Brownlee Gerry: General Debates 
Brownlee Gerry: General Debates 
[Volume:609;Page:6568] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam) 
: 
 We know the Government is in trouble when it sends the “B team” down here to try to defend its position. Why send the “B team”? Because today all the heavyweight Ministers in the entire Maori caucus are locked in a battle of dialogue up on the seventh floor of the Beehive. They are trying to sort out who owns the foreshore and seabed of this country. I tell members that this is a Government that in 2 years’ time will have a legacy of being shifty two-faced reckless with the truth and hell-bent on destroying the social fabric of this country. Every major newspaper in this country every major radio station in this country and every major television station in this country is telling us: “Don’t panic. The Court of Appeal decision that is going to allow the Maori to claim all the foreshore all the seabed all the launching pads all the fishing grounds and all the marinas around this country will not have any effect because Helen Clark says that the Government is going to legislate away that entitlement.” What did we get today though—the Government having solved the public’s concern to some extent over this? The Prime Minster scurried into the House and quietly conceded that she and her Government are about to role over to the Maori caucus and allow them in fact to make those very claims. 
I want to speak on behalf of the thousands of New Zealanders who enjoy going to the beach enjoy going fishing and enjoy gathering a bit of shellfish from the beach because those people are about to lose a right that they thought was their birthright as New Zealanders. My family have held the title to a property in the Marlborough Sounds for almost 130 years. There are now some 130 or more of us who would claim that that place is our turangawaewae and everything that that might mean and who would claim that we are tangata whenua for that particular piece of property. I say to Margaret Wilson and Helen Clark that for them to suggest that somehow 130 years of right in this country can be expunged on the basis of someone else’s customary claim is an absolute nonsense. Further I say that that property in 1962 was subject by a law passed in this House to the relinquishing of a riparian right; the right to claim ownership of the foreshore of that particular property. My family did not stand in the way of that. They quite happily moved a small dwelling from the foreshore on the basis that they believe and I believe that every New Zealander has a right to walk around the external parts of this country and every New Zealander has a right to walk over a beach any time they like. Any New Zealander has a right to land their boat on any beach anywhere in this country. For this Government to start saying that it will allow Maori to say: “We have a customary right to these properties.” is an outrage. It is an absolute outrage. 
Government members need to know that in all sorts of bars cafes clubs workplaces and homes around this country a discussion is taking place that is not favourable to them. Helen Clark the Prime Minster may think that she has been very clever getting a shot away in every newspaper and saying that the Government is going to fix the problem but one cannot deceive all the people all the time as the great Abraham Lincoln said. It will be only a matter of time before people wake up and realise that we have a Government that is much more interested in preserving the Maori vote it gets than it is in the interests of all New Zealanders. 
I say to so many Maori in this country who will get no benefit out of this at all: “What is the point of supporting and promoting something as hopelessly divisive as this? Where is the progress for the country if Maori are going to stand up and attempt to take on the whole nation on this sort of basis?” I would have expected that a Prime Minister who wanders out there confident that she has such a huge amount of support and mana in the community might take a stronger leadership role in making it very clear to the unfortunates who sit in the Maori caucus—who do not frankly give a toss about the rank and file Maori in this country—that they are not going to have a win on this one.