though technically only 50,000 acres were confiscated – the Native Land Court had no role in determining customary title and the return of these lands to Maori.⁷ This afforded the Commissioners complete discretion in the award of lands and in the choice of factors used to make their decisions. It has been argued by historian Vincent O’Malley that rather than abandon the confiscation of the ‘three quarters’ returned and allow the Court to decide the title to these lands – a move which had the support of local Maori – the Act allowed the return of lands ‘by means of Crown grants through a process over which [the government] had complete discretion in terms of who the lands would be awarded to’, perhaps with the intention ‘enforcing] a kind of tenurial reform in the district’.⁸

The first three Katikati-Te Puna transactions were validated by the Tauranga District Lands Act 1867 and Tauranga District Lands Act 1868, although the primary function of these statutes was to validate the act of confiscation itself. O’Malley has also suggested that this legislation was ‘an implicit acknowledgment on the part of the Government that it had not … acted in accordance with the requirements of the New Zealand Settlements Act’.⁹ Furthermore, the original schedule of land was found to be ‘incorrect’. According to the 1867 Act’s schedule, lands that had been surveyed as part of the Katikati-Te Puna and confiscated blocks fell outside the confiscated district. The second Bill was introduced and then passed (the Tauranga District Lands Act 1868) with an amended schedule that incorporated the lands already surveyed.¹⁰

The 1867 Act was passed on 19 October 1867; so too was the Confiscated Lands Act 1867. The earlier New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 and the New Zealand Settlements Amendment and Continuance Act 1865 had outlined behaviour that would disqualify a person from receiving compensation, but the Confiscated Lands Act was specifically concerned with the redistribution of land confiscated from Maori to Maori. Section five of the 1863 Act declared that no compensation could be granted to any person who had carried arms against the Crown, ‘adhered to aided

⁷ This is covered more fully by O’Malley, ‘Aftermath’, pp. 11-16.

⁸ O’Malley, ‘Aftermath’, pp. 26, 35.

⁹ O’Malley, ‘Aftermath’, p. 20.

¹⁰ O’Malley, ‘Aftermath’, p. 21.