The Values Party believes that the determination of Maori Affairs should be largely in the hands of Maori people.
Values Party policies that would affect Maori people incorporate this principle. (Refer: Education, Government Reform, Crime, Status of Women, Individual Rights.) As Values’ policies develop in other fields they will also incorporate this principle. Maori problems are frequently the problems of lower socio-economic groups. Our economics policy has been developed so that it will attack these problems at their fundamental, economic level.
New Zealand prides itself on a record of racial harmony and this pride is justified when New Zealand is compared with the situations in (for example) South Africa, Australia, and the United States. But relative to the goals of equal opportunity and equal achievement, racial equity and harmony in New Zealand is similar to the relationship between a shark and a terakihi.
New Zealand's history with respect to the Maori people is by and large one of exploitation and land-grabbing, of inadequate services especially for introduced social problems in health and education, of emasculation of maori tradition and culture. Dick Scott’s recent book, Ask that Mountain, gives an account of one episode in this history.
Present generations are not to blame for this history, but do share a responsibility to help redress its injustices. It makes no sense to claim that because we are not to blame we should do nothing about it.
The facts are clear: the Maori is not succeeding pakeha world. Why he is not is also clear: the drift to the cities has tended to erode his social and cultural institutions and thus the sense of personal identity from which he previously derived his mental stability and satisfactions.
The Values Party will do everything it can towards remedying the disadvantages that many Maori people are facing.
Pakeha society has tried to assimilate the Maori; it has tried to turn him into a brown-skinned European. Education and court appearance statistics show the extent of failure.
Assimilation has created much personal unhap- piness. Witi lhimaera’s story One Step Forward is Two Steps Back gives an insight into the sort of problems faced by the two-headed people, the pakeha Maori. Today, when most Maori live in urban areas, these human problems assume even greater proportions.
The task ahead is not to assimilate the Maori but to foster his racial and cultural identity. We must strengthen maori institutions, not legislate them out of existence. Maori institutions that are strong, respected, and accepted by the pakeha majority could contribute to the well-being of the nation, by preserving the Maori culture and its alternative values and satisfactions, and by re-integrating into maori society a number of its members, especially in the younger age groups, who are dissident and alienated.
In undertaking to do everything possible to encourage development of the richness and value of maori tradition and culture, the Values Party recognises that there is much in maori tradition and culture that pakeha could learn to their own benefit. For example, from traditional maori approaches to community, co-operation, work, land and decision- making. It is time that all in New Zealand tried to make maori traditions their own to some extent (as maori people have done with pakeha traditions).
The Values Party believes that if traditional maori attitudes to the land had been allowed to develop instead of being broken down by the traditional European attitude, New Zealand would be in a far healthier state than it is. Obviously, neither attitude is sufficient for today's interdependent society.
In many important respects Values’ land policy - that the use and administration of land be placed under community control through co-operative and participatory procedures - is closer to the traditional maori attitude then to the traditional European attitude.
The Values Party advocates that existing Maori lands wherever possible remain in maori proprietorship.
New Zealand's race relations problems have been both deteriorating and widening in recent years. Immigrants from the Pacific Islands and Europe find themselves faced with intolerance and prejudice. Often only lip service is paid to the concepts of individual freedom and interdependence.
The Values Party support the concept of integration that emphasises the need for particular ethnic groups to develop and live out their own cultural identity. There can be no effective integration in New Zealand until the different cultures are each viable in their own right and each willing to integrate.