Franks Stephen: Ngati Awa Claims Settlement Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Franks Stephen: Ngati Awa Claims Settlement Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:623;Page:18839] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 In the provisions relating to coastal tendering the preferential rights are set out in a schedule appended to the Ngati Awa deed of settlement. It may be that the Maori Affairs Committee which considered this bill had a good look at those preferential rights and it may be that they are entirely consistent with what is contemplated under the regime for aquaculture areas as agreed by the Government last year. But I believe that the Ngati Awa agreement was made well before that was contemplated. I do not know exactly how it will be done that the iwi gets a prior right or pick under this deed and under the deed of settlement or how that fits in with the parallel rights created under the regime that accompanied the foreshore and seabed settlement. 
If as is stated under clause 120 the tender of Ngati Awa whose governance entity will presumably make these pitches has a right to be treated as the most preferred tender by the Minister—if there is no tender or if the Minister would otherwise reject every tender—then it does seem that the interrelationship between this deed and the coastal marine area coverage of the foreshore and seabed arrangements ought to have been explained. I do not see anything that even touches on it. Nothing in the report from the select committee touches on it. There is a suggestion about Crown policy on overlapping claims but I do not think that anyone has seen this as potentially overlapping claims. It seems like overlapping claims to me because of the arrangements that could well have people other than Ngati Awa pitching for the same areas. I do not know whether they will have preferential rights but there is nothing in the bill itself that indicates how competing preferential rights are to be dealt with. 
The whole thing is wrong in principle. There was no reason for assigning 20 percent of aquaculture area to Maori. The principal concern I have about it is not that they get it because it is a windfall anyway. When one is creating aquaculture rights one is creating valuable property rights very sensibly where none have existed before and it does not matter hugely who they go to except that people should recognise them as a windfall. But what does matter is whether those property rights then get locked up and are not able to be dealt with freely by the owners. It does matter whether the aquaculture rights are article 2 property for which there is an assurance of transferability and exclusive possession or whether they are the kind of insulting property that is created by this bill—that is the sort of property that is permanently afflicted with the kinds of restrictions that we find in the Fisheries Commission settlement arrangements where people who may have lost all interest in fishing or may have taken a strategic view that it had passed its peak are nevertheless unable to shift to something better. 
Some of the rights that are created under Part 4 are the sorts of rights that the treaty promised Maori they would not have. I cannot see for example how the nohoanga areas the camping areas will be exercised in say 30 or 40 years’ time when the people who have been there for all time—the generations in that area—might be a tiny portion of the local community. They might be a very small portion even of the Maori population in the community. The exercise of this kind of right is likely simply to set them at odds with their neighbours partly because undoubtedly there will be nepotism in the way it is organised. That is the way humans act. That is not something exclusive to Maori. If the temptation is there then it is used.