Shirley Ken: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — Procedure Second Reading 
Shirley Ken: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — Procedure Second Reading 
[Volume:621;Page:16942] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (ACT) 
: 
 The ACT party is certainly opposing this legislation. The Government has been lurching from panic to panic from the moment the Court of Appeal brought down its decision last June. The Government has been precipitous inconsistent and wrong at every turn of this legislation and the way in which Winston Peters and his party have at this late stage allowed the legislation to proceed through Parliament is an indictment on them. 
It is bad legislation and I believe that the future generations who will have to live with it will regret its passage. It fails to protect property rights and it is a gross breach of due process which is an aspect of this legislation ACT is particularly upset about. 
We were promised that the bill was based on the principles of access regulation protection and certainty. It certainly will not deliver certainty. It will deliver incredible uncertainty by the very fact that it amends the Resource Management Act—the tool by which this legislation is to be implemented. Who thinks we have certainty under the Resource Management Act? What we will do here is extend the principle of the Resource Management Act—codified tikanga—over the whole management of our foreshore and seabed. That is a recipe for ongoing uncertainty not certainty. 
The select committee process was an absolute and utter disgrace. The committee had 4000 submissions from concerned New Zealanders most of whom wanted to be heard. The Government screened them out and we were able to hear from only 200. Only 5 percent of the submitters were heard by the select committee. 
The Government did not have the numbers on the select committee. In fact Government members themselves opposed this legislation. Do members remember John Tamihere’s public comments the week before the report back? He was going to bring down all sorts of changes because he was opposed to it. That is why the select committee was unable to report back fully. 
To carry on the insult of ramming bad legislation through Parliament only today did the Government show Parliament the whites of its eyes. We saw the detail of this legislation only about 5.30 this evening immediately prior to this debate commencing. That is a disgrace. 
The NgatiApa decision of 23 June last year did not actually say very much at all. All it said was that pursuant to the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act there might in some cases be rare and remote instances—and it even stressed that they would be rare and remote—by which some iwi could go to court and establish that they did indeed have title based on customary rights. The Government totally overreacted to that situation. 
People blame the courts and say what a bad decision that was but the more I read the judges’ decision the more I do not blame them. I blame the legislators and the Government of the day—the previous National Party Government—for passing the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act in 1993 because it was vague it was uncertain and it extended by default the jurisdiction of the Maori Land Court. As Mr Brownlee has already pointed out not one submitter in the lengthy legislative process in 1993 even referred to the foreshore and seabed. 
That aside the previous Government let through bad drafting that made it quite specific that the Maori Land Court had extended jurisdiction and that it could indeed issue title over the foreshore and seabed. Prior to 1993 no such right existed and it was not an issue so that was the genesis of the problem. 
The ACT party asks why we do not go directly to the problem directly to the mischief—if indeed it is a mischief—and address that issue rather than create a whole new regime of complicated mechanisms codifying tikanga amending the Resource Management Act and introducing all manner of new concepts to manage the foreshore and seabed that are untried unproven and untested and that will certainly create mass uncertainty. 
The Government is saying that it will codify Maori tikanga. Let us remind ourselves that every iwi in the country every iwi that came to the select committee was horrified at that—and so they should have been. What right has a Government to codify spiritual belief? That is what is upsetting Maori as I learnt from the select committee. How dare the Government give itself the right to put bounds and limits on and to codify Maori spiritual beliefs! They are not asking the Government to do that.  
Not only is the Government codifying those beliefs but it is also making an instrument for the Resource Management Act which of course upsets the rest of society—all the non-Maori—in relation to how that will be applied. Somehow it will be used as a tool in resource consents—in whether someone wants to build a marina engage in aquaculture or carry out any development. Any activity on the foreshore and seabed will be subject to that codified tikanga. 
We have had enough problems with the Resource Management Act. It was meant to be for the sustainable management of natural and physical resources. The fact that previous Governments have imported all sorts of ill-defined nebulous spiritual and metaphysical references into it is a key reason why the Resource Management Act is in such chaos. What we are doing here in part is importing those same principles into the total management of our foreshore and seabed. 
But it gets worse. Can members guess what agency will be the Government’s holder of all the foreshore and seabed? It will be an old friend of ours: the Department of Conservation. All reclamations all management of coastal waters and all applications to do anything with the foreshore and seabed will be controlled and managed on behalf of the Crown by the Department of Conservation. So we have the Department of Conservation having this great big new tool: the amended Resource Management Act. 
That is what Winston Peters is supporting; that is what Dail Jones is supporting—and they say it is good legislation! It is appalling legislation and future generations are going to regret it absolutely. The ACT party will continue to oppose it. 
Now I come to the issue of reclamations. The ACT party says and I say that we should be issuing title to a reclamation. A reclamation creates a block of land. But no it all has to be vested in the Department of Conservation. Let us look back in history. The foreshore used to be right outside the door of this building; there is a little plaque about it on the footpath. Lambton Quay was Lambton Quay because it was the foreshore so all of that land in Wellington is reclaimed land. Henceforth moving on in our history all such land will be vested in the Department of Conservation. Who thinks that that is a good idea? I do not think it is a good idea. Winston does though; Winston thinks it is a good idea. He supported that measure and it is an appalling measure. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I was prepared to indulge the member for a while but he cannot go on referring to me by my Christian name. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: The member is absolutely right. 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY 
: Mr Peters supports having all future reclaimed lands under the control of the Department of Conservation. He supports a position where all the spiritual and metaphysical amendments to the Resource Management Act are applied to all future management of the foreshore and seabed. That will not work; it will be a disaster. I am prepared to stand here tonight and predict that it will be a disaster. Just as the Resource Management Act has frustrated all development in this country this amendment to it—this so-called foreshore and seabed legislation—will certainly be a disaster. The ACT party will oppose it at every stage.