The Mother of All Departments: The History of the Department of Internal Affairs
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The Mother of All Departments: The History of the Department of Internal Affairs
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| ISBN-13: | 9781775581963 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Auckland University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 312 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
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The Mother of all Departments
The History of the Department of Internal Affairs
By Michael Bassett
Auckland University Press
Copyright © 1997 Crown CopyrightAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77558-196-3
CHAPTER 1
THE FIRST YEARS, 1840–56
In the early nineteenth century the British came to regard New Zealand as 'the problem society'. Since the turn of the century, whalers, sealers, adventurers and reprobates had been struggling half-way round the world to a land of bush, birds and bracken that was thinly populated and had limited agriculture. By the end of the 1830s about 2,000 settlers were mingling, marrying, fighting and trading with the indigenous Maori, whose numbers had slumped since European contact to about 100,000. In the years immediately preceding the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, 'New Zealand presented a sorry picture of anarchy, bloodshed, and ruin'. Missionaries and colonisers, however, had plans. The former wanted free rein for missionary endeavour; the latter sought an opportunity to relieve population pressures in Britain through carefully planned settlements in the South Seas. Government, missionary and coloniser alike hoped to make New Zealand a better colonial society than its Canadian, South African and Australian predecessors.
Gentlemanly debate about the ideal society was interrupted by a series of executive decisions made in London in 1839. Authority was desperately needed in New Zealand, especially in the Bay of Islands where no one controlled the deteriorating situation. Edward Gibbon Wakefield's New Zealand Company was intent on establishing colonies in the middle of the country, and its dispatch of a ship heightened a growing sense of urgency. On 25 August 1839, Captain William Hobson was dispatched from England with full authority from Her Majesty's Government to arrange with Sir George Gipps, Governor of New South Wales, an extension of his authority to New Zealand. After meetings with Gipps and Australian merchants trading in New Zealand, Hobson set sail from Sydney for the Bay of Islands in the Herald on 18 January 1840. He had been sworn in as Lieutenant-Governor of whatever New Zealand territory might be ceded after negotiation with Maori. Once cession had taken place, the Crown would pre-empt trading in land between settlers and Maori, conduct all future purchases, and investigate past land acquisitions. By these and other means, order might be imposed on the hitherto unruly process of settlement.
Accompanying Hobson on his trip to Sydney and then to New Zealand was a former naval associate, Lieutenant Willoughby Shortland, who had served with Hobson in the West Indies. Shortland was initially appointed a Police Magistrate in New Zealand at £300 per annum. While in Sydney, Hobson and Shortland recruited other staff who became the nucleus of New Zealand's fledgling civil service: Felton Mathew was appointed Surveyor-General on 1 January 1840; George Cooper became Treasurer and Collector of Customs on 5 January; and James Stuart Freeman took office on 15 January as Chief Clerk to the Colonial Secretary, who was as yet unnamed.
There is no mention of anyone being designated, or proclaiming himself, Colonial Secretary until 17 February 1840, when George Cooper signed a letter as 'Acting Colonial Secretary'. However, the Colonial Secretary's letter files began in Sydney in December 1839 with plans for the journey to New Zealand. There is correspondence on a number of housekeeping matters such as the building of a storehouse. Supplies of blankets, tobacco, and shirts had to be arranged, and a sum of £3,000 was placed in the Bank of Australasia to assist Hobson in establishing his government. It is clear that the nucleus of the colonial secretariat had been formed in Sydney. It also appears that Shortland, who had been acting as Hobson's right-hand man in Sydney, had been de facto Colonial Secretary for some weeks before Hobson stepped ashore at Kororareka on the morning of 29 January 1840.
