Brownlee Gerry: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Brownlee Gerry: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:621;Page:17055] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. I just want a clarification. I am looking through the redline copy which I know is not official but is there to help us. I notice that clauses 38 to 40 seem to be struck out. In actual fact it would appear that the sequential numbering will go from clause 37 straight to clause 41. Is that caused by hurried preparation or do I have a copy with some bits missing? My pages are sequentially numbered if that helps.  
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Would the member please repeat that. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: If you go to page 46 of that document Madam Chairperson you will see that the last clause there is clause 37 “Applications for orders”. There is a small clause remaining there but virtually from there on the clauses—38 39 40 and 41 42 and 43—are all removed. When it comes to the content going back into the bill on page 50 we start with clause 41 so it is just a question of what has happened to clauses 38 39 and 40. 
Dail Jones 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. Whilst the Minister is perhaps getting some more information I note on just having a quick look at it that that legislation relates to ancestral connection does it not? That has been deleted hence it is not in the bill any more. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Yes but I did not hear fully what the member said. 
Dail Jones 
: I believe that those deletions relate principally to ancestral connection and there have been some further matters tidied up as well. Perhaps the Minister could take another call because I was doing something else when the point of order was raised. But if we look at the redline version we see that it is principally ancestral connection matter that has been deleted I think and matter linked to it to some extent. The Minister can confirm whether I am right. 
Hon Margaret Wilson 
: As I read it both members are right. The numbers do not run sequentially and that is because the ancestral connection clauses have been removed—those three—so the bill needs to be renumbered. As the member Mr Brownlee quite rightly noted this redline version is here to assist; it is not the official version. It will be changed. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Well I think that that just serves to show how difficult it is to deal with this bill. I am very pleased that the New Zealand First member Dail Jones is in the Chamber. He should be sitting in the Minister’s chair. That little explanation from him certainly confirms that this Supplementary Order Paper which is effectively an amendment bill by and large is his work. The country will not thank him for that.  
The interesting thing about this part we would contend is that in many ways clause 35 is what the Government should have done—or the essence of it is what it should have done—right from the start to make it clear that the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act did not give jurisdiction to the Maori Land Court to deal with the foreshore and the seabed. That should have happened right upfront and the rest of it should have been taken from there. 
The fascinating thing about this whole part is that it will empower the Maori Land Court to decide who has customary rights and who does not. It would seem to me that if an iwi grouping a hapu grouping or even a whanau grouping has a customary right then it has it. So why does it have to go to the Maori Land Court to have that right sorted out? 
In the South Island—and Dover Samuels will be able to attest to this because he is a beneficiary—there are arrangements for a particular customary right on the Crown’s Titi Islands the mutton birding islands that is a long established customary right. Not any Maori can go there; only certain families can go there. That right has been passed down from generation to generation and I expect that it would not change if there were some application to have it further ratified by going to the Maori Land Court. 
Our view quite simply when it comes to customary rights is that those recognitions should be made as part of treaty settlements—as they have been frequently up to now as they were under the National Party and as they will continue to be under the National Party. Those areas in question are not huge; they are relatively discrete areas around the country where undeniably there has been an exercise of a customary right for many many generations. 
What is perhaps most offensive about this piece of the bill is that it assumes and works from the premise that no customary right can be established post-1840. That has to be an utter nonsense. A good part of the country was completely desolate of human habitation in 1840. There have to be hundreds of thousands of people who have taken up residence around this country and engaged in activities that could be considered customary only for them. But this bill will not recognise that. I think particularly in the South Island where it was so sparsely populated and where new communities have sprung up that no matter whether people are Maori or non-Maori this legislation will be a denial of customary rights that they should be able to exercise. I think it is also amazing that where we can say there has been a customary practice—obviously in this case for more than 160-odd years or whatever—suddenly the Minister of Conservation will be brought in on top of that and he will make the determination for example of how many mutton birds Dover Samuels and his colleagues can take from the Crown’s Titi Islands in any particular year—[ 
Interruption 
] I only said Dover Samuels because he told me that he has access rights. 
Hon Member 
: I would not believe him. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Oh has he not? He has led me up the garden path. Well why is that a surprise!  
The point is that there are people who have had those access rights and who have been carrying out that activity for many many years and it does not appear that they have carried out that activity in a way that has destroyed the resource. But it would appear that we are still going to have the Maori Land Court ratify that. Then despite treaty settlements we are going to have the Minister of Conservation inserted into the process as well. We know that the current Minister of Conservation is in fact more like a “Minister of Preservation” because he just does not want anything to be touched anywhere so I wonder whether members on the other side of the House or the Minister considers that these provisions in actual fact do cut across and place unnecessary constraint on those who hold the customary right.