Dunne welcomes landmark Foreshore and Seabed agreement

UnitedFuture leader Peter Dunne has welcomed the National and Maori parties’ landmark foreshore and seabed agreement on public domain – a concept first promoted by UnitedFuture seven years ago.

“National and the Maori Party have both stepped forward and shown real leadership and they are to be congratulated,” Mr Dunne said.

“In particular, Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Minister Christopher Finlayson deserves the gratitude of New Zealanders. He has put in a tremendous amount of work to get us to this day,” he said.

Mr Dunne said he hoped the agreement would allow the nation to “finally bring healing to this long-standing grievance so we can all move on.

“The tragedy of this issue, however, is that we never needed all the hurt and sense of unfairness that has surrounded this issue. It was completely avoidable," he said.

“Sadly, what we have been through over the last seven years never needed to occur and history will record that we went through all this to satisfy the political whims of a party that is no longer represented in Parliament – New Zealand First.

“The good news is we now have a durable political solution in which the interests of all – Maori and non-Maori – are respected and that is the key element that will ensure it can work,” Mr Dunne said.

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