Brownlee Gerry: Maori Fisheries Bill — In Committee 
Brownlee Gerry: Maori Fisheries Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:15426] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 Mr Chairperson you can see how eager Opposition members are to make a contribution to this debate and I refer you again to the points I made before. Part 1 is about the preliminary provisions key concepts and key iwi organisations. It is a very large part of the bill and it should take the Committee quite some time to deal with it. As the Chairperson has already said we are dealing with several schedules as we go through it. 
What is very evident in this part is just what hopelessly patronising legislation this is. I wonder how many New Zealanders out there would be happy if they were told that they were being given some assets but that they could never ever get their hands on them—if they were told the assets were theirs as of right but that they would never get their hands on them or be given the opportunity to determine how they would be used and who was to have the say over them. That is the trouble with this legislation. I do not have too much of a concern about who might have been involved with this legislation before Mr Benson-Pope became the Minister. He is the Minister who will go down in history as the paternalistic old grandfather who treated Maori in the appalling way that they have been treated for so many generations in the past. I can see future generations of young Maori coming to the Crown again and asking why that was done to them. Maori will ask why the Crown gave them assets but then did not let them get their hands on them—did not let them directly determine how the assets were to be used and what sort of return they would get off them but rather combined Maori into a very very convoluted and bureaucratic structure that saw them take only what they were given. 
The irony of course is that this legislation will hand over in a fairly substantial way control of all those assets to Maori—but to a very very exclusive group of Maori. It will be interesting will it not in the time of future generations when people come back to the Crown and say that it made a mistake and they want redress for that. I have no doubt that that will be the result of this legislation—and it may not be very long before people come back to the Crown quite frankly. Then we will see the extraordinary situation of the Crown having to sort out a mess for Maori created by Maori. That is one of the concerns the National Party has about this legislation. The purpose clause states that the bill is to “provide for the development of the collective and individual interests of iwi in fisheries fishing and fisheries-related activities in a manner that is ultimately for the benefit of all Maori.” But Maori can never hold the assets. The assets will be locked up by a very elite group which will be able to choose the directors for the various companies that may operate a good chunk of the quota that will go into those assets and other Maori will simply have to take whatever they can get. 
I remind people who may be interested that very recently the Maori fishing assets must have been under some peril as Sealord’s itself was a company that for a moment or two seemed less than viable. Would it not be awful for the country if in the future Maori quota is somehow lost—or if the value of it is lost which is probably the real point? The value of it could be stripped away through bad management and the asset given to Maori could become worth very little. If one or two people had had their way with regard to the Sealord’s arrangement about 55 percent of the country’s fishing assets would have ended up in one place. If one big company has 55 percent of the assets and a whole lot of small companies have various little bits who sets the value? The big player does. I think that is the real tragedy in this bill. From my perspective I am reluctant to support it. The rest of my concerns will become evident as we go further through the bill.