G—B

125. The case of the confiscated lands in the North Island presents a much closer analogy. There we have, as some evidence of the values of land even twenty years later than the Treaty of Waitangi. the report of Mr. Justice Sim's Commission (the Confiscated Lands Commission) in 1927. In the TaranaJci case it was held by the Commission that the Maoris should be compensated in respect of an area of 462,000 acres (as against 87,582 acres here) of land of much better quality and greater average per acre value than the lands of the North. The Commission said that it was difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion as to the value of the land at the date of its confiscation, and recommended compensation at the rate of £5,000 per annum in perpetuity, which, capitalized at 5 per cent, equals £lOO,OOO, and on this basis the value of the land was 4s. 4d. per acre. In the Waikato case, the Commission seems to have fixed compensation on the basis of an area, as I work it out from the report of the address by counsel for the Natives, of 717,332 acres. Counsel had submitted that the land should be taken as worth 10s. per acre, but the Commission rejected that contention and recommended compensation at £3,000 per annum in perpetuity, which, capitalized at 5 per cent, equals £60,000 ; and on that basis the land must have been regarded by the Commission as being valued at just a fraction over Is. Bd. per acre. I am aware that in the case of the Waikato Lands the annual sum was by the Waikato-Maniapoto Maori Claims Settlement Act, 1946, fixed at £5,000 (instead of £3,000 as recommended by the Commission), together with a cash payment of £5,000 and an additional payment of £l,OOO per annum for forty-five years. But even supposing that all this amounted in the aggregate to £6,000 per annum in perpetuity (which it does not), that would mean a valuation of the land at only 3s. 4d., plus a fraction of a penny per acre. 126. But, while I have thought it desirable to refer to the compensation paid in the cases mentioned in the last few preceding paragraphs, the 'fact is that in the case of these surplus lands there is material upon which to base a sound judgment of their value without resorting to other cases where the circumstances may be quite different. I propose to refer to this material in some little detail:— (i) As to the 16,427 acres of surplus under the waiver of pre-emption Proclamations which I have included in the total of 87,582 with great hesitation, the actual purchase-price for the whole aggregate of 90,000 acres bought under the penny-an-acre Proclamation averaged Is. 3d. per acre. It must, however, be remembered that the Maoris have already been paid the full purchase-money for the whole area, including the surplus. They surely, therefore, cannot complain if it is now valued at the same rate per acre as compensation. On that basis the total in respect of this item of 16,427. acres would be £1,026 13s. 9d. (ii) The item of 71,155 acres arising as surplus from the " old land claims " requires a more detailed statement. Mr. Commissioner Bell said that the purchaseprice paid for the surveyed lands which included both " old claim " lands and waiver of pre-emption lands and which aggregated 474,146 acres was £95,215 2s. With fees and certain survey costs, &c., the total cost to the purchasers amounted to £131,000, so that, as Mr. Commissioner Bell says, the total cost to them was ss. 6d. per acre, but the actual payment to the Maori—viz., £95,215 2s.—was at the average rate of 4s. per acre for the surveyed area of 474,146 acres. But as a matter of fact, while Mr. Commissioner Bell's figures are correct as far as they go, they do not give all the facts and figures which are necessary for the purposes of this inquiry. For example, so far as I can gather, the total of £95,215 2s. includes over £20,000 which represents the prices paid for the very many thousands of acres which reverted to the Maoris, while the 474,146 acres represent only the surveyed areas and do not include those reverted lands. Those were the only figures Mr. Commissioner Bell was concerned with, and he rightly

76