Race relations good, but ...

Race relations in New Zealand are "unequal" but "favourable", says the man sent to New Zealand following Maori complaints about the Foreshore and Seabed Act.

Professor Rudolfo Stavenhagen, a UN human rights and race relations expert, has spent the past 10 days attending four hui, among other meetings, to listen and report on the status of human rights for Maori as an indigenous people.

He will now write a report for the UN Human Rights Commission, due in April. He was invited to New Zealand by the Government after a finding by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in favour of a Maori complaint about the act.

But his final report will be broader than that and will canvass wider human rights issues.

Professor Stavenhagen said at a press conference in Wellington yesterday that given the history of colonial settlement and dispossession of Maori, ethnic relations were "really very favourable".

"They are peaceful, there is a lot of tolerance, there is a lot of understanding, people respect each other, there is no violence as I have seen in other parts of the world, there is no apartheid as there was in some other countries.

"In that sense I think the stage is set for a solution to many of these issues.

"But on the other hand these relations are not perfect in the sense that they are unequal because they are imbedded in an unequal power structure and in an unequal economic structure.

"The playing field is not level."

He rejected the notion that Maori were in a privileged position.

Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen had told him he did not expect the disparities to be closed within 20 years.

"I think it's a long time. It means almost one generation," said Professor Stavenhagen, suggesting swifter action.

He said his recommendations tended to be constructive.

National Party Maori affairs spokesman Gerry Brownlee said New Zealanders did not need to be told by the UN what it meant to be a Kiwi.

"Fair-minded Kiwis will reject these statements outright, because they know them to be untrue."

Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia said she noted the UN visitor "refers to the issue of power and it is perhaps time that those who have always been in power recognise that the patronising and paternalistic decisions they have made, in crafting solutions for Maori, need to end".