51 Human Rights Commission protecting the land had no place in a world where the Pākehā measure of land use was set according to production for profit according to the norms of capitalism in white settler society (Brooking, 1992, 1996, 2014. pp. 198-9; Binney, 1997, p. 123): The perceived failure of Māori to exploit the economic potential of their land was used by settlers and Crown as justification for alienation through legislation (Kukutai, 2010, p. 53). Commentators viewed the justification was racist because it applied a Eurocentric lens based on profit, and resource exploitation, and dehumanised Māori as inferior and therefore unworthy of land ownership for not utilising the land as a European (Liu and Robinson, 2016, p. 137). Public works Successive Public Works legislation was another means of taking Māori land. Land taken for public roads and railways began in 1862 and were mainly military in nature, with roads and railways built during the wars, enabling the Crown to quickly move troops to invade iwi lands and crush iwi resistance. The Public Works Act (1864) authorised the taking of Māori land for infrastructure projects (Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2016; Taonui, 2012b). While at face value the legislation applied to both Māori and Pākehā land, where possible, the government targeted Māori land because it could negotiate to pay the owners less compensation, or none at all (Taonui, 2012b). Land confiscated after the sovereignty wars was originally closely linked to public works provisions (Marr, 1997, p. 1). Public Works Acts generally carried the provision that land should be returned to owners if no longer needed for the purpose that it was taken. The Crown regularly ignored or dishonoured this in the case of Māori land. The Public Works Act (1928) removed this provision making the taking of Māori customary land especially discriminatory (Waitangi Tribunal, 2010, p. 736). Inflaming this situation further, local bodies could also compulsorily acquire five per cent of Māori land for similar infrastructural purposes (Waitangi Tribunal, 2010, p. 799). Indeed, a raft of provisions came into being, the common denominator of which was the swift separation of Māori from their whenua. The comprehensiveness of this land theft made it difficult: … to separate out public works takings from other types of compulsory land [takings].This can involve issues such as compulsory vesting, punitive confiscations, compulsory perpetual leases, and disputed purchases (Marr, 1997, pp. 1, 55). “Land grabbing refers to the transfer of control over large areas of land or water from local control to more powerful outsiders (both domestic and foreign) for industrial, agricultural, conservation or tourism-related development (Borras et al. 2012; Edelman et al. 2013). It is symptomatic of a neoliberal process in which land is commodified and moved from local people to private companies and wealthy elites, natural resources are appropriated, and alternative, indigenous, forms of production and consumption are suppressed” Hagen, R. & Minter, T. (2020) Tangata whenua under Te Tiriti should be able to request that when government identifies land, that might be sold or otherwise freed up, government carry out an investigation which details the history of how such land came to be under government control. The land could then be returned to iwi if improperly or unjustly acquired (e.g., taken as ‘punishment’ or for public works) (Taonui, 2021). Local government rates The Native Lands Rating Act (1882) was yet another way of Māori land alienation. Local authorities levied rates on Māori land without the consent of the owners. Local authorities often did not advise whānau and hapū about these obligations and, in many instances, Māori rates were set as high as 300 percent, more than Pākehā owned land (Halkyard-Harawira, 2021). The increasing individualisation of land, and a prejudiced lack of access to development funds, meant Māori were unable to pay the rates with the result that land had to be sold to cover these costs (Reid et al, 2017, p. 67). In this way, local authorities were complicit in the government-led drive to alienate whenua Māori: