Turei Metiria: Aquaculture Reform Bill — Second Reading Instructions to Committee In Committee 
Turei Metiria: Aquaculture Reform Bill — Second Reading Instructions to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:622;Page:17740] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 Is it not hysterical that here we have an amendment to the Foreshore and Seabed Act only 19 days after it was passed in this Parliament? It is only 13 days since that Act received the royal assent and the Government is putting in a Supplementary Order Paper amending the Foreshore and Seabed Act using the Aquaculture Reform Bill as its little tool. It is just another example of this Government’s use and abuse of parliamentary procedure of the democracy we have in this country to make the changes it wants to make to legislation. 
The Foreshore and Seabed Act is a travesty. It is an act of aggression. Thousands of New Zealanders recognised that travesty and fought so hard to prevent the bill from turning into an Act. We all know that the Foreshore and Seabed Act is a moral mistake. It takes from one section of our society the right to go to court to have its property interests investigated and clarified. New Zealanders are horrified at the theft of access to justice by this Government through the Foreshore and Seabed Act. We all know that the Foreshore and Seabed Act is an ethical mistake. A group of citizens went to court and they won their case. The Government lost. The Government’s response to its loss was to abuse its power as a lawmaking institution claim absolute parliamentary sovereignty and change the law to suit its failed legal argument. 
But here is the first of no doubt a long series of examples of the miserable practical mistakes that the Foreshore and Seabed Act is. The Government’s indecent haste to pass this legislation has meant that it has mistakenly confiscated millions of dollars worth of property from local authorities—property like Britomart Wellington Airport the Viaduct Basin and Victoria Park. That land is now owned by central government because of a stupid mistake made by the Government and New Zealand First. 
How terrible for the Hon Dr Michael Cullen! He made a multimillion-dollar mistake. He went to hui across the country and told Maori that they did not like the Foreshore and Seabed Bill because they did not understand it. Here we now have it. We know who did not understand that bill. Michael Cullen did not understand it and in not understanding it he has made a multimillion-dollar mistake that he is now trying to fix up through a cynical quick-fix solution that will cover his embarrassment about his mistake. 
This issue which is addressed in a Supplementary Order Paper should have been sorted out at the select committee but the Government and New Zealand First refused to allow the select committee enough time to deal with the issues in the bill and try to discover these sorts of stupid mistakes. They refused the requests from hundreds of submitters for the opportunity to be heard. Those submitters may well have identified mistakes that may yet be the subject of sneaky little quick fixes like this Supplementary Order Paper on the Aquaculture Reform Bill. 
Even the officials who had to work late into the night in order to get the Foreshore and Seabed Bill ready cannot be held responsible for this mistake. The Government’s indecent haste has meant that the select committee did not have enough time even to talk about possible changes to the bill and report back to the community in a way that respected the seriousness of the consequences of the legislation. The Government was in a massive rush to pass the foreshore and seabed legislation before Christmas and in doing so it has made a multimillion-dollar mistake. 
The Green Party recognises the need to remedy that mistake—land wrongly confiscated from local government. It is not without considerable irony that I note that the Government is going to such extraordinarily sneaky lengths to return this wrongly confiscated land to its rightful owners—the local councils and the people of this country. Of course the sole purpose of the Foreshore and Seabed Act was to confiscate only Maori land not land that belonged to local councils. 
The Greens recognise that the Supplementary Order Paper is a cynical manoeuvre by the Government to fix this one mistake at this time in this flawed process. Without doubt there will be further stupid mistakes discovered in the Foreshore and Seabed Act that will have to be remedied. I say to the Government that it should fess up that the whole Foreshore and Seabed Act was one huge dumb unjust mistake. It should fess up that it should never have happened and that the Act will cause only more problems be more divisive endanger the ecological security of our coast and further alienate mana whenua in their own country. I tell the Government to fess up and fix the problem.