Parker David: Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill — In Committee 
Parker David: Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:670;Page:17433] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 Firstly I acknowledge the officials who have been here for a long time this week. I thank them for being here and for the help they gave to the Maori Affairs Committee and this Parliament. 
I will raise a couple of issues. Firstly I will point out the logical flaw in Paul Quinn’s argument. Paul Quinn said that codifying the relevant tests for the establishment of customary interests settles the issue and will provide an enduring settlement but I ask how that can be when the Maori Party the coalition party that the Government relies upon to pass this legislation says it disagrees. The reason Labour withdrew from a consensus on this legislation was that it had turned into a fiction. Maori Party members could not bring themselves to say that they accepted that this legislation was an enduring deal. If they had done maybe Parliament would have had a different outcome now and we would just about have unanimity on this thing. The Prime Minister did not go to the Maori Party and say that the Government needed it to acknowledge this bill as a full and final settlement of the framework for the settlement of customary interests in the foreshore and seabed. It is a failure of leadership in the view of the Labour Party on the part of both National and the Maori Party that they did not get to that point. The objective those members set for themselves was that this bill would settle things. So there is a logical flaw there. 
The other thing I thought was interesting in Paul Quinn’s contribution was that he spent the first part of it saying how great it was that the Maori Party and National were cooperating on this issue. That is interesting because a lot of people are effectively saying—and they are right—that a vote for the Maori Party is a vote for National. From the Maori Party supporters’ point of view they see that as being a plague upon the Maori Party house. A lot of other people are saying that a vote for National is a vote for the Maori Party and that is being seen as a plague upon National in the eyes of a lot of voters. It is really a plague upon both their houses. In a process sense this legislation is being pushed through quickly even under the shadow of the Canterbury tragedy and the Christchurch earthquake because both the Maori Party and National know those lines are correct; a vote for the Maori Party is a vote for National and a vote for National is a vote for the Maori Party. That is why the select committee process was truncated. Both the Maori Party and National want to get this legislation off the agenda because it is a plague upon both their houses. 
I will also deal with something that the Hon Mita Ririnui said. I thought his contribution in respect of the member for Te Tai Tonga was appropriate. He was not making a personal attack upon her; he was just asking how she could stand there and pretend that the bill delivers what she says it delivers for Ngai Tahu when it does not. Ngai Tahu do not favour the bill. They say the bill should go down. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: She’s not there as a representative of Ngai Tahu; she’s there as a representative of Te Wai Pounamu. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I agree that she is not here as a representative of Ngai Tahu—her interests are broader than that—but she pretends that the bill delivers to Ngai Tahu something that meets their aspirations when it does not. It most plainly does not. I do not necessarily agree with Ngai Tahu’s view on what the common law test would be if it went to court. In fact I do not agree with them but I do believe they should have the right to explore it and I do believe them when they say their sense of injustice will last for generations and will not go away through the passage of this legislation. Mita Ririnui’s criticisms of Rahui Katene were not personal attacks upon her; they were actually just showing that the position she takes is wrong and is ignorant in respect of what the bill delivers for Ngai Tahu which is very little if anything. 
In respect of that issue the Maori Party is hoist with its own petard because through its—in my view irresponsible at times—rhetoric at one edge of the debate during the debate on the last version of the legislation it created an expectation amongst Maoridom that would never have been delivered by the Ngati Apa decision. The Maori Party is being hoist with its own petard because it exaggerated to the people it purports to represent an outcome that would never have been achieved. That is not what the law ever said. 
The other thing Paul Quinn said is that the legislation makes the foreshore and seabed safe and everyone can have access to them. That is a return to some of the arguments of the past that I did not like. I acknowledge that in Tau Henare’s contribution he made it clear that access to the beaches has never been an issue in relation to the Foreshore and Seabed Act. That was a fiction put about by Don Brash and other members of National. I have actually read out their contributions in the Committee stage including Nick Smith’s— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: And yours. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: No we actually said in this House that access to the beaches was not at risk. We made it absolutely explicit in our contributions that it was never at risk. In fact we also legislated through the Foreshore and Seabed Act that it was not at risk. 
I agree with Tau Henare that access across people’s land to the foreshore and seabed is a completely different issue. It has never been an issue in terms of the Ngati Apa foreshore and seabed decision. There are places in New Zealand where as my colleague Parekura Horomia has said access down to the beach is increasingly difficult. That is a different issue I agree but it is a practical issue in parts where some private owners are exercising their property right to exclude others and are stopping people from going across their land in a way that was not the case in prior years. That is not a foreshore and seabed issue as Parekura Horomia makes clear; it is another important issue. 
The legislation has a new name. It is the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill. It could equally be called the “Replacement Foreshore and Seabed Bill” because it is actually not much different from the original Act. It is not much different. The main difference is that someone who has proved to the court that they have a territorial customary right now does not have to go to the Crown to negotiate to get their rights back; they can get a remedy from the court. That is an important change that Labour agrees with and indeed submitted to the review committee. Yes the threshold tests are a bit different but they are not very different. The creation of the new definition of public space as a space that somehow no one owns is a legal fiction. What matters is not whether the space is held by the Crown or held in some other name; what matters is the different rights people have in respect of that space and those bundles of rights are largely unchanged. 
I am saddened at the lack of leadership shown by both the Maori Party and National in not getting us to a settlement. That is the task they set us and because National was not willing to call the bluff of the Maori Party and say it could take it or leave it and because of the unwillingness of the Maori Party to offer up acceptance that the settlement was fair we have left New Zealand with uncertainty— 
Hon Dr Wayne Mapp 
: No you’re the ones who’ve done that by your hype actually. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: No I tell Dr Mapp that that is not correct. I might quote again what he said in the Committee stage of the last version; he said that large tracts of the foreshore and seabed would not be accessible to non-Maori. That is something that should stand as a stain upon that member’s record in this House. The reality is that this bill does not settle the issue because the Maori Party and National have not been able to reach an accommodation between themselves acknowledging that this legislation is full and final. The Prime Minister has not required that of the Maori Party and the Maori Party has not offered it. John Armstrong was right when he made that analysis in the  
New Zealand Herald 
. National moved a long way. Labour was willing to move a little way. We did not actually have to move very far because we were a lot closer to the Maori Party than National was. But we were willing to move even a bit further than that. The Maori Party had to move just a little way. It actually had to show a bit of leadership. As Tau Henare said its members are not here to represent just an iwi interest. We are here representing the interests of all— 
Hon Dr Wayne Mapp 
: They actually have shown leadership by their vote today. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: No they have said at co-leader and senior whip level that they do not accept that this bill is a settlement and that it is but a first step. That is a failure of political leadership that is bad for this country. The access issues were never an issue. Sadly this bill should be called the “Failed Attempt at Settlement Bill”. I think it is lamentable because we got very close. We had the opportunity. Even if one of the Supplementary Order Papers that would flick it all back to the courts had been voted for that would have settled it too. There were a couple of ways in which this bill could have resulted in settlement but it did not occur.