Garrett David: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Garrett David: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 18 August 2010. Volume:665;Page:13242. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID GARRETT (ACT) 
: 
 I wish to speak today about the detail of the new foreshore and seabed legislation—at least I would if I could. Despite the Government’s intention— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Have you seen it? 
DAVID GARRETT 
: No I have not seen it I tell Mr Henare. Despite the Government’s intention to pass the legislation by Christmas as of today there is no draft bill in the public arena that I can speak on. It is however likely to be a law that will give billions of dollars worth of minerals to a few select iwi. It is a bill that could quite likely limit free public access to beaches. I note that despite many invitations to do so neither the Prime Minister nor the Attorney-General will confirm in this House the fact that the legislation will forbid charging for access to a beach.  This bill will be upon us just in time for summer if National and the Maori Party have their way. 
It is incorrect to claim as the Government does that the bill will restore the right to go to court to claim customary rights. Such rights were preserved in the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004. It is more correct to say that the proposed bill allows claims to the courts for greater ownership rights than were available under the 2004 legislation. The bill will also say however that iwi will be able to negotiate customary title with the Government. That is why many many New Zealanders are gravely concerned. Just today the Coastal Coalition representing over 8000 Kiwis has started a billboard campaign highlighting its real fears of having a New Zealand where people are excluded from the foreshore because they are not Maori or for that matter they are not from the right iwi. 
Looking at this Government’s record of giving away rights to Maori covertly it is no wonder that people are frightened. There have been veto rights over the Waikato River and we had a Minister sneak off to New York to sign a taxpayer-funded separate Maori governance that even Miss Clark’s Government would not sign. The ACT Party shares those people’s concerns. Once again one group of New Zealanders is getting special rights over the rest. This is not what the Treaty of Waitangi intended as can be seen by anyone reading it without a vested interest in distorting its meaning. In fact it is not even what the decision in  
Attorney-General v Ngati Apa 
 the case that started all this said. Herein lies the problem with letting Governments do a job that is properly the role of the judiciary. Despite the claims of many including my colleagues in the Maori Party the Ngati Apa verdict did not give Maori the foreshore. It merely gave the iwi the right to have their case heard in the Maori Land Court. 
The judges stated in that case that the chances were slim. They stated: “any customary property in the areas vested seem unlikely to survive.” That is a direct quote from the Ngati Apa decision. We can contrast that with what the Attorney-General Chris Finlayson has been saying. He said that 10 percent of the foreshore and seabed is likely to end up in exclusively Maori hands—2000 kilometres of the coastline. He even touts the direct negotiation route as the better option and why would iwi not go for the direct option? Mr Finlayson says that it will “negotiate a settlement outside the courts to eliminate excessive cost or uncertainty”. Well if I was an iwi leader who wanted to get my hands on a whole lot of foreshore and minerals I would be a moron to go through the courts when I can negotiate with such an accommodating Minister. 
If Mr Finlayson concludes that giving large tracts of Ninety Mile Beach to the five iwi that make up the Te Hiku Forum will keep the Maori Party onside then no legal precedent will stop him from doing so. If the Prime Minister decides that it will be less strife to give Te Atiawa the 20 kilometres of foreshore and seabed in Taranaki that they are after then what the courts say is immaterial. If they succeed who would blame the other six iwi with coastal boundaries in the region from having a go themselves? Successive Governments both National and Labour have shown that political expediency is far more important than doing what is right. Labour did this when it overreacted in 2004 to the Ngati Apa decision and National is doing it again now. The only place to determine those property rights is the High Court. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.