Aren't Maori allowed to make a profit?

After decades of being forced to charge lower-than-market rents, a landowner uses a long-forseen review to bring things more into line with market reality, resulting in large rent increases to leaseholders. Ordinarily, they'd just have to lump it, right? Not, it seems, if the landowner is Maori. In that case, you send your MP off to the Maori Affairs Select Committee to petition for "rent relief".

The underlying assumption here is that Maori are not entitled to behave like Pakeha landowners. They are not entitled to a market return from their property, and must be restrained by law from pursuing one. And they must sell their land when asked to, even if they don't want to. The racism in this assumption ought to be apparent to all.

There's a clear case here for "one law for all". Maori leasehold land should be treated no differently from land leased from Pakeha. It should be brought into the normal system, and then those complaining about rent increases can do what everybody else does, and fight it out through the courts.