Catchpole Brent: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Catchpole Brent: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:621;Page:17163] 
BRENT CATCHPOLE (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise to take a call on the title of the Foreshore and Seabed Bill. This is a bill that vests the foreshore and seabed in the Crown in order to give all New Zealanders the right of access to the foreshore and seabed. It is clearly a means of protecting the rights of all New Zealanders. New Zealand First has shown leadership and strength on this issue and I must congratulate my colleague Dail Jones on that. He has done a lot of work and spent many many hours through to midnight and beyond working on it. New Zealand First has ensured that there is one law for all New Zealanders and that everyone in New Zealand has the right of access to the foreshore and seabed. It is in Crown ownership for that very reason.  
I have sat in the Chamber and listened to National Party and ACT members waffle and dribble on about what is wrong with this bill. There have been desperate attempts by them to try to discredit it. But every time that those members have stood up they have illustrated that they do not understand this bill. They have got up and tried to discredit it simply because they do not understand it. How many times over the 48 hours that we have been debating this bill has the bill been described to them in one-syllable words? And yet they still do not understand it; they have not been able to get to grips with it. I would like to make sure that the lights are turned on as it is a wee bit dim over the National Party members who have failed to understand this bill. Either they have not bothered to read it or they do not understand the way it is written and the way it protects the rights of all New Zealanders to have access to the foreshore and seabed.  
National has continued in a desperate attempt to try to find something wrong with the bill but it has come up with weak flimflam examples. When National had an opportunity to show that it really supported the foreshore and seabed and particularly the Bayswater Marina it voted against the Supplementary Order Paper that came before the Committee to protect and support the Bayswater Marina decision. Therefore National has shown that it has no interest in anything whatsoever except to sell up the foreshore and seabed. National wants the Bayswater Marina to be in private ownership. It wants to sell it off to anybody and particularly to overseas buyers. That does not help anybody and it certainly does not help Maori. All that National wants to do is to help the wealthy and to sell that marina to them—particularly to overseas investors. Therefore Maori and all New Zealanders would lose everything. This bill has ensured that the marina will not be sold to anyone—it will not be sold either overseas or locally.  
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: It’s a great bill. 
BRENT CATCHPOLE 
: It is a great bill and New Zealand First is proud that we have spent so much time on getting it right. We have shown leadership— 
Dail Jones 
: Can we fix it? 
BRENT CATCHPOLE 
: I am being asked whether we could fix it. We have shown that we could fix it and New Zealand First has fixed it. Yes we can fix it. New Zealand First has fixed it; we have shown that we can fix it.  
On another note I want to make sure that National understands that the part of the bill that deals with the Resource Management Act has clearly made decisions under that Act a lot clearer.