Post by Kiwi Frontline on Jun 27, 2018 6:33:14 GMT 12
Maori Land Use 3: Wild Claims and Realities
NGAI TAHU CLAIMS AND PROFIT MAKING
Continual bleating today about “loss” of land becomes an increasing chorus. Among the most flagrant is one from pale-faced, red-headed Sacha McMeeking, now no less than the Ngai Tahu member of the University of Canterbury Council. According to her, “the decision was to settle cheaply – accepting $170m when even the treasury value of dispossessed lands lay between $12 and $15 billion”. Note the word-twisting: what was sold eagerly is now “dispossessed” while the land today is nothing like the trackless waste of 1840.
And the process continues. In 2010, Ngai Tahu Corporation, registered as a charitable trust, sold Rakanui Station south of Kaikoura to Margaret Hyde, an American citizen, for several million dollars and in 2011, Ngai Tahu Forest Estates Limited, sold 18,252 hectares of central South Island land to a Swiss company for $22,888,888.[ii]
NOR WERE THIS TRIBE UTILISING MUCH OF WHAT THEY CONTINUED TO OWN. THE 1896 CENSUS REVEALED THAT NGAI TAHU WERE CULTIVATING A MERE 857.5 ACRES OF 45,000 IN THEIR POSSESSION.
Dover Samuels speaking before the Waitangi Tribunal stated: “Maori also lost their land, their fisheries, and the rest of their culture” and “unlawful actions by the Department of Maori Affairs [led] to loss of land.”[iii] – wild generalities ignoring legitimate transactions freely entered into.[1]
LAND VALUE THEN AND NOW
Today 5.6% of our land remains under Maori title, just 4% having been confiscated from rebel tribes in the colonial period. Though precise figures are not available, a considerable amount of land held under fee simple has Maori owners. Arowhenua Trophy winners (for Maori farmer of the year) Dean and Kristen Nikora (2008) and Barton and Nukuhia Hadfield (2013), I surmise, among them.
One Potonga Neilson, whose opinions are often aired in the “Wanganui Chronicle”, claims that the Taranaki tribes should receive $24 billion![iv] Peter Dey in “Sunlive”[v] states that “the value of land wrongfully taken from Maori by past governments is more than $30 billion. Fair compensation is very simple. It returns what was taken or enough money to buy the equivalent of what was taken.”
Apart from Dey’s wild claims of land “wrongfully taken”, he blatantly omits the critical point that the value of land today is almost wholly owed to the hard labour and investment of settlers and of successive governments in roads, drainage, irrigation, wharves and other infrastructure.
SOLD FOR WHAT IS WAS WORTH AT THE TIME
Whether that land is worth $30 billion today is utterly beside the point. It was sold for what it was worth at the time. Governor Fitzroy, not our most successful governor, did get it exactly right on this point: ‘What is it that makes land valuable? It is labour … in addition to the price of the land it is for bringing out labourers, and tools, and seeds, and cattle, in ships; for … roads, and bridges, and surveys, and many other things. The payment for the land only is very small.”[vi]
Tory, E.G. Wakefield and Whig, Normanby agreed on this aspect. In Wakefield’s words, land was to be sold to settlers at ‘a sufficient price’. This price was indeed somewhat more than that paid to Maori owners for the raw land. In providing funds for infrastructure it was the equivalent of property rates today.
IT MAY BE NOTED ALSO THAT WHEN IN DUE COURSE RATES WERE LEVIED, OWNERS OF MAORI LAND WERE AT TIMES REQUIRED TO PAY ONLY HALF THE STANDARD RATE OR EXEMPTED ENTIRELY FROM IT.
The gravy-trainers today conveniently forget this favoured treatment of Maori landowners.
(To be continued.)
[1] This was part of a wider submission which received wide publicity, asking for an apology for the corporal punishment of children for speaking Maori at school. It is a glaring example of when telling less than half the truth is worse than lying. What Samuels omitted saying is (1) the policy of speaking only English in schools was a consequence of petitions from Maori parents. In the 1870s, Maori MP Takamoana sought legislation to ensure that Maori children were taught only in English. Several petitions in a similar vein were taken to Parliament. In 1877 Wi Te Hakiro with the support of 336 signatories sought an amendment to the Native Schools Act to require teachers in Maori schools to be ignorant of the Maori language and (2) that in the days in question, corporal punishment was used universally for any breaking of school rules, whatever pupils’ racial background. Any kind of corporal punishment of children is repellent but that is how it was.
