Connell Brian: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Connell Brian: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:621;Page:17164] 
BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) 
: 
 This will be good. Members have asked for the great debater to come to the Chamber. I have heard the call and here I am. Mahara Okeroa took a call; at last he has found his tongue. Unfortunately he is a lion in the Chamber but on the marae he is a mouse. Where was he when his people really needed him? Where was he when his people were asking for due process? He was not at home then. The great shame about this whole bill is that it did not have to happen. It is all premised around a Court of Appeal decision that led some people to say that Maori would have ownership of the foreshore and seabed. If cool heads had prevailed and if people had taken the time to read that judgment they would have understood that that was never stated in the first place. But we have a poll-driven Government that thought because that was the public perception it would sneak this bill through Parliament in undue rude haste.  
I say to the Maori caucus that it has changed its tune now. I can remember when the Labour Maori MPs were out on the streets of this country saying that they would not vote for this legislation and would not do dirty backroom deals. That is the great shame of the Maori caucus. That is the way history will remember those members. That is the way they will be reported on the streets of this country today tomorrow next week and the weeks and years after that.  
The great shame of it all is that people like Winston Peters have put their name to this deal. Winston Peters is a man who was nourished in the bosom of the National Party. He did all his training with it. He spent the formative years of his political career in the National Party being groomed for bigger and better things. And what has he done? Winston Peters has ruined that distinguished career by having this millstone around his neck. He will have on his tombstone the words: “Here lies a politician who sold the farm for a few cheap votes.” I can understand people like Michael Cullen doing that because that is all he has ever known. But guys like Winston Peters and the New Zealand First members whom I have some respect for ought to know better than to do that.  
New Zealanders are being dispossessed by stealth. [ 
Interruption 
] The member will get his chance. They are now being told that everything is OK because the issue has been fixed. Well it has not been fixed. Naughty dirty backroom deals have been done so that New Zealanders can be dispossessed. We are told that ancestral connection has been taken out of this bill. That is an absolute nonsense. Those words may have been taken out—they were too controversial for the Government and the weak members of the Maori caucus. But members of the National Party who have read the bill—who have looked at what has taken place—know that put into the Resource Management Act now is a sneaky dirty little process whereby people can be dispossessed at will. And the Government does not even have to go to the public. It can just sign away by cheque after cheque people’s traditions and ancestry. People in this country deserve better leadership and better governance than they are getting from the likes of Michael Cullen and his cohorts.  
I can tell members something else. Everyone talks about the Port of Timaru people being happy. Well new clause 100 does not take care of that issue. People from the Port of Timaru have called me and said they still worried about it. They have said the Government has not thought the issue out at all and have asked me how they can grow the port if they do not have certainty.