In relation to the Timber Floating Act 1873, and timber cutting generally, Crown counsel have submitted that the Crown was in a dilemma over the conflict between the rights of private landowners, ‘and the goals of State resource development’, and that it sought to balance those rights. Crown witnesses have submitted that it would be anachronistic to expect modern ideas about conservation to operate in the nineteenth century.

We accept that these arguments have some validity. We also acknowledge that some Maori were themselves active in advancing the mining and timber industries. But such arguments should not be taken too far. There was in fact an active forest conservation movement in New Zealand from at least the 1860s but its proposals either did not become law or if they did the law was poorly enforced. There is also evidence that the discharge of mining wastes was subject to much stronger controls in California and Victoria than it was in New Zealand, where mining law was more concerned to promote and encourage the industry than to regulate or restrain it.

While some Maori benefited in the short term from some aspects of the mining and timber industries there is also overwhelming evidence of damage, in both the short and the long term to their traditional resources, with very limited compensation. Nor, until very recently, was provision made for ongoing Maori involvement in resource management or their inclusion in the benefits of land development. Notwithstanding the article 2 guarantees, Maori concerns about damage to their resources, expressed consistently in petitions and in parliamentary inquiries, were almost always the Crown’s last priority. We therefore find that the Crown’s duty of active protection of Maori rangatiratanga over valued resources was often not honoured in Hauraki.

ES.14 Socio-economic Impacts

We have studied the demographic evidence submitted by claimant witnesses and note that, according to that evidence, of the 10,000 Maori who reported affiliation to Hauraki iwi in 2001, only 19 per cent live in the inquiry district. Moreover, Hauraki iwi members make up only about 15 per cent of the Maori population resident in the inquiry district, and several socio-economic indices show them still to be disadvantaged relative to Maori of other iwi and non-Maori. The evidence supports the claimants’ view that many Hauraki Maori moved out of the district early - from the early twentieth century as well as after the Second World War - and settled in the Waikato and Auckland districts where 67 per cent now reside. We believe their out-migration was largely a consequence of their having insufficient usable land and employment opportunities in Hauraki. Competition for employment from non-Maori was evident since the gold rushes. The evidence relating to Maori health and housing from the late nineteenth century till after 1945 shows that Hauraki Maori were among the most