[1] "The Press”, p. C5, 2nd July 2011
[ii] “Committee against foreign control of Aotearoa”, August 2011
[iii] Dover Samuels, “Northern Advocate”, 5th September 2015
[iv] Potonga Neilson, “Wanganui Chronicle”, 17th June 2014
[v] Peter Dey, “Sunlive”, 26th May 2017
[vi] Robert Fitzroy, Official Report, September 1844, quoted by Ian Wishart, “The Great Divide, 2012, p.210
kapitiindependentnews.net.nz/maori-land-use-3-wild-claims-and-realities/
NGAI TAHU CLAIMS AND PROFIT MAKING
Continual bleating today about “loss” of land becomes an increasing chorus. Among the most flagrant is one from pale-faced, red-headed Sacha McMeeking, now no less than the Ngai Tahu member of the University of Canterbury Council. According to her, “the decision was to settle cheaply – accepting $170m when even the treasury value of dispossessed lands lay between $12 and $15 billion”. Note the word-twisting: what was sold eagerly is now “dispossessed” while the land today is nothing like the trackless waste of 1840.
And the process continues. In 2010, Ngai Tahu Corporation, registered as a charitable trust, sold Rakanui Station south of Kaikoura to Margaret Hyde, an American citizen, for several million dollars and in 2011, Ngai Tahu Forest Estates Limited, sold 18,252 hectares of central South Island land to a Swiss company for $22,888,888.[ii]
NOR WERE THIS TRIBE UTILISING MUCH OF WHAT THEY CONTINUED TO OWN. THE 1896 CENSUS REVEALED THAT NGAI TAHU WERE CULTIVATING A MERE 857.5 ACRES OF 45,000 IN THEIR POSSESSION.
Dover Samuels speaking before the Waitangi Tribunal stated: “Maori also lost their land, their fisheries, and the rest of their culture” and “unlawful actions by the Department of Maori Affairs [led] to loss of land.”[iii] – wild generalities ignoring legitimate transactions freely entered into.[1]
LAND VALUE THEN AND NOW
Today 5.6% of our land remains under Maori title, just 4% having been confiscated from rebel tribes in the colonial period. Though precise figures are not available, a considerable amount of land held under fee simple has Maori owners. Arowhenua Trophy winners (for Maori farmer of the year) Dean and Kristen Nikora (2008) and Barton and Nukuhia Hadfield (2013), I surmise, among them.
One Potonga Neilson, whose opinions are often aired in the “Wanganui Chronicle”, claims that the Taranaki tribes should receive $24 billion![iv] Peter Dey in “Sunlive”[v] states that “the value of land wrongfully taken from Maori by past governments is more than $30 billion. Fair compensation is very simple. It returns what was taken or enough money to buy the equivalent of what was taken.”
Apart from Dey’s wild claims of land “wrongfully taken”, he blatantly omits the critical point that the value of land today is almost wholly owed to the hard labour and investment of settlers and of successive governments in roads, drainage, irrigation, wharves and other infrastructure.
SOLD FOR WHAT IS WAS WORTH AT THE TIME
Whether that land is worth $30 billion today is utterly beside the point. It was sold for what it was worth at the time. Governor Fitzroy, not our most successful governor, did get it exactly right on this point: ‘What is it that makes land valuable? It is labour … in addition to the price of the land it is for bringing out labourers, and tools, and seeds, and cattle, in ships; for … roads, and bridges, and surveys, and many other things. The payment for the land only is very small.”[vi]
Tory, E.G. Wakefield and Whig, Normanby agreed on this aspect. In Wakefield’s words, land was to be sold to settlers at ‘a sufficient price’. This price was indeed somewhat more than that paid to Maori owners for the raw land. In providing funds for infrastructure it was the equivalent of property rates today.
IT MAY BE NOTED ALSO THAT WHEN IN DUE COURSE RATES WERE LEVIED, OWNERS OF MAORI LAND WERE AT TIMES REQUIRED TO PAY ONLY HALF THE STANDARD RATE OR EXEMPTED ENTIRELY FROM IT.
The gravy-trainers today conveniently forget this favoured treatment of Maori landowners.
(To be continued.)
[1] This was part of a wider submission which received wide publicity, asking for an apology for the corporal punishment of children for speaking Maori at school. It is a glaring example of when telling less than half the truth is worse than lying. What Samuels omitted saying is (1) the policy of speaking only English in schools was a consequence of petitions from Maori parents. In the 1870s, Maori MP Takamoana sought legislation to ensure that Maori children were taught only in English. Several petitions in a similar vein were taken to Parliament. In 1877 Wi Te Hakiro with the support of 336 signatories sought an amendment to the Native Schools Act to require teachers in Maori schools to be ignorant of the Maori language and (2) that in the days in question, corporal punishment was used universally for any breaking of school rules, whatever pupils’ racial background. Any kind of corporal punishment of children is repellent but that is how it was.
[1] "The Press”, p. C5, 2nd July 2011
[ii] “Committee against foreign control of Aotearoa”, August 2011
[iii] Dover Samuels, “Northern Advocate”, 5th September 2015
[iv] Potonga Neilson, “Wanganui Chronicle”, 17th June 2014
[v] Peter Dey, “Sunlive”, 26th May 2017
[vi] Robert Fitzroy, Official Report, September 1844, quoted by Ian Wishart, “The Great Divide, 2012, p.210
kapitiindependentnews.net.nz/maori-land-use-3-wild-claims-and-realities/