The precise date for the establishment of the Colonial Secretary's Office may always remain in doubt. Colonial Secretaries were traditionally the right-hand men of governors, the 'focal point' of colonial administrative systems. The Colonial Secretary's Office, and Freeman, no doubt, were involved in some of the negotiations leading up to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi on the lawn in front of James Busby's house on the afternoon of 6 February 1840. In that Treaty, those Maori chiefs present yielded to Queen Victoria sovereignty over New Zealand and the sole right to purchase their lands. Shortland had been one of Hobson's emissaries in contacts with Maori over previous days, and at one critical juncture acted as master of ceremonies during Hobson's discussions with Maori. His formal appointment as Colonial Secretary, a position which was to carry with it a seat on the Governor's Legislative and Executive councils, did not take place until 7 March 1840. The annual salary of £400 was soon increased to a generous £600 in November 1840 when New Zealand was awarded colonial status in its own right. At that point Hobson was designated 'Governor and Commander in Chief over the Colony of New Zealand'.
Hobson had probably intended formally to appoint his friend Colonial Secretary, but only got around to it in the week after he suffered his first stroke early in March 1840, when it became necessary to establish a clear line of succession. The Charter issued from London in 1841 formalised an earlier understanding that the Colonial Secretary would exercise the Governor's powers should he be incapacitated.
In the days after the signing of the Treaty, Hobson's entourage settled into Kororareka – an unprepossessing settlement with about twenty cottages. It struck Felton Mathew as a 'vile hole' with 'half-drunken, impudent devil-may-care' European inhabitants and 'natives' of a 'squallid [sic], debased appearance'. The 36-year-old Shortland took a cottage on the waterfront. Mathew and Freeman joined him in the 'snug little house', their dormitory 'being a dog-kennel of a cock-loft, which, as the only room to be had in the place, we are obliged to put up with'. They were soon designing plans for buildings at nearby Okiato on land acquired from a local merchant, J.R. Clendon. Office furniture for the new civil service was ordered in early March: the Colonial Secretary's Office would get one iron safe, an office press, an office table and six cane-bottomed chairs. Orders were soon placed for stationery and some pieces of 'red tape'. The Treasury, however, was to receive six leather chairs and a set of pigeon-holes, suggesting early recognition of superior status – and of a bureaucratic capacity to procrastinate?
From the beginning, fond British hopes for an ideal society in New Zealand clashed with the harsh realities of the Antipodes. Between Maori and Pakeha there was what McLintock calls, 'a barrier of speech, custom and law'. Missionaries shared Hobson's hopes for fairness for Maori, and prayed for law-abiding, God-fearing sobriety. Law and order, however, were scarce commodities, as writers to the Colonial Secretary frequently complained. Hobson had only 100 troops at his disposal. Nor were there any social services. The north lacked a hospital, and there was no surgeon until Dr William Davies arrived and offered his services. He soon became Colonial Surgeon. Elementary schooling had to be organised for the children of Hobson's entourage; there were no school books, and an inadequate number of Bibles.
Hobson's greatest problem, however, was the realisation that his authority was unrecognised beyond the Bay of Islands and the Hokianga, where chiefs had also signed the Treaty. He decided to use his Colonial Secretary to assist with his assertion of British authority. The news that Wakefield's New Zealand Company was establishing itself in Wellington as an independent government, with a president and council, spurred Hobson to dispatch Shortland to Wellington in May 1840. He called first at Kaitaia to read the Treaty to local Maori 'and to invite their adherence thereto'. Sixty chiefs duly signed. When Shortland arrived in Wellington on 2 June, he was unable to land for two days because of a gale, but soon reported that the settlers were 'highly delighted' at his arrival and that Hobson's authority had been 'fully established'. However, there followed years of uneasy relations with Wakefield, who had little respect for a distant authority that possessed only scant resources. Hobson's authority in the South Island remained negligible for some time, news reaching him only through reports of the Police Magistrate in Wellington.
