demands for 'idle Maori land' to be made available for settlement. Mackay, who had been specially hired under the legislation, was able to buy another 16,175 acres in the Hauraki district over the next two years. In 1909 the land legislation was overhauled once again. Direct purchase of Maori lands was opened more fully to private individuals but the power of the Government to prohibit such dealings, by Order in Council, while it negotiated with Maori was retained. Although the last phase of acquisition (under public works legislation) was now largely complete, the Government continued to utilise powers under section 363 of the Native Land Act 1909, to claim a monopoly of negotiation while making occasional purchases in the district, for purposes ranging from the acquisition of lands for soldiers' settlements, improvement of access, and sites for hospitals and schools.
The Crown's interest throughout this period was focused on the Hauraki Plains as the only extensive lands in Maori hands with potential to be turned into dairy farms, but the more active policy of acquisition and the deployment of officers to the district was almost certain to draw the remaining peninsula lands into the compass of purchase operations. Mair, Mackay, and other Government officers were thus able to acquire at least another 62,000 acres in the peninsula lands from 1890 to 1912. Of particular note was the Crown's willingness to buy reserves now that there was little else available (discussed at Chapter Three) and, at the prompting of the local politicians, business community, and mining interest, to purchase the best of what remained to Maori. The discussion here draws on the example of the Kuaotunu blocks where gold had been recently discovered and of township properties where Maori ownership was blamed for holding back development.
The impact of court and survey costs in the Hauraki Plains
This was a time of some economic distress for the Hauraki iwi. The expenses of defining title by means of the hearing process before the Native Land Court and the survey of boundaries had a particularly profound impact on their ability to hold onto remaining lands—more especially in the Hauraki Plains. The Government had long know that this area was particularly fraught with difficulties of title determination, being characterised by clashing colours of right: the one derived from conquest and consistent use; the other based on an argument of the pre-eminence of unbroken physical occupation. That evidence of dispute over right-holding was to be found both in the early reports of officers, and in the troublesome nature of the negotiations in the 1880s, which had been frequently interrupted by protests and resistance to survey. Nonetheless, the Crown pushed ahead, determined to have title defined in the last Hauraki territory under native tenure and the area opened to purchase and settlement.
Once the first obstacle had been cleared in the Hauraki Plains district—the definition of boundaries of Ngati Paoa blocks subject to the old raihana debts, and passage of those lands through the court—the dam was broken. Other iwi with rights in the district began to bring their lands through the court, signalling the breakdown of final opposition to the land court amongst the Hauraki people as the Kotahitanga ban collapsed, and as those groups who had formerly refused to accept its jurisdiction now gave way. Bitter rivalries were expressed in the ensuing cases, as Marutuahu, Ngati Haua, and the Ngati Hako
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