Problems in administration of gold field agreements, 1869-1879
[pp. 167-172] The Government's administration of the revenues was plagued by problems of lack of accountability and long delays in paying out the sums which were due. Maori found that sole control was in the hands of the Government, but that the Government did not 'care to watch [their] interests Instead, Maori had to pay much of the cost of administering the payments but without obtaining any real control over that process. `Native gold field revenues' were under intermittent threat throughout the nineteenth-century, either mishandled, ignored, or deliberately undermined by both legislation and administration. The result was that Maori, instead of being treated as partners in the gold field's development, constantly had to defend their entitlements under the cession agreements, or petition for proper payment.
Chapter Four: Policy, Legislation, and Land Purchase, 1865-1885
Chapter Five discusses Crown land purchase policy from 1865 to the 1880s in some detail. In these years an estimated area of at least 330,000 acres of Hauraki core lands was acquired by the Government.
The general impact of the Native Land Court
[pp. 175-184] Underlying this Government success were the changes and stresses caused to tribal tenure by the introduction of the Native Land Court. Not only did the nature of title, derived from the court in the first years of its operation, 'disinherit' the majority by vesting hapu lands in a few individuals, but Maori were entangled in expensive sittings and surveys. In fact, the costs of establishing title were so high that those best able to take a case to court were those who had sold already, or had a backer behind them. That sponsor might be either a Crown agent, or a private party, for after 1865 the Crown gave up its pre-emptive right, and private purchasers also began to make incursions in the Hauraki land holdings. Of particular note in this context, was the acquisition by private parties of the blocks adjoining confiscated lands on the western shores of the Firth where the Native Land Court had quickly followed up on Compensation Court activity; and the purchase by sawmilling concerns of the freehold of a number of large-scale blocks in the Whangapoua and Mercury Bay area, from the handful of grantees named in the title. One prominent sawmiller, C.A. Harris, in the Whangapoua district acquired at least eight blocks comprising over 24,000 acres from fewer than ten grantees in the period 1867-1876.
The Hauraki area did not figure prominently in Government examination of abuses and costs of the Native Land Court system. Nonetheless, there are indications in the record that some sections of Hauraki were soon caught in the spiral of debt engendered by court and survey requirements, and a misuse of the court system in which Government officers sometimes participated. The Haultain Commission, for instance, heard evidence of how
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