BRASH-REPORT
An update from the National Party Leader
No. 33, 30 June 2004
What Labour doesn't want you to find in the Foreshore and Seabed Bill
In metropolitan dailies this week you will see an advertisement by the National Party spelling out the exact nature of
the con job that Labour is trying to put over the electorate.
After discovering that most of us were opposed to its initial proposals on the foreshore and seabed, the Labour
Government, with assistance from NZ First, has come up with a reformulation that changes nothing.
The notion of "customary title" is now termed "ancestral connection", but not much else has changed.
As we demonstrate by quoting directly from the legislation, holders of customary rights will have the power to veto
resource consents; in practise, only Maori will get customary rights orders; new customary rights may be declared at any
time; ancestral connection orders will apply to virtually the entire coastline; these orders will be very difficult to
oppose; and judges deciding on customary rights and ancestral connection orders must rely on "tikanga Maori", creating a
situation where iwi claimants will be allowed to help define the tikanga meaning of the ancestral connection they're
claiming.
An inevitable consequence of this legislation is that the part-Maori descendants of signatories to the Treaty of
Waitangi will still be able to hold up the development of our coastline until their terms are met.
Labour's basic message to Kiwis is that if you're not Maori, then no matter how long you live here, you can never love
this land as deeply, or care about it as responsibly, as Maori.
As I have said before, this legislation will divide our country, not bring it together. This is not the way to build a
better future for all.
This Labour-NZ First con job deserves to be exposed for the duplicitous sham that it is.
20% of Aquaculture to Maori also
But it doesn't stop there.
Two weeks ago, the Government announced a deal with Maori on aquaculture which will give Maori 20% of marine farm space
allocated since 1992 and 20% of future space.
National's Fisheries Spokesman, Phil Heatley, has observed that Labour's proposed marine farming legislation will give
Maori four bites of the cherry. Not only will Maori be allocated 20%, they will be able to tender for the general
allocation, and some iwi groups will be able to claim up to an extra 10% due to preferential rights included in their
Treaty settlement.
The fourth bite will come via the foreshore and seabed legislation, where regional councils will have to consult Maori
during the resource consent process over the marine farms of competing marine farmers.
The 1992 fisheries settlement gave Maori 20% of wild fish in the quota management system, on the basis that fishing for
wild fish was a traditional Maori activity. But marine farming wasn't a traditional Maori activity and this allocation
of marine farm space goes too far.
Maori interests already constitute about 25% of the existing aquaculture industry, and the Government's two-year
moratorium has held up the applications of an even larger percentage which are Maori. So Maori interests were already
substantial players, and are about to get even bigger.
We are now in the bizarre situation where some of the existing Maori operations may be bought back by the Crown in order
to give them back to Maori as part of the 20% they are entitled to. And we know who will get the better end of that sort
of deal.
We might have thought that New Zealand's Treaty madness might be abating, and that Labour (and NZ First) would be having
second thoughts. Now we can see that the Treaty industry still has plenty of momentum.
But it gets worse.
Last week the Government announced that they would legislate to include tuna in New Zealand's quota management system.
This will determine how much fish can be caught not only in our exclusive economic zone (EEZ) but also on the high seas
and in other nations' exclusive zones. So they will be giving Maori 20% of tuna caught outside our EEZ.
Could Treaty madness go any further? Under this Government, of course it can.
McCully.co
My colleague Murray McCully, in his weekly newsletter, awards his "2004 Mugabe Award for Craven Political Correctness
and Treaty Separatism" to the Institute for Geological and Nuclear Sciences. See his latest newsletter at http://www.mccully.co.nz/. This weekly newsletter, by the way, is undoubtedly New Zealand's most entertaining and provocative weekly commentary
on politics.
Law and Order
This Sunday I will be giving a major speech on law and order to a meeting of the Sensible Sentencing Trust in Auckland.
A copy of the speech will be put on the National Party website ( http://www.national.org.nz/) on Sunday afternoon.
Don Brash