Parker David: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Parker David: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:621;Page:17092] 
DAVID PARKER (Labour—Otago) 
: 
 The debate on this part shows the arrant nonsense that the National Party has been speaking for weeks. Only last week Mr Brownlee showed his misunderstanding of these issues by denying the need to deal with the High Court jurisdiction if we were dealing with the Maori Land Court jurisdiction. The National Party agrees that the foreshore and seabed should be Crown land. The National Party says it agrees that the jurisdiction of the Maori Land Court had to be truncated so that alienable title could not be created; freehold title could not be created and sold. It failed to realise and fails even now to acknowledge that closing that particular door and not dealing with the High Court jurisdiction would be to deal with only one side of a two-sided coin. The inherent jurisdiction of the High Court also includes the power to award in some situations alienable title and to exclude the public from parts of customary title that could otherwise be granted by the High Court.  
 That also exposes the Greens’ lack of logic. The Greens in their report back on the bill say that access to the foreshore and seabed should be provided for all people. The Green Party recommends that: “there should be no saleable private and exclusive title granted over the foreshore and seabed to anyone New Zealanders in general tangata whenua or overseas interests.” Yet it opposes the limitation of the jurisdiction of the High Court. That is effected by clause 62C which provides that the High Court cannot make customary rights orders that restrict access rights. If that provision was not in the legislation the 80 or so applications presently before the Maori Land Court covering just about the whole foreshore of New Zealand would very quickly migrate to the High Court forum. That avenue would be open that divisive issue would be out there for years to come and it would not be fixed.  
Only through addressing the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court as well as the jurisdiction of the Maori Land Court can this be fixed. The ignorance of the National Party was shown by Mr Brownlee during question time last week. Even after 19 months National does not understand that simple point. Mr Mapp has just shown his ignorance by saying that the defining date at which customary rights are assessed should be later than 1840 when the very basis of the court’s common law jurisdiction to find customary rights relates to the date of the assumption of sovereignty by the Queen. That again shows how poor the National Party’s understanding of these issues is even after 19 months. If we deal only with the Maori Land Court which National and the Greens say should be the case but disregard the jurisdiction of the High Court then we do not cure the underlying mischief which is the risk of freehold title alienable title being sold off or created and used to prevent other people from getting access.  
I want to deal with one more point. The Greens say that Crown ownership does not protect the foreshore and seabed from being sold off and that there is some hidden agenda to sell off the foreshore. What arrant nonsense! Who owns New Zealand’s national parks? The Crown owns them. Does anyone feel that the national parks are at risk of being flogged off? I certainly do not. The foreshore and seabed will be in exactly the same situation. Indeed they will have even greater protection because the provisions in this legislation say that they should be held for all the public and should be inalienable. This debate on Part 4 shows that the National Party does not understand the issue. This legislation is needed. Part 4 is as important as the limitations on the Maori Land Court jurisdiction and it should be passed.