te Heuheu Georgina: Maori Fisheries Bill — In Committee 
te Heuheu Georgina: Maori Fisheries Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:15620] 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (National) 
: 
 Part 5 deals with dispute resolution procedures and provides for the resolution of disputes over specified decisions including a requirement that decisions be notified to the parties involved and the application of an extended jurisdiction for the Maori Land Court. There are two issues that I want to deal with. I will deal with the Maori Land Court issue first. 
As is clear from this bill it will be the case and in fact the bill provides for it that the Maori Land Court is to be given an extended jurisdiction. Of course that means that it will be given more work. Currently of course the foreshore and seabed legislation is doing the rounds with hearings around the country which also will extend the jurisdiction of the Maori Land Court so it will have more work there as well. I just want to flag a concern that I think the Fisheries and Other Sea-related Legislation Committee also signalled but probably not much stronger than that that if one is going to put a dispute resolution in place that may involve the Maori Land Court then it behoves this Parliament to make sure that that forum is properly resourced. Nearly all members of Parliament will stand and say: “Yes we want to see the assets transferred out to Maori as soon as possible so that they can get their economy going forward which was promised by the 1992 settlement.” 
 Not a lot of that means much if in fact they do run into disputes and find that they are waiting around for fixtures and hearing dates in the Maori Land Court because there are not sufficient resources for that. I just want to raise that issue again. 
The other issue I shall talk briefly about in my contribution is the issue around coastline entitlements. Under the bill assets cannot be transferred to iwi until they have a mandated iwi organisation that is recognised by Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd until they have asset-holding entities and membership registers and in particular until they have concluded their coastline and other agreements with other mandated iwi organisations for all stocks for which they hold an entitlement. 
The bill as introduced made it so that assets could not transfer until there was full agreement on the coastline between adjoining iwi. The select committee came to the conclusion that it was far too onerous that it could result in the transfer of assets being unnecessarily held up and some amendments have been proposed whereby where two iwi agree say on 90 percent of their coastline entitlements and 10 percent remains in dispute then transfer of assets can occur relative to that 90 percent. So iwi will go into the dispute resolution process on the 10 percent only. As I said that was agreed to by all the committee. National members certainly thought that that was a big improvement because originally it made no sense at all to hold the lot up. We have seen how iwi have been very litigious towards each other in recent times and there was no sense in holding up a transfer of assets if there was dispute only around a small part of the coastline entitlement. It is a coastline agreement. It is on the basis of the coastline entitlement that assets will flow. 
I believe that our colleague Pita Paraone has a Supplementary Order Paper in relation to this part that I am sure he will address shortly and will add a refinement.