Budgeting

Te Ao Hou, November 1957, Page 50

Budgeting How could it best be advocated to our people as the proper way to set our daily lives? By the use of the graph system of division with each item cut to fit its proper place in the family income. That would be the method by which we could deliver our subject on the appropriate occasion. Certainly the idea is good we all agreed. But then, budgeting to the Maori is not new it is something that is inherent and only requires a re-awakening as to its suitability and usefulness to us the Maori of today. Let us turn back the clock six hundred years to the period when a fleet of canoes left the shores of Hawaiki and what do we see? Months and perhaps years of preparation for the journey across the vast oceans with only a small canoe to carry the manpower, the energy…the instruments…the stores of food, all within that limited space. Every item calculated to give its full capacity, every muscle trained and tested to its full ability. Sir Peter Buck in his “Vikings of the Sunrise” calls it the budgeting of resources. We can correctly assume that that was no hit or miss journey but maybe “Tangaroa” had some protecting influence on the safe conduct of those budget minded Polynesian Vikings. Nevertheless there is the lesson which we can all do well to remember.