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Maori and the State: Crown-Māori relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa, 1950-2000

Regional and National Representation

Regional and National Representation

Few would have predicted such rapid international developments – or the extent to which they would be taken up in New Zealand – in the immediate aftermath of the Hunn report. This had implicitly dismissed rangatiratanga in favour of assimilationist socio-economic progress, in an official climate in which advancement and tribalism were seen as incompatible. There was little initial opposition from any quarter, with Maori grateful for its major thrust of state-assisted ‘uplift’. The most the Crown would concede in response to that degree of criticism which did arise in the early 1960s was to take into account the insistent Maori call for better consultation. This occurred partly through ad hoc procedures implemented in specific policy arenas. But with increasing Maori disillusionment at the lack of systemic ways of getting Maori needs, requests and suggestions attended to, there was clearly room for a more structured approach. Given that there was already enormous pressure to endorse fully the recent informal developments at regional and national level in the official committee system, Crown proposals for reform centred on finessing the plans already developed under Labour. There was little internal opposition within the state, as most advisers had come to the position that the proposals were in the Crown’s interest as well as those of Maori. Since the case for reform had been made by the Hunn report, a mandate could be argued to exist.

Legalising representation at regional and national levels of Maoridom would, it was hoped, inject new vigour into an official committee system discernibly flagging in enthusiasm after the failure of the flaxroots Ratana/Labour organisations to get ‘their own’ government to deliver anything much by way of recognising rangatiratanga. A quarter of the 80 tribal executives and 440 tribal committees were officially deemed ‘inactive’ before the fall of Nash’s Labour government. Entire areas had no functioning committees, nor were cities and large towns comprehensively covered. Moreover, the National government believed that reviving the work of the official committee structure would also provide it with an opportunity to increase its own influence among Maori.

With the election in 1960 having put paid to the structural plans Labour had been formulating, Hunn took the lead in pushing for swift statutory recognition for regional and national groupings above the tribal committees and executives. On his advice, the new Minister of Maori Affairs consulted the unofficial Dominion Council of Tribal Executives and was quickly convincedpage 108 on grounds of both merit and politics. The Maori seats remained impregnably Labour, however disappointed its Maori followers at their party’s failure to recognise rangatiratanga when it held office. National was therefore disposed to seek political capital within Maoridom by other means. A national body representing Maoridom, certainly if the reassuringly non-militant unofficial council was anything to go by, was likely to provide ‘an alternative leadership system at the centre with which the Government could have more sympathy than with the 4 Labour Maori MPs’. Moreover, such an organisation could be established in ways which might contain, even harness, rangatiratanga. Officials’ advice, then, gelled with political expediency. Henare Ngata would later put the matter bluntly: ‘In 1961 there was an urge to set up an organisation to give voice to the National Party interests’.28

Ministers were quickly persuaded that a national statutory body based on representation from regional councils could not be seen, as it had been in the 1940s and early 1950s, as potentially threatening to indivisible sovereignty. It would constitute no more than the sum of its parts: the now-weakened traditional tribal system, often led by conservative elders, and the increasing amount of organised Maori representation in the cities and towns, generally of pan-or non-tribal nature. A national body might usefully provide Maori viewpoints which differed from those of the Maori MPs, whose positions were underpinned by the mass, non-tribal Ratana movement. It would also, no doubt, be useful in more efficiently relaying governmental intentions and requirements back to Maori. It might be of particular assistance in implementing the Hunn recommendations, and could act as an early warning device if Maoridom was finding difficulties with aspects of policy.

The new government accepted officials’ advice that the plans for a national structure not be taken before Parliament until consultation with Maori had occurred. A major hui of leading Maori was convened by Hanan in June 1961, a number of delegates chosen for their political conservatism – indeed some key rangatira present were prominent National Party members or supporters. Attendees emphasised that if those aspects of the Hunn report which Maori supported were to be properly implemented, improved modes of communication between Maori and the Crown at all levels needed to be cemented in place. Since this gelled with the views of the official representatives, there was ready agreement over the type of enabling legislation required to legitimate regional-level Maori councils and a national body. The now four-tiered organisation would be deemed to represent legally all of Maoridom. Government intentions to establish it were foreshadowed in Parliament that same month. The various moves ‘to complete the committee structure’ for Maoridom were declared to have been carried out ‘on the initiative of the Maori people themselves’ and to constitute a true reflection of their wishes.

page 109

In October 1961, Hanan introduced legislation to amend the 1945 legislation governing the official committee structure, and support by Labour and its MPs reflected bipartisan consultation. The Maori Social and Economic Advancement Act Amendment Act passed that same month. It authorised a New Zealand Maori Council of Tribal Executives and regional District Maori Councils of Tribal Executives. Each of the three higher levels of the revised structure was elected from the layer below, extending the democratic ethos of the 1945 system. There was no attempt to remove the language of tribalism, despite the many urban organisations which had arisen since the original legislation and however much the Maori future was seen by the Crown to be urban and detribalised. This decision was ostensibly an indication of respect for the traditional Maori structures from which the official national leadership would be drawn, including men with public links to the National Party. Retention of tribal terminology, then, arose from the consultation processes. But the thrust of government policy did not change. The amending legislation was, in the words of the chronicler of the DMA, ‘far from a charter of Rangatiratanga’, and assimilation remained at the forefront of policy. ‘The Minister and Secretary still loomed large’ in the new structure, moreover, ‘retaining considerable powers of initiation and, in the case of District Councils, dissolution.’ Essentially, the government saw the restructured official committee system as a vehicle to effect its post-Hunn report policies. Within a few years, its intransigence over issues of assimilation and rangatiratanga were to meet much criticism from within Maoridom, and not just from those who depicted the concept of a statutory national body as yet another attempt at appropriation. Opposition would, in fact, arise from within the new national organisation itself.29

page 110

28 Hunn, Affairs of State, pp 152–3; McLeay (ed), New Zealand Politics, p 238 (for ‘alternative leadership system’ quote); Hazlehurst, ‘Maori Self-Government 1945’; Butterworth, ‘Men of Authority’, pp 7–9; Gustafson, Barry, The First 50 Years: A History of the New Zealand National Party, Auckland, 1986 pp 241–55, for Maori and the National Party.

29 Williams, John A, Politics of the New Zealand Maori: Protest and Co-operation, 1891–1909, Auckland, 1969, p 163; Pearce, G L, The Story of the Maori People, Auckland, 1968, p 148; Butterworth and Young, Maori Affairs, p 103; Walker, Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou, pp 204–5; Department of Maori Affairs, The Maori Today, 1964, ‘Welfare’ section (for ‘to complete’ quote); Butterworth, ‘Men of Authority’, pp 9–11 (including ‘charter’ and ‘dissolution’ quotes).