Brownlee Gerry: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Brownlee Gerry: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:621;Page:17145] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 This is the title debate in the Committee stage and I think the interesting point to be made is that at the end of this stage the Leader of the House will move to divide the bill to give it two titles: the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 and the Resource Management (Foreshore and Seabed) Amendment Act 2004. 
I cannot help thinking that those two names are somewhat inadequate in the first case and quite misleading in the second case. The Foreshore and Seabed Bill should surely be entitled at this stage the “Foreshore and Seabed Alienation Empowerment Bill” in order to become the Act. Effectively the bill empowers the Government of the day either to hold in perpetuity or to dispose of and the whim of the Minister of Conservation in conjunction with the views of the Minister of Maori Affairs are what will hold sway at any particular point in this country’s future if this bill is passed today. 
The Government has reserved for itself the right to dispose of foreshore and seabed at various times and in various ways and we will talk further about that in the third reading debate. But a title to a bill should indicate very clearly what it does and what it enables. Without question this bill enables alienation of the foreshore and seabed—ownership of which so many New Zealanders believed should be held by the Crown and was held by the Crown post-1840. 
The second title referred to is the Resource Management (Foreshore and Seabed) Amendment Bill 2004. I think this is an extremely cynical title because most people on hearing of an amendment to the Resource Management Act will think the Government has listened to what they are saying and has decided to deal with some of the less helpful aspects of that Act so that many many developments and improvements around this country that lead to employment opportunities and most important to bigger incomes can be delivered for those who take the risks to set up such enterprises and activities. But no this amendment particularly will make development in land adjacent to the coastline of this country more difficult in many many cases. 
Yesterday in the various debates in the Chamber we heard that an acceptance has developed that over 10 percent of this country’s coastline is likely to come under some sort of reservation status for Maori to be administered by a new group appointed by Maori and apparently to look after the customary rights the courts will bestow on Maori. That is an utter nonsense in the first place because if Maori have customary rights they already have them. They do not need courts to start telling them what the constraints on those rights are. The interesting thing is that from the time this bill receives the royal assent the Minister of Maori Affairs and the Minister of Conservation in particular will be the Ministers who tell Maori how when and where they can exercise those customary rights. It seems to me that that is not much of a right at all. 
I go back to the point made about the title to the Resource Management (Foreshore and Seabed) Amendment Bill. Most people are going to believe that this bill is about the Labour Government finally waking up and realising what a huge brake the Resource Management Act has been on our economy and more particularly on the opportunity to raise incomes in this country. Far from that this bill is just more of the very heavily layered bureaucracy that that Act already puts upon New Zealanders who are trying to do things for the betterment of this country. The bill has an inadequate title indeed.