Jones Shane: Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill — Third Reading 
Jones Shane: Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:671;Page:17628] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 This is the day the cup of sanctimony runs over. We have just been served up a speech riddled with sanctimony and selective memory and held up by the politics of betrayal. We have heard from the co-leader of the Maori Party Tariana Turia that the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill—the very reason for the Maori Party’s being—has actually been fulfilled. This is the day the Maori Party has delivered a bill that suits the purposes not of Maori but of corporate New Zealand with mainstream bigoted approaches and it weakens every hapu and every tangata whenua. The only people who will gorge at this cup of sanctimony with Tariana Turia are those from the legal profession. A very deep and unfortunately expensive road leads to the courts. It will yield precious little results. 
This bill is designed to fossilise Maori rights in the seabed and foreshore. It is not evolutionary. It is not dynamic. It insists that Maori rights have to be viewed through the prism of 1840. This bill is designed to leave Maori political aspirations in a legal crypt. That speaker has not advanced the cause of Maori in the seabed and foreshore; the bill has advanced the cause of what she sees as the right of the Maori Party to uplift and sustain the National Government. 
This bill firstly represents a great deal of activity and supposed benefits for Maori Party membership. Now that Tariana Turia has delivered the consent of betrayal to her own people to suit the purposes of National she has only one reason to remain and that is Whanau Ora. At a time when we are discussing the demise of the seabed and foreshore interests of Maoridom she is clinging tenaciously to the benefits and the rewards of Whanau Ora. 
We have heard the most powerful financial spokesman Bill English continue to mislead not only garden-variety Kiwis but also Tariana Turia. That member said she would have to review her future in politics in the event that the Whanau Ora interests were not served. She refuses to review her suitability in the face of failing on the seabed and foreshore pinching ideas that largely were provided by Dr Cullen and dressing them up with a different coloured korowai. There is nothing left in the bars of the Whanau Ora for the Maori Party. 
What makes the Maori Party remain in power tethered to National? Is it the perks of office? Is it the promises to its diminishing almost non-existent membership? No. It is a mistaken and foolhardy belief that its vision will take our country forward. Its vision has pitted Maori against Pakeha. We have had thousands of emails from a whole range of Pakeha organisations that express repugnance and disdain for this bill. Every single leader of the iwi community loathes this bill. They actually curse the day that they helped to raise money organise hui meet the costs of vehicles etc. to enable the Maori Party to come into being. Every expectation they loaded on the backs of the Maori Party is today dashed. 
This bill provides an opportunity for a hollow husk of a right. No rights are available here. No interests will be served other than the short-term superficial political agenda of a small diminishing number of Maori MPs who thankfully will not be here after 26 November. 
It comes to pass that Hone Harawira in the face of oppression and adversity in the midst of our own people has spoken something closer to the truth. It may be inversely related to the name Harawira but that is another matter. In this case he has had the courage to stand by those original interests and he has had the courage to challenge the leadership of his own party which as a consequence of this bill has become blind to the aspirations and goals of the Maori community and has become ignorant of the fears that blight the Maori community. 
This bill marks the day that the Maori Party will actually begin to meet the costs of its departure. It has no broad support. Firstly the legal advisers are clapping their hands up and down the country. We did not want a bill that would worsen the legal costs and the impost on Maoridom; we wanted a bill that took an expansive and pragmatic approach that brought all New Zealand forward so that this issue did not become as divisive as it is today. 
We took a progressive approach. Indeed the former Deputy Prime Minister Dr Cullen offered solutions. But in offering the opportunity to work in a win-win situation we suffered repudiation from the Maori Party and ignorance from the National Party. That is why only 11 percent of the population of te iwi Maori supports this remedy. When polled 89 percent of Maori said that this bill sucks and that it must go like its authors. 
Secondly at the Maori Affairs Committee thousands of submissions were completely wiped aside and people were treated in a grossly rude manner. They were not given more than a cursory opportunity to exercise their democratic rights and have their say. We have seen a destruction of process a betrayal of political aspiration and a sell-out. During this process we have a seen a massive sell-out. The very issue that brought the Maori Party into being is what it has sold out on today. 
The Maori Party may think as a consequence of the National Party’s polling that this level of deceit will not count in the minds of Maori voters. But without a doubt we will drive home this point at every single hui and in every single interview. At the end of the day very honest sincere and hard-working people supported that party. Every one of those people has been sold out today. 
I come back to talk about the Attorney-General. It was said that the Attorney-General went to great depths. Of course the member meant to say that he sunk to great depths. The Attorney-General is no stranger to the finer points of the English language but he knows that the moment he seized the pen of authorship and completely sold out the Maori Party he was marching to the drum of the real supporters of this legislation. The existing rights of corporate New Zealand the ambitions of the legal profession and the rights of private landholders have not been interfered with. None of those rights have been eroded or weakened. The only people who will be put in possession of Clayton’s rights are tangata whenua. The Attorney-General has come up a criterion that is so narrow whose threshold is so high and the politics of which are so divisive that he knows that no one of any substance will achieve anything approximating customary interests or indeed Treaty-based justice. 
All the flash and hollow words were from a speech written by the Attorney-General for Tariana Turia to deliver. They forget that at every single meeting Dr Cullen organised in the time that he had the seabed and foreshore legislation she sat there and never once opened her mouth—Dover Samuels has told me this. She never ever demurred. She never ever did anything other than defect. Somehow she has arrived on the back of this legislation as some form of Mother Teresa. This bill is a betrayal and Maori people have been sold out today by none other than Tariana Turia. Kia ora tatou.