Shirley Ken: Maori Fisheries Bill — In Committee 
Shirley Ken: Maori Fisheries Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:15646] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (ACT) 
: 
 We are drawing to the close of a very unsatisfactory and a very unfortunate ending to a very long saga. Looking around I think I am the only member in the Chamber tonight who was there at the beginning following the Muriwhenua court case back in the 1980s. Indeed Dr Cullen is waving in front of me here and I seem to recall that he was also there. I think he was the junior whip at the time. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Senior whip. 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY 
: Senior whip—I do him an injustice. The situation was clear. It was all about an article 2 property right with the chiefs and tribes being guaranteed inter alia the full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their fisheries. It was never an issue with the administrative allocations that we traditionally had in the permitting system and there was never anything there to debate. But after the 1986 fisheries legislation introduced a property right which was a sensible and appropriate thing to do with a quota system and individual transferable quota property right then Maori legitimately had a case. They took it to the courts and that case was upheld. So the Crown was certainly bound to settle it. The first Maori Fisheries Bill was introduced in 1989 in the name of one Hon Richard Prebble. A special select committee was appointed and one Ken Shirley was the chairman of that select committee that met over 18 months and came up with the first settlement. What the bill started off with was 50 percent of the quota but that was confined to the inshore. It was 50 percent of inshore species. The rationale for that was that Maori drew a long bow in claiming that they caught orange roughy and the like at depths of 2500 feet and many miles offshore. It stretched the imagination and beggared belief to think that they rowed out or paddled out in a canoe and with flax ropes caught orange roughy at a depth of 2500 to 3000 feet. However they convinced the Government that they did indeed do that. I remember chairing that first select committee when Maori made such a claim and my question to them was: “What was the Maori name for orange roughy?”. The senior kaumatua did not have an answer. He said: “I’ll come back tomorrow with it.” Sure enough he came back the next day with a Maori name for orange roughy. But be that as it may the 10 percent settlement over all the fishery acknowledged that there was an artificial boundary between the inshore and the deep water and the inshore fishery in New Zealand had been decimated through overfishing and overcapitalisation. So I believe that it was fair to move to that 10 percent and the Maori of the day settled for that. I was at meetings with Sir Tipene O’Regan Matiu Rata Graham Latimer and all those leaders and 10 percent was seen as being reasonable over the full quota. 
 Unfortunately—or fortunately depending on how one looks at it—someone called it “the interim solution” which was an invitation to come back for more. Surprise surprise that is exactly what happened. That is what led to the Sealord’s deal in 1992 when the 20 percent quota allocation was established. As the Minister of Fisheries I signed over the allocation to the fisheries commission. Four 2.5 percent quotas going through to 1992 were signed over in 1990 and indeed most thought that that would be the end of it. The commission was established so the property right could be transferred to Maori because there was no way the Crown could have gotten that right. Whatever the Crown did it would have ended up as the meat and the mustard in the sandwich so the Maori Fisheries Commission was established for Maori to make that determination. I thought it would probably take a year or possibly 18 months—I was wrong. It took 12 years of bitter wrangling and litigation to the point even then whereby a consensus could not be reached. That is why this issue is now back in Parliament. I would like to be able to say that this bill is the end of it and that we have a harmonious settlement that will work that can meet the very laudable objective of meeting the article 2 treaty property right settlement and that can have Maori fully engaging in the business of fishing. But when I and the ACT party look at this bill we do not believe that it will do that. I believe that it has inherent in it the seeds of ongoing wrangling.