Worth Richard: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Worth Richard: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:621;Page:17117] 
RICHARD WORTH (National—Epsom) 
: 
 What a great choice and a privilege it is to be able at 11.20 p.m. on 17 November to talk about this really critical part. As I look across a crowded debating chamber to the Maori members on the Government benches I can so easily reflect that some members have made no contribution at all to this debate. I would like to hear from Mahara Okeroa. He has strong views on these issues. What has Dave Hereora who is with me on the Justice and Electoral Committee said on these issues? Absolutely nothing! What can he contribute? It may be the same answer—absolutely nothing. But he should be given the opportunity to contribute. That is why I encourage those who are present in the debating chamber to make a contribution. In this call which I hope may be one of many that I make as this debate runs on into late tomorrow afternoon I would like to comment on two particular things. Those two particular things concern clause 83.  
Clause 83 is concerned with the contents of New Zealand coastal policy statements. It is a sadness about the Resource Management Act that we have a great plan for national policy statements but what has happened to them? They were reduced to only one which was a New Zealand coastal policy statement full of fudge and waffle. So in clause 83 there are provisions that add further statutory criteria relating to the protection of recognised customary activities. But worse still is an old issue that bedevils the Resource Management Act—which has in my view unnecessarily delayed the Local Government and Environment Committee—concerning iwi planning documents. I am sure that members of the committee will be very much aware that there are iwi planning documents of incredible variety ranging from the sophistication of Ngai Tahu to the poor work that Tainui has done recently. There should be an opportunity taken in this legislation to correct those issues so that iwi planning documents have a credibility and a power that enable them to have a real role in the context of the issues that regional councils and territorial authorities have to deal with. I look at the young Minister David Benson-Pope who is seated opposite me and who has some great charge from the present Government to revamp the Resource Management Act. I ask what he is doing about that. We know the answer to that. Sadly it is nothing much.  
In the course of this debate I have touched on an issue that I think members need to reflect more fully on. It is that although issues of Maoriness were very relevant in 1840 and remained relevant for many years they are of much less significance now. They are of much less significance for a number of reasons but maybe the most significant of those reasons is the fact that Maori and non-Maori have intermingled. Whereas it was possible at one stage to talk in New Zealand of Maori and Pakeha there is an uneasiness about using those classification tags now. A happier way to describe those issues in a country that is now blessed with a strong ethnic and cultural diversity is perhaps to talk about Maori and non-Maori. It is appropriate in the context of this part particularly with the emphasis on the Resource Management Act and the issues in that significant statute that touch on iwi consultation iwi planning documents and those things to talk for a moment about what a Maori may be. I raised this in the debate on an earlier part and I think that I attracted a good deal of interest from members like Mahara Okeroa who are the new philosophers who are leading Maoridom through 2004. It certainly will not be into the new Government that will sit in Parliament in 2005 because those who currently sit on the Government benches will be sitting over here in Opposition and those who are on the Opposition benches will be sitting quite determinedly over there in Government.