Turia Tariana: Foreshore and Seabed Bill Resource Management (Foreshore and Seabed) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Turia Tariana: Foreshore and Seabed Bill Resource Management (Foreshore and Seabed) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Volume:621;Page:17197] 
TARIANA TURIA (Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 First of all I thank those who have chaired the House and the Committee through what has been a very difficult process and I acknowledge those iwi in the top end of the South Island who took their case to the Court of Appeal and were then denied justice to go on to the courts.  
Today we are witnessing the death of democracy through the tyranny of the majority. Over the last few days this Chamber has witnessed some desperate cries for credibility from members of the Government whose Maori seats will be sacrificed by the Government to save the general members’ seats. We heard cries of confusion and of complicity and we heard the plea that we need a vision of what New Zealand is today not what it was in the 19th century. Yet this legislation takes us right back to those days a period in the mid-1880s when this Parliament will recall a shameful history where the majority of Maori males were not then eligible to vote on the general electoral roll and at that time we were the majority. To be on the electoral roll males were required to hold a minimum amount of private property whereas nearly all Maori then did not own property individually but communally. What I put to all members today is to show me the difference between then and now.  
This bill is a discriminatory act. It treats private property rights as more important than customary property rights. When I was a child other children used to say: “What’s mine is my own.” Now what Maori children will say is: “What was mine is everybody’s.” The backroom deal with New Zealand First has made an absolute mockery of the select committee process. Only the privileged were listened to and that is everyone except tangata whenua. When members try to convince us that the legislation is all about New Zealanders they seem to forget that tangata whenua are also New Zealanders—a collective group of New Zealanders who have special constitutional status by virtue of the relationship signed up to by all our ancestors Te Tiriti o Waitangi.  
We listened to members desperately trying to convince themselves that the Government is proud of its ongoing fiduciary obligation to tangata whenua. The basis of a fiduciary relationship is that of trust. Does anyone in the House honestly think that tangata whenua will be fooled into thinking that they can trust a Government that has sacrificed extinguished and confiscated the last piece of customary land that we held by default? The only fiduciary relationship we believe in is that vested between tangata whenua and the Crown in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Our position with respect to te tiriti is unequivocal. It is a cornerstone of the constitution of Aoteaora.  
Let us look instead at what the minority Government is pinning all its hopes on—the fiduciary relationship it will have with tangata whenua through the establishment of reserves. Prospective groups must in line with section 34C make application to the High Court to apply for the establishment of a reserve. If successful in their application the High Court then directs them to prepare a charter by which the board will administer the reserve. The High Court then directs as set down in section 34D(a) for the board to be established as a legal entity and then in section 34D(b) the group has to present a charter to the High Court again itemising a host of technical specifications for the new legal entity. Such an exhaustive process for compliance hardly represents to me an action of trust. I recall the Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations the other night throwing off that in the Court of Appeal case while there were 34 lawyers acting in the interests of iwi the Crown needed only four. Of course she neglected to mention the huge departmental infrastructure available to the Crown or the unlimited public purse.  
This legislation adds further to the labyrinth of legal processes that our people must push through. New Zealand First the party that has made its name out of criticising the so-called gravy train is now proudly standing by a legislative sham that sets into play an excessive reliance on lawyers. We have gone from the gravy train to the whole railway network. If our people are not to be borne down with the weight of compliance costs the confusion created by this legislation in its use of terminology will be the final straw. The minority Government has tried to mislead our people by promoting the idea that Maori groups that would have won aboriginal title claims can now opt to be guardians of reserves.  
Guardianship is about whakapapa. It is about mana. Contrast that with the meaning of guardianship in the Foreshore and Seabed Bill to mean the members of the board of a foreshore and seabed reserve. In other words a concept that we see as intimately connected to kaitiakitanga is reduced to members of a committee. The terminology promulgated in this legislation for the concept of guardianship is totally devoid of any Maori interpretation. In this legislation creating reserves is just another way of trying to influence Maori into believing that they will have a management right but all those reserves will be subject to the existing rights of access and other laws like the Resource Management Act that protect the coastal areas. The legislation further suggests that kaitiakitanga will be expressed through the review of the Resource Management Act. Given that Maori consultation has always been so poorly carried out in the context of that Act what confidence can whanau and hapu have in the legislation?  
Let me get this right. This minority Government with the full support of New Zealand First will strip our people of their birthright their customary property of takutai moana in exchange for what? It expects us to willingly take on an arduous process of negotiating with local authorities to confirm a management plan. What is even more bizarre is that the members of the board of the reserve the so-called guardians are to do so for the benefit of the public. So they are to manage the service with no capacity to receive any resources or any other form of payment for any activities undertaken as specified in section 34B(2). We are not only being robbed but we are also being asked to do community service for the rest of our lives.  
Maori have experienced the large-scale legitimised theft of land through the policy of raupatu yet we punish Maori and other New Zealanders who steal. Those are the double standards that serve to confuse and enrage our people. Stealing land by Government is accepted as legitimate whereas theft is punishable by law—the so-called one law for all New Zealanders. This nation is tired of doubletalk of deliberate confusion and of unseemly haste. This nation is tired of the divisive intent of this legislation. This legislation never needed to happen.  
We are not on about the fences or the gates. Those are the barriers built by this Government and now New Zealand First that will remain between the peoples of this land and our people and their land. The issue was never about contiguous use. The issue is about tikanga and that is what has been ignored. Two simple changes could have been made to existing legislation—changes to Te Ture Whenua Maori Act to prevent the alienation of land and changes to the Resource Management Act to give certainty to access. A movement was born of this legislation and I want to mihi to a movement that looks to reflect the thousands of New Zealanders who marched on Parliament the thousands who spent more hours writing submissions and the people who travelled here today to demonstrate their grief. The Maori Party on behalf of all those people we represent and for the sake of all our future generations vehemently opposes this legislation.