Developing Difference: Attitudes towards Maori ‘Development’ in Patricia Grace’s Potiki and Dogside Story

People supporting ‘development’ stressed the gains to be made from making the peninsula accessible to and comfortable for a larger population. They drew attention to the need to create employment in the region so that members of local families could continue to live there. They also stressed the rights of property owners to dispose of their land in whatever ways they regarded as most appropriate or most profitable. […] Neither side ‘won’ the argument. But the development lobby was most influential with the shapers of public policy. I witnessed (and reported) the destruction by bulldozer of a pa site at Whiritoa and watched onlookers scramble to gather artefacts scattered by the blade. (Michael King, Being Pakeha Now, 73)