By Roger Childs

Highly inaccurate pro-Maori advocacy penned by Gurunathan for the Stuffers

The previous Kapiti District Mayor has taken up the mantle of Stuffer Joel Maxwell in writing dishonest pro-Maori articles for The Post and other Stuff papers. 

“In What Maori need more than their own Parliament is a Maori Economy” (The Post Monday 10 June 2024), Guru promotes Catherine Comyn’s book The Financial Colonisation of Aotearoa. (In pre-colonial times the Natives never has a concept of New Zealand as one nation, and the Maori never had called the country Aotearoa until the late 20th century.) 

He tries to draw an analogy between Mahatma Gandhi’s 1930 Salt March and the protest by some hundreds of Maori on Budget Day in Wellington.  He fails.

The East India Company (EIC) and from 1858 the British authorities wanted to have a monopoly over salt production and discourage local manufacture which where it happened was heavily taxed. It also discouraged self–sufficiency, Indian industries and promoted colonial exploitation of the local economy. He also maintains that the plight of the poor worsened. He compares the New Zealand Company (NZC) with the EIC, but the NZC was not the government of the country and although the Wakefields did help develop colonies in Wellington, Nelson, Wanganui and New Plymouth, it had limited influence over the Canterbury and Dunedin settlements, and none over other urban developments in Northland, Auckland and elsewhere.  

There is a Maori economy

From the time the British government took over New Zealand in 1840 many enterprising Maori developed their own flax mills, shipping businesses and horticultural industries. They were encouraged to do so by the authorities.

Experts estimate that today Maori companies and assets are worth well over $60 billion, mainly originating from the very generous and often unjustified Waitangi Tribunal grants to Maori tribes. 

What Comyn and Gurunathan think a “Maori economy” would do, is unclear. Would it develop its own schools, hospitals, retail business, industries, roads, railways, theatres, galleries, sporting facilities and banks? Who would pay to set them up and where would they operate? He mentions that the second Maori “king” Tawhiao set up a bank in the late 19th century but did he do the research which shows that this financial experiment was a disaster. Most Part-Maori today have more settler than Polynesian blood and are happy to continue using the services and business that other New Zealanders do.

Maori have made giant strides under colonial and government rule

The economic growth, social policies and infrastructure development under the colonial rule and later governments were hugely beneficial to Maori, and today, outside the diehard activities, the vast majority recognize this and would not have wanted it any other way.

Guru knows this and needs to stop writing nonsense about the history and possible future development of the country. He should read up on New Zealand history with Michael King’s seminal Penguin History of New Zealand being a good starting point. 

Relying on dubious interpretation of our country’s story by Comyn and others is not a good basis for providing newspaper readers with objective observations on how history has shaped the lives of part-Maori today.