1953 Maori Affairs Act

In 1949, the government fell to the National party. National as the farming party, inherited the land-grabbing traditions of its political forbears, both Liberal and Reform. The resumption of land leases and the encouragement of the formation of incorporations were unpalatable to that section of the community that had grown used to the ready availability of Maori land at cheap rates. Under the guise of consolidating the rambling mass of legislation affecting Maori land and affairs, the new Government passed the Maori Affairs Act of 1953, nullifying many of the benefits achieved under the previous legislation and marking a return to the policy of Maori land alienation.

Ominously, the Government in laying down its policies stood by the recommendations of the Native Land Commission of 1907: that the first consideration should be the encouragement of the Maori people to become industrious settlers. In pursuit of this objective, the right of compulsory purchase of “uneconomic” interests in Maori land by the State, at the States valuation, was reintroduced under the aegis of the Department of Maori Affairs. While land still continued to be developed by the department as hitherto (although the money available tended to be inadequate to meet the needs), the department reverted to its traditional role as land-purchase agent.

That is not to say the Maori Affairs legislation from this time on has been entirely hostile to the Maori people, for it has included advantageous provisions in respect of consolidation and clarification of titles (although this has sometimes been the prelude to alienations). But the dynamo that had driven the legislation in practice had been the powers it gave to the Maori Trustee for what is generally known as conversion, which is the right to purchase without the consent of the owners, interests worth less than $50 and then to dispose of them as the Trustee saw fit, and the powers to insist upon the utilisation and development of land by others when the Maori owners were unwilling or unable to exploit the land themselves to the greatest extent of its economic potential.

This principle of Maori land administration is fundamentally unjust to the owners of the land and makes mockery of the notion of trusteeship if the actual administration of the land is looked at. The Maori Trustee had considerable powers in consolidation of titles, which, if used to the full, would reduce the number of shares of land worth less than $50. Instead of using the power available in this way the Trustee chose to take over small interests. In some instances the department, as agent for the Trustee, had gone further and insisted, as a condition of making developmental capital available, that the owners agree to sell their ‘uneconomic’ land interests to the Crown.

Pakeha farmers, faced with such conditions of development assistance would have no hesitation in refusing the loan and seeking finance elsewhere, from either a bank or a stock and station agency. But this option was not open to many Maori farmers or communities who wished to develop their land. The normal loan agencies were reluctant to lend money to Maori owners because the often tangled state of land titles made them useless as security.They were forced to obtain their development assistance from the State, under terms very much to their disadvantage.

If, however, they chose not to exercise this option but to let the land lie unused, they were also courting disaster. In these circumstances the same legislation gave the local rating authority, usually made up of local farmers or their small-town financial counterparts, the right to apply to the Land Court to have the unused land put to use by the Maori Trustee. In practice, this has meant that the land would be leased to the local pakeha farmers who control the rating authority.

Between 1953 and 1962, 48,875 acres of land passed out of Maori hands by this means — 20,000 acres of it in Raglan County alone. Once leased in this way it was very difficult to recover into Maori ownership, as the legislation required that the leasehold rent the pakeha framer paid was based on the unimproved value of the land, but that at the completion of the term of the lease the Maori owners were required to compensate the lessee for the improvements he has made. This places the owners in a “Catch 22” situation.

For the law required that the rent they received during the term of the lease was ridiculously low, but that on the completion of the lease, because of this requirement, they did not have the capital needed to buy back the lease. They were therefore forced to renew it, again on unfavourable terms. Given that provisions of this sort lie at the root of the law, it is hardly surprising that between 1953 and 1967 Maori land once again began to slip out of Maori ownership at a rapidly accelerating rate.

Some communities and kin groups had found a way out of this dilemma, however. They had been turning increasingly to incorporation of land. This had meant a pooling of interests, although separate titles were retained, under a trust board to develop land as a total economic unit. It has considerable advantages—for instance, banks are much more ready to lend money to an incorporation, and thus the owners are not wholly reliant on the department for development capital. This has enabled them to make better loan terms. Perhaps even more important, an incorporation is not a company. In a company the board of directors has the power to dispose of assets, but in an incorporation the board of management consists of the trustees and not even a single owner can dispose of this interest without consulting with all. Nor can the Maori Trustee dispose of the the less-than-$50 interests he obtains, except to other members of the incorporation.

