say at the outset that the company either by itself or its creditors has no legal claim, with the possible exception of the legitimate claim existing under the Egmont Box Co.'s agreement which has been put before you by Mr. Weir. But we come before the Committee because we are invited by Parliament to do so. And here may I express the appreciation of the people I represent to Parliament and the Government for having referred these matters by a " short-cut," if I may use the term, to this Committee, instead of our having to do so by going to the trouble of preparing a cumbersome petition. When I sav that we are invited to come before you I refer of course to section 29 of the Act of last year, subsection (6) (a) of which reads as follows : — Tlie Aotea District Maori Land Board is hereby constituted the lawful agent of the Native owners of the lands mentioned in or affected by the agreements referred to in subsection (!) hereof [That is the agreement originally made between the Tongariro Company and the Natives] and each of the said lands respectively, to take all lawful ways and means to recover possession of the said lands or any of them, to prevent, or recover damages for any trespass, waste, or other injury on or to the said lands or any of them, and to commence, prosecute, or enforce or to defend or oppose any action or other legal proceedings and demands of or concerning the said lands or any of them or in respect of the timber-trees, timber, and other wood or flax and minerals thereon, and with the consent of the Native Minister to settle, adjust, compound, submit to arbitration, or compromise all actions, accounts, claims, or payments arising out of the agreements mentioned in subsection (1) hereof which are bow or hereafter pending between the said owners or any of them and any other person or persons whatsoever in such manner as the Board shall think fit. Subsection (b) says,— The Minister of Lands may authorize the said Maori Land Board to act as his agent in respect of the interest acquired by the Crown in any such lands for all or any of the parties mentioned in this subsection, and the Maori Land Board shall thereupon be deemed to be the lawful agent of the Crown in respect of the matters in which it is so authorized to act. We find that the Maori Land Board is appointed the agent of the Natives and of the Crown in this matter. The history of the transaction has been dealt with earlier, and the Committee is perfectly familiar with it. It is set out in the report sent in in 1929 by the officers of the Forestry Department to the Commissioner of State Forests ; it has been printed, and has been before the Committee on previous occasions. That report shows that from time to time extensions of the period under the agreement were granted by the Government, sometimes with the consent of the Natives in the first case, although sometimes apparently without their knowledge, to the Tongariro Timber Co. We come first to the longest extension of time granted in 1915 by the moratorium. As Dr. Chappie told you this morning, that was not the only moratorium by any means granted in 1915, and Sir Apirana Ngata made the point, quite pertinently, that the moratorium protected the company and did not protect the Natives, because it possibly deprived them of any remedy they had against the Government. But I would like to remark that necessarily at that time there was interference with many things by Governments that passed such legislation, and that moratoriums existed all over the Empire, and probably all over the world, and in very many instances people were adversely affected by the operation of such moratoriums. The moratorium, passed in 1915 for the protection of the rights of the company, to a certain extent possibly also conserved the rights of the Natives, and was only natural in the usual course of events during the war years. Let me refer to the section in the Act of 1915 whereby that moratorium was created. This is the recital — And whereas the said company has paid large sums of money in advance to the Native owners of the said land and to the said Board on account of royalties for timber to be cut on the said land, and has expended large sums of money on the necessary surveys for the construction of a railway through the said land and incidentally thereto. So you will notice that Parliament specifically stated in this Act the fact that the company has spent large sums of money in payment of royalties to Natives, and large sums in having surveys made, and so on.