Brash Don: Foreshore and Seabed Bill Resource Management (Foreshore and Seabed) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Brash Don: Foreshore and Seabed Bill Resource Management (Foreshore and Seabed) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Volume:621;Page:17186] 
Dr DON BRASH (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 Finally we come to the third readings of this legislation one of the most fateful pieces of legislation ever to be debated in this House. When the Court of Appeal decision was announced in the middle of last year what we thought was settled law was suddenly overturned. We thought that all New Zealanders Maori Pakeha Pacific Islanders and Asians owned the foreshore and seabed. The Court of Appeal turned that into doubt. What should the Government have done? Well its initial reaction got it about right. It initially said that it would legislate to ensure that the foreshore and seabed belonged to all New Zealanders. Even Chris Trotter said on Willie Jackson’s Television One programme  
Eye to Eye 
 on Tuesday night that what Labour should have done after that Court of Appeal decision was cross the floor of this House and ask for National’s support to pass legislation quickly to re-establish the position in law that we all thought was the case. I have no doubt at all that the National Party would have agreed to do exactly that.  
Had the Government done that all the drama all the anguish all the hikoi and demonstrations and all the anger would have been avoided because the Government would have moved quickly to re-establish the position we all thought was in fact the case. What did it actually do? It embarked on a fundamentally dishonest process that gave the appearance of listening to the public of legislating for Crown ownership of providing strictly limited rights to Maori New Zealanders and of adjusting their proposal in the light of submissions but in reality it changed nothing of substance. It embarked on a process that involved endless hui with Maori long hearings at the select committee stage further debate and consultation and now an unseemly cynical rushed process under urgency to get this thing off the agenda as quickly as possible before the public learn what is going on before Christmas and before the election campaign.  
 It has been a process involving secret deals and backroom agreements with anybody and everybody to secure sufficient parliamentary support and to ensure buy-in from Maori. So we see last-minute compromises with other political parties. “Public domain” becomes “Crown ownership”. Ancestral connection in; ancestral connection out. We hear hints of secret assurances of special treatment for Tainui to try to guarantee the support of Nanaia Mahuta. We see evidence that Labour has entered into secret negotiations with at least four iwi aimed at recognising ownership interests. At the end of this process what do we have? We have a fundamentally flawed—[ 
Interruption 
]  
Mr SPEAKER 
: From now on we will hear this debate in relative silence. Dr Cullen was given a good hearing. This is an important debate and there will be very few interjections indeed. Dr Brash’s time has not been affected. 
Dr DON BRASH 
: At the end of the process we have fundamentally flawed legislation that will divide Maori New Zealanders from non-Maori New Zealanders for generations to come. Superficially we have Crown ownership of the seabed and foreshore. Superficially we have ownership of the seabed and foreshore by all New Zealanders. If that were the reality the National Party would be supporting this legislation. But it is not the reality. Crown ownership is so heavily qualified that it is meaningless. I take just one example. Ancestral connection has been dropped from the legislation although the Government has made it clear that ancestral connection orders will be taken into account in the review of the Resource Management Act. The Labour Party Maori caucus said on Tuesday that the new plans will provide stronger recognition of the traditional association of whanau hapu and iwi with the coast than the ancestral connection orders initially provided for in the legislation.  
The Government is making it explicitly clear that it reserves the right to hand over ownership of parts of the foreshore and seabed in the context of treaty settlements—exactly as it did with the Rotorua lakes and Te Arawa. The passage of this legislation will mark the beginning of a process whereby control of large tracts of the New Zealand foreshore—the birthright of all New Zealanders—will be handed over to small groups of unelected undemocratic tribal elites. They will be people who can claim some Maori ancestry—often a very small amount. The bill is the result of a Labour Government that is desperate to persuade Maori that they have some continuing and ongoing involvement in the control of the seabed and foreshore while persuading other New Zealanders that ownership is retained by all of us.  
Which party has made this deal possible? New Zealand First. What an extraordinary name for a party that has sold New Zealand and New Zealanders down the river. It has sold us into a world of increased racial division increased racial tension and increased racial dissent by signing up to this sordid deal. Both Labour and New Zealand First have shown their true colours when it comes to treaty issues. The National Party wants to see all New Zealanders—Maori Pakeha Pacific Island Asian young old men and women—treated as equal before the law with a foreshore and seabed owned by all of us not by people who chance to have one Maori ancestor.  
We have seen an inept response from the Government to a controversial decision by our courts. We have seen no leadership on this issue just a Prime Minister blowing in the political wind. We have seen no backbone when that is precisely what was required to bring New Zealand forward as a confident and united country moving into the future. National is absolutely and totally opposed to this legislation.  
The story of Parliament’s management of Treaty of Waitangi issues over the decades has been a saga of neglect and the shirking of responsibility. The important task of spelling out the rights of New Zealand citizens in relation to the treaty has been avoided or even worse abdicated to the courts. The Foreshore and Seabed Bill which now receives its third reading continues and exacerbates this sad legacy. Yet again Parliament has decided that the rights of New Zealanders under the laws of the land are to be placed in the too-hard basket and that our courts will be given explicit powers to determine that one group of New Zealanders is more equal than another.  
In less than 12 months’ time New Zealanders will have the opportunity to elect a Government that will insist that Parliament not the courts will determine the framework of our laws especially as they affect our fundamental rights as citizens. They will have a chance to elect a Government that will insist that laws passed by Parliament will be based on the principle that all New Zealanders regardless of race are equal before the law. They will have an opportunity to ensure that this fatally flawed unprincipled and unfair legislation will never again darken the Chamber of this Parliament.