Incorporation attracts certain tax advantages, too, which frees more profit for reinvestment. The logical extension of incorporation was therefore the complete drying-up of the supply of alienated Maori land to pakeha farmers. This was politically unacceptable to the government and in 1967 it amended the law to ensure that this avenue of protection was no longer open to Maori landowners in retaining their patrimony.

1975 Treaty of Waitangi Act

In the 1970s a wave of protest actions such as the Māori land march in 1975 and the 1978 occupations of Bastion Point and Raglan golf course drew public attention to the Māori people’s sense of injustice. From 1980 annual protests on Waitangi Day impelled successive governments to make changes to legislation affecting Māori. Some of those changes gave greater recognition to Māori traditional law and custom.

In 1975 the Labour government established the Waitangi Tribunal and gave the Treaty of Waitangi recognition in New Zealand law for the first time. The Tribunal was empowered to investigate possible breaches of the Treaty by the New Zealand government or any state-controlled body, occurring after 1975. It was also empowered to recommend, but not enforce, remedies.

However, of course, Māori grievances related mainly to the Crown’s historical actions and omissions from the beginning of colonisation. Many Māori were unhappy with the Act. Most of the significant breaches of the Treaty, such as land confiscation in the New Zealand Wars, had occurred in the nineteenth century, and the Tribunal was powerless to investigate these. This became increasingly clear in the 1980s, when the tribunal gained momentum and mana under its second chair, Edward Taihakurei Durie. After great pressure, the Labour Party agreed to empower the tribunal to hear grievances dating back to 1840.

1985 Treaty of Waitangi Amendment Act

Following Labour’s election victory in 1984, a 1985 amendment to the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 allowed historical grievances going back to 1840 to be heard. The tribunal began to issue reports addressing a multitude of grievances – including land, environmental, cultural and language loss – based on historical events.

The tribunal’s findings generally upheld the grievances and its recommendations included significant transfer of land and money to Māori. Reparations for past losses were the more urgent because government economic policies had greatly increased unemployment, with Māori suffering disproportionately. But compensation issues essentially related to treaty principles, which (partly in response to judicial and tribunal findings) now implied development of a partnership relationship between the Crown and Māori.

Controversies affecting the treaty claims settlement process included: perceived ‘treaty fatigue’ among some Pākehā; settlements depicted by politicians and pressure groups as discriminatory in favour of Māori; settlement processes said to violate national unity or, alternately, multiculturalism; settlement policies said to benefit either a tribal elite or Māoridom alone, in a country where much mixing of peoples has occurred.

Settlements needed to reflect many factors, including size of claimant groups and the nature and degree of treaty breaches. The Crown had found it difficult to negotiate final settlements without claimants knowing what other tribes were to obtain. In 1994 the government imposed a $1-billion fiscal cap on total settlements. There was universal opposition among Māori to the cap and it was soon officially dropped. However, by then Waikato–Tainui had signed its settlement, worth 17% of the total ‘fiscal envelope’ at 1994 values. Thereafter relativities remained informally in place and iwi whose settlements included relativity clauses were to receive extra resources if settlements exceeded the billion-dollar figure, as adjusted for inflation from 1994.

The pace of settlements picked up speed when Labour’s Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen took over treaty negotiations in 2007, and continued under the National-led government’s Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Chris Finlayson from 2008. The rapid pace was criticised by some tribes who claimed that the government placed undue pressure on them to settle. Others, however, pointed to the long time they had waited to see their claims addressed.

Despite the many controversies, by the 21st century treaty settlements were accepted by the political mainstream and treated as normal events within New Zealand. This acceptance was helped because no more historical treaty claims were allowed to be lodged after 2008. The National-led government elected that year set 2014 as a target for final settlement for all such claims.

Settlements have been negotiated quickly by international standards and have involved significant resource transfers, as well as important cultural redress and apologies. New Zealand’s settlement processes are widely regarded internationally as an efficient model for the reconciliation of historical grievances and a relatively fair way of achieving historical justice for indigenous people who have suffered from colonisation and its aftermath.