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:17086] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 This is the part that no doubt New Zealand First members will claim as their triumph. This is the part that supposedly allows those New Zealanders who hold some property contiguous to a sea space and who have held that property continuously since 1840 and have undertaken activities within that foreshore and sea space of the same nature pretty much without change since 1840 the opportunity to go to the High Court and have a customary use right registered. There will be perhaps one or two families in New Zealand who might meet the criteria of still holding in 2004 the land that they held in 1840 or before that time. There will be perhaps one or two maybe a few more but certainly not hundreds not thousands and not tens of thousands—just a few. 
 Very few and perhaps none of those groups of natural persons—an interesting way in which to be described—will be able to demonstrate continuous use since that time. I have no doubt that Mr Jones will say that that will enable the committee that organises the Auckland regatta to go to the High Court to have that activity registered as a customary use of the area. But unfortunately for Mr Jones the fact is that one cannot make application to the High Court for a customary right or be granted such a right under the bill as he has restructured it if there is an aspect of commercial gain or activity inside what is claimed as a customary right. So the Auckland regatta with its various sponsorships and attempts to recover costs would in our view be caught by that restriction.  
But if that does not catch them the other clause in this part talks about having exclusive use for an activity in an area and the right to deny others access for that purpose. Well they cannot do that. Everyone knows that sailing on the Auckland harbour is a free-for-all. If Mr Jones is going to stand up and tell us that the High Court is about to change that he is a much bolder man than I am. So what we have here is a very large number of clauses that in fact will probably achieve absolutely nothing for anyone.  
I invite the Minister in the chair Dr Cullen to give us some practical examples of groups of New Zealanders by name—we can go around the countryside and name the Maori groupings who will be able to go to the Maori Land Court and get their rights granted. I will guarantee that the Government does not have a clue who others might be but in these conditions it has simply made sure that there will be very very few of them.  
So this is really just a “placate the white folks” series of clauses here. It does not set out to give any rights whatsoever because the reality is that the vast majority of people in this country have ancestors who arrived post-1840. When we look at the general processes that have to be gone through under the legislation I think that it would be difficult for any group to assert that it was a group of natural persons for the purposes of representing themselves under the conditions of this bill.  
I have to say though that it is difficult to follow the process. We notice that the numbering in the so-called redline document does not follow the numbering we have in the Supplementary Order Paper and that we have to search very hard through the bill itself to find the relevance of the Supplementary Order Paper given the very considerable number of additional bits and pieces that have been added on. I cannot help thinking that the Government might have got its members together in a back room somewhere and said: “Heck if we don’t tighten this thing up goodness knows who might try whatever on with the courts.” So they went to Mr Jones who is a naturally cautious and suspicious man and they asked him what he would recommend. He came up with just putting in a clause 65A B and C etc.