The Governor's office attracted place-seekers and mendicants. Locals hoped his tentative authority would be a cure-all for parochial grievances, and asked him to use his mana to enforce elementary town-planning requirements in Russell. Hobson was woefully short of money, yet settlers traded on the potential of his office as much as on its early service delivery. In effect, Shortland was the Governor's Secretary, receiving a constant stream of letters from people wanting better postal services, roads, gaols, chaplains to help with church services, or police in outlying areas. Freeman acted in Shortland's absence, and fed letters and petitions to the appropriate official for report before passing the files to the Governor, who then suggested appropriate replies.
Hobson's lack of resources constantly threatened any pretence at governmental effectiveness, and necessitated revenue in addition to the money New South Wales grudgingly remitted. The Colonial Store ordered supplies, then on-sold them to settlers, competing with local merchants. The licensing of hotels and liquor shops also became an early source of revenue, and before long forest-cutting dues were levied on sawmillers wishing to clear bush from Crown land. In time, gold-prospecting licences were also introduced. Hobson's eight-man Legislative Council, of which Shortland was a key member, felt obliged to tap new sources of revenue to meet burgeoning demand. Land sales were the principal revenue-earner, with the government fixing high prices to blocks they had bought for a pittance from Maori. By April 1841 the sale of allotments had produced £21,499 9s for Government coffers. Customs dues were applied to spirits, tobacco, snuff, cigars, tea, flour and wheat. All other goods of non-British origin attracted a 10 percent levy. Customs dues and levies produced revenue of £2,259 5s 3d for the six months to 31 December 1841.
While Hobson and his staff worked hard to make Kororareka into a liveable capital, it was quickly apparent that the settlement was too remote geographically from the rest of New Zealand. Wellington was being administered by Police Magistrate Mick Murphy, and contact with him by letter took weeks. Even the developing commercial port of Auckland, where there was a steady demand for suburban land, seemed distant. Before the signing of the Treaty, Henry Williams appears to have advised Hobson to give consideration to Auckland as his capital, arguing that the Bay of Islands was 'too confined', and 'situated at the extreme end of the island'. When Hobson visited the Waitemata in late February 1840, the small Ngati Whatua and Ngati Paoa tribes began to see advantages in having the Governor closer to hand, and offered him land. As a result of another visit to Auckland in October 1840, Hobson decided to move the capital there. His officials chose a piece of land in central Auckland with a pleasant outlook, which became known as Official Bay (now Beach Road). By the end of December a home for the Governor was being constructed on the hill above the beach. Early in February 1841 Hobson shifted the seat of government to Auckland, and was given a formal welcome by its citizens on 13 March. Shortland followed, and built a house near Government House. Government buildings were soon under construction, with the colonial secretariat becoming the principal governmental office in fast-growing Auckland. Those with an eye to commerce quickly adjusted to, and sought to benefit from, the government's presence. Hobson's government, however, remained rudimentary. One political scientist describes it as 'not so much an institution which carried out policy, but a collection of officials, some of whom had very little function, led by a governor whose chief task was to prevent the settlers from excessively irritating the Maori inhabitants, and thus bringing about their own destruction'.
The boom Auckland enjoyed as a result of the steady flow of settlers was further stoked by the burst of construction and contracts for supplies emanating from Government House. In addition to the handful of government officials, by May 1841 a total of 56 people were in the direct employment of government, most on a casual basis. In July the New Zealand Government Gazette, hitherto an occasional publication, became a weekly with the Colonial Secretary as its editor. It announced appointments to courts in various parts of the country, noted the names of coroners, health officers, chief constables and gaolers, and also signalled dates when the government was to close off its accounts, warning that bills should be submitted in time.
Office brought knowledge, and knowledge provided opportunities in the rapidly expanding settlements. While Hobson remained squeaky clean, his officials had advance warning of the auction of choice sites in Eden County on 19 April 1841. They probably also knew Hobson's reserve prices. Not content with the sites originally set aside for them, thirteen of Hobson's officials bought land in the public sale as well. Shortland was prominent among them, securing a substantial block of prime real estate for £339 on the basis of a 10 percent deposit. Not surprisingly, members of the public took offence, and labelled officialdom 'the Auckland Official Land-Jobbing Association'. These purchases in open competition with the public did much to sour relations with the rest of the town.
