► It was appropriate for the Crown in the early 1860s to establish some form of commission or tribunal to clarify customary land rights rather than leave this to land purchase officials, but there was very little consultation with Maori or regard for Maori opinion as to the form and the practice of that tribunal, either at the outset or during the next 100 years.

► It was not unreasonable that customary tenure should be modified to meet the needs of the commercial economy, including the aspirations of Maori to farm their own land. But the extent and nature of that modification was far too drastic and owed little to Maori wishes. The titles created facilitated alienation of the land by sequential purchase of undivided individual interests in titles, followed by a succession of partitions. The system destroyed the traditional balance between individual and community rights, fostered factional division and frustrated rather than assisted Maori aspirations for commercial farming, either by individuals or groups. Instead, it created a sense of fatalism among Maori as to the land’s passing and a pauperising opportunity to obtain money for day-to-day needs by selling individual interests.

► As Crown witnesses have conceded, the Native Land Act 1873 (under which most Hauraki land was alienated) did not include an adequate mechanism for community control over either alienation or development of the land. The memorial of ownership created by that Act empowered title-holders to alienate the land and little else.

► About 70 per cent of Hauraki land was acquired by the Crown between 1870 and 1914, most of it under Crown monopoly through proclamations of Crown pre-emption in 1872 and 1874 and under the Government Native Land Purchases Act 1877, which meant that Maori were prevented from selling or leasing on an open market.

► The cost of securing land court titles (survey costs and court costs) commonly drew Maori communities into debt and eroded any potential advantage in securing the titles in the first place.

► The Native Land Act 1909 attempted to deal with the increasing fractionation of Maori land titles by allowing decisions to be made at ‘meetings of assembled owners’. This resulted in considerable areas being alienated by majorities on the night, even though they might not hold a majority of all interests in the blocks concerned.

► When the Stout-Ngata commission of 1906 to 1907 examined the situation in Hauraki, only about 15 per cent of the claim area remained in Maori ownership. The commissioners recommended that Hauraki iwi required virtually all remaining land for their own needs. The Crown nevertheless continued to purchase systematically in the district (including the compulsory acquisition of land in the Hauraki Plains drainage scheme) and facilitated a spate of private purchases in the period 1910 to 1929. There is no evidence of any attempt to reciprocate by reserving land for Maori dairy farming in the Hauraki Plains.