KEY POINTS:
Labour Cabinet minister Shane Jones says Maori leaders need to establish a set of protocols for tangi to prevent body-snatchers bringing the culture into disrepute.
His comments follow two previous cases that have grabbed national headlines - those of James Takamore in August last and Tina Marshall-McMenamin in December.
Mr Jones said Maori leaders needed to come up with new protocols that would help the police and courts decide what to do if similar situations arose.
"This is predominantly a challenge to Maori leadership. It's absolutely necessary for people, including our senior clergy, to co-ordinate a series of regional and national meetings.
"If Maori leadership can't exercise oversight and consolidate a set of protocols as to what is the appropriate conduct in times of tangi then the community at large will be left to drift asto what is acceptable and what is a genuine reflection of Maori cultural standards."
Police have said they are powerless to intervene because such cases are civil matters.
Mr Jones criticised the people involved in the most recent case for making body-snatching a cultural issue when the victim was not Maori, had not been involved in Maori tradition and did not want to be buried on a marae.
Police Association president Greg O'Connor said last night that police who are scared of being accused of cultural insensitivity are partly responsible for a spate of body snatching cases.
Mr O'Connor said the body snatching cases were a classic example of authorities, not just police, not acting decisively which encouraged people to "push the limits".
"Police have to be colour-blind on these issues ... they have to stop seeing this as a cultural thing," he said.
Mr O'Connor told the Herald a system needed to be established under which deaths where problems could arise were flagged early and someone _ either a JP or senior police officer _ could make an interim custody order on the body.
That order could be challenged in court and anyone who broke the order was committing a criminal act and could be arrested, he said.
If changes weren't made the country could expect to see more bodies being taken from grieving families, he warned.
"The more indecisively authorities act the more this thing will happen. It will happen."
The dean of St John's Theological College, Dr Jenny Te Paa, said the complex family relationships that existed these days meant the issue would come up again, so it should be "anticipated rather than reacted to".
"Maori elders ought to be capable and willing to provide the kind of moral and compassionate guidance at times like this so I think [protocols are] there, but they certainly just need to be revised."
Waikato University chair of Maori language programmes Tom Roa said body-snatching instances were not the norm in Maori society, but a sign of dysfunction.
Legislation probably wouldn't solve anything, he said.
- James Ihaka and Andrew Koubaridis