Dislike officialdom as they did, the people of Auckland could not ignore the source of power on the hill above Queen Street. Traders such as John Logan Campbell, his partner William Brown, David Nathan and William Goodfellow regularly submitted tenders to provide government supplies. Speculators wrote to the Colonial Secretary hoping to sell firewood and liquor at inflated prices, and there was seldom a shortage of tenders for roading and building contracts. A steady flow of requests arrived for permission to cut trees, build brick-works, fence tracks being put across private land, and to clean up the smelly open drains in Queen Street – a job Hobson assigned to prisoners who had been sentenced to hard labour. In 1846 the founders of the Auckland Savings Bank sought approval for their constitution, and the following year made the Colonial Secretary a trustee and vice-president of the bank. Keeping close to the source of power was an act of prudence in this new, young and inexperienced society.
The Colonial Secretary's Office also received occasional requests for medical attention or help for the destitute. Shortland would arrange for the Colonial Surgeon to examine the ill and, depending on the report, would have them admitted either to the Colonial Hospital or, if that was full, to the gaol's hospital. By the middle of the decade there was a list of regulars – mostly widows and children – who were receiving daily rations from the Colonial Secretary's Office. From Wellington came a petition for more effective control of stray cattle that regularly broke through fences, often 'destroying] in one night the hopes of the colonist'. The rate at which letters flowed into the Colonial Secretary's Office tells its own story. In 1840 there were 893 letters; the following year the figure topped 1,500, and by 1842 reached 2,300. A decade later there were 3,019 incoming letters for the year. What became a New Zealand tradition of expecting the government to solve most problems was already flourishing.
The Colonial Secretary's Office gathered useful information about the environment, which was filed in what became known as the 'Blue Books' that were compiled between 1840 and 1847. The harbourmaster was instructed to measure the rise and fall of the tides and to collect meteorological data. Elementary census information was gathered in 1841 as well. There exists a list of the names and addresses of all 543 men living in Auckland, as of 19 January 1842. Soon catalogues of all ships calling at New Zealand ports were being sent in to the Colonial Secretary, who also received the names of gaol inmates and the reasons for their incarceration. Regular medical reports came from Wellington and New Plymouth, enclosing morbidity data. The origin of the Government Statistician's office lay in early instructions emanating from the Colonial Secretary.
Shortland's land dealings had turned the public against him. The appointment of R.A. Fitzgerald as Registrar of Deeds with a six-month advance in pay raised eyebrows, and when Shortland married his daughter in 1842, some sniffed scandal. Shortland was a pedantic man who was 'cordially disliked' by his immediate colleagues. He demanded that officials in other departments write to the Governor using less than half the page, leaving a big blank area for comment – an instruction largely honoured in the breach. He also insisted that stock-taking of government furniture and supplies be written up in triplicate. Hobson fell ill again in the winter of 1842, and died of a second stroke on 10 September. Few cheered when Shortland, as the next senior official, took over as 'Officer Administering the Government'.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Mother of all Departments by Michael Bassett. Copyright © 1997 Crown Copyright. Excerpted by permission of Auckland University Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Abbreviations,Introduction,
One: The first years, 1840–56,
Two: Ministerial control, 1856–90,
Three: The Liberal years, 1891–1912,
Four: The Hislop era, 1912–28,
Five: Depression and the early Heenan years, 1929–40,
Six: Heenan in top gear, 1940–49,
Seven: The Department loses ground in the 1950s,
Eight: Was the Department to continue?,
Nine: Henry May, Pat O'Dea and Allan Highet, 1970–84,
Ten: The era of reform after 1984,
Epilogue,
Notes,
Index,