Responsibility for Race Harmony Rests with Every Individual

The Secretary for Maori Affairs, Mr. J. K. Hunn, told Congress he looked forward to the day when racial integration would have gone far enough in New Zealand to allow for the abolition of the Department of Maori Affairs and the Maori Education Foundation.

The responsibility for improved race relations rests on every individual, Mr. Hunn told the annual congress of the New Zealand University Students Association at Curious Cove.

The secretary defended State action to help improve Maori education, job opportunities and social status. But, he said, New-Zealand had just about all the machinery it needed for organised State and community action to raise the Maori's social position.

"Have we not," he asked, "reached the point where any further action that waits to be done to that end is a matter for each of us individually and not for organised groups? Fortunately it is quite a simple matter-nothing more than the act of being a good neighbour."

"The more there is of social 'togetherness' in private life the less room will remain for public action instead," Mr. Hunn said.

"On this reasoning I hope to see both the Department of Maori Affairs and the Maori Education Foundation fold up and fade away in my lifetime."

Within 40 years 500,000 Maoris will be living in towns, Mr. Hunn said. "All the neighbourly qualities we possess will be summoned into action. If we fail this test it will be a pity, 500,000 pities."

The secretary responded to criticism that Government action is patronising and demoralising to the Maori by asking: "How can that be when the Maori himself is a keen partner in the deal?"

In fact, he said, participation in inter-racial committees working on local projects for the Government was helping to give self-confidence to Maoris.

The number of Maori candidates in the 1962 local body elections was proof of this, he said. "And the success of so many of them on polling day did credit to the pakeha sense of fair play in electing them on their merits."

"One of the best features of all joint activity of this kind is that it educates the pakeha about the Maori in the course of raising the level of Maori education," Mr. Hunn said. "We are beginning to realise that we know little enough of Maori culture and it would have a tonic effect if we interested ourselves in it a bit more."

Citing the £600,000 raised in the first year of the Maori Education Foundation, Hunn asked: "Is this not John Citizen's answer to the occasional objection that nothing should be done for the Maori?"

"The art of government is to meet special needs in special ways, and it is nowhere more manifest than in the field of education," he said. "Why, then, should the undeniably special needs of Maori education be alone excluded from special attention?"

Some resistance had developed to the department's trade training programme for young Maoris, he said. "The cry is 'What about the pakeha?' Well, what about him? The pakeha has been around a long time in western civilisation and is quite capable of looking after himself; the Maori boy and his parents have not and are not."

"Extra trade training facilities for Maoris are not advocated out of sheer goodness of heart," he said. "They are conceived to prevent so much talent from gravitating to the unskilled labour force of the country and to help the Maori fill his proper quota in every walk of life, for the good of society as a whole."

"New Zealand spends a million pounds a year helping underdeveloped peoples in other countries," Mr. Hunn said. "The Maoris are under-developed people right here in this country."

When a Maori family moves into a neighbourhood and pakehas ask "Will he be a good neighbour?" they are asking themselves the wrong question, Mr. Hunn said. "The right question is what sort of neighbour will we be to him, because the onus rests on us: and his attitude will be reciprocal. Good neighbours, good friends, good race relations—the logic is elementary."