Franks Stephen: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Franks Stephen: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:621;Page:17155] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I have been in the Chamber now for 3 hours in total since last night and this is my first call. This bill is being rammed through. The title should not be “Seabed and Foreshore” it should be the “Beach Trolls Empowerment Bill”. Dover Samuels just mocked the idea that there would be fees and that wardens would be enforcing fees. I tell Mr Samuels that the  
Spirit of New Zealand 
 trust that takes kids on sail training all around the country has had to drop Mayor Island off its agenda because every time the kids wanted to swim ashore from the boat beach trolls emerged from the rocks and tried to charge every one of them a fee and the trust could not afford it. What is the Government going to do about that? That is the sort of thing that these beach wardens will be doing. This is formalising kaitiaki-ship—although no one knows what that means— 
Hon Member 
: Guardianship. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Guardianship? No guarding the koha. That is what it is all about. This bill is just a grab for power from a Government that is willing to give it by setting up a false form of ownership where the real control goes to a race-selected minority. This is absolutely a dishonest piece of law. We are opposing this somewhat to the surprise of many decent members of ACT National and other parties because they have a view that the Government must be doing something right if Maori are jumping up and down so much. That is the only way they can judge it because there has been no truthful information about this bill for months. There has been nothing. This bill comes back full of new clauses and we are told we have an hour and a half to read it. No wonder New Zealanders can judge only on the basis that Maori are jumping up and down and Tariana Turia does not like it!  
What it has actually done is very simple: it has taken the beaches from the control of local communities and local authorities and vested it in the Minister of Conservation. It is telling Maori that they can then front up and ask for guardianship rights in respect of customary activities that the bill does not define. It pretends to say that it does not cover spiritualism and then does. So there will be taniwha around every headland because it will be in the interests of people to invent them. Because it also expressly provides that when people want to do something on their beaches when they want to do something with a piece of coastline they can get the Maori people’s deeply deeply felt love for customary activity waived—as long as Maori sign the application to the court it can be waived. There is money in this but it is only negative. It puts Maori in a position of being always negative.  
 There is no real property right under this bill. If this bill were really conferring proper property rights Maori could be positive about it. They would be looking to see the useful things they would be doing with this land. Instead the only value they can extract is by being a pain in the neck to their neighbours. The only value they can extract is through extortion payments—through holding to ransom and then signing the application to the court. Then the court can accept that the customary activity is not being infringed.  
This bill also exempts these areas under guardianship from the provisions of the Resource Management Act—the only justifiable provisions in the Resource Management Act. These are the ones that say we cannot pollute and we cannot trash the flora and fauna. The Act exempts them from that. There is no explanation from the Ministers as to why there should be an exemption from the 10 most critical sections of the Resource Management Act. It is obvious. What was done here is a set of trade-offs. They were not going to provide real property rights to Maori on the very small areas that the courts would have found they were entitled to. Instead they create this shared management—and no man can serve two masters happily—across all of New Zealand potentially. We are aware from what the Maori caucus members themselves are saying it is at least 10 percent.  
This bill will live with as much infamy in New Zealanders’ memories in 10 years’ time as section 9 of the State Owned Enterprises Act. This deal has been trumpeted as simply the status quo. That is what David Lange told his Cabinet colleagues in 1986-87: “This is just the status quo; it does not mean anything.” This bill means a great deal. This is an entrenchment of racism in this country. There is nothing to justify the creation of these rights other than ethnic inheritance.