Postscript

Our submissions are limited and we have referred mainly to Maori rights. But we emphasise that the position of the Maori is especially similar to that of Pacific Islanders (included under the term Polynesian for brevity's sake) because:

*Polynesians today, like the Maori before them provide a main source of cheap unskilled or less-skilled labour for the NZ economy.

*NZ government education assistance to the Islands people (like its country schools for Maoris) has never achieved equal opportunity for Polynesian — has perhaps never really considered equal achievement possible?

*NZ immigration procedures have too often prevented Polynesians from staying long enough to acquire more skills in NZ (in the same way, say, as NZ doctors, scientists and others who go abroad to acquire the skills they cannot learn at home) from taking such skills back to their home islands where, as in rural areas of NZ, capitalist development has in any case provided little scope for their use and from achieving equal earning power with the government-assisted European immigrants for whom fares are paid and homes provided. Island immigrant labour, on the other hand, imported for short periods to do necessary work (scrub-cutting, tobacco-harvesting etc) which NZ labour is now reluctant to do, usually have to refund their fares out of their wages to their employers.

*Island communities are given "independence" while the NZ government retains control of their purse-strings (as with Maori affairs and Maori moneys); so that, as a result, the plight of Islanders is attributed not to such government policies of phoney 'independence', but to the 'independent' island governments who (like Maori incorporations etc) find themselves ever deeper in debt to the NZ government or its agents.

*Maori and Island communities/ethnic minorities in NZ (unlike the Chinese, Indian, Greek etc) have mostly had no experience of money-geared, capitalist economies prior to their relations with Pakeha governments. This is their additional handicap.

*The attitude of many Pakehas to Islanders in NZ may be illustrated by statements of the Secretary of the NZ Department of Maori & Island Affairs (J.M. McEwen) — for example:

"The most undesirable feature of Island settlement in Auckland is the concentration of so many people in the centre of the city in the same areas which had a con-centration of Maori families 15 or 20 years ago. With housing assistance the Maoris have largely moved out to the suburbs and the problems they faced some years ago are now confronting the Islanders." (p. 79, Administration in NZ's Multi-racial Society, Brookes & Kawharu, 1967. Since 1967 there have of course been changes, but the fact remains that problems faced by Maoris are also subsequently faced by Islanders.)

"The Cook Islands are like a young fellow over 20 with no money. It is difficult both ways, for Dad and the boy. The Islands have attained their majority but they have to keep coming back to Dad. I do not thing we are failing in our obligations. We have provided enough for them to do a reasonable job. But they have not been doing it."

(quoted by A.P. Scherer, NZ Herald 28.12.1971, in article documenting why the Cook Islands, despite a sixfold increase in taxation of Islanders since the granting of 'independence' in 1965, were still forced to borrow from New Zealand but were only increasing their indebtedness) "In return for the latest aid already granted — $1,300,000 in addition to the annual $2,300,000 — Mr Henry and his Cabinet have reluctantly had to waive much of the substance of their self-governing status...."

— Reuter: 19.9.1972.