Fitzsimons Jeanette: Urgent Debates — Government Proposals for Seabed and Foreshore 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Urgent Debates — Government Proposals for Seabed and Foreshore 
[Volume:611;Page:8050] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The last few weeks have seen the biggest political beat-up on Maori that I can remember. Fear has been whipped up out on the streets by Opposition parties—and indeed by the Government’s own support party—as a political weapon in a calculated and despicable campaign to spread misinformation and hatred. That has done immeasurable damage to our evolution as a nation. 
The Greens believe we must bring out into the light the shadows of racial distrust and fear that have been magnified by this debate. Only by shining a light into those dark corners and by naming and facing those fears will we be able to move past them. Which New Zealander would not feel rage if he or she is provoked by the thought of losing the chance to walk on the beach or to go for a swim? What easier way is there to make all New Zealanders afraid of their neighbours and angry to defend their rights? How easy then it is to pose as the defender of those rights. Political campaigns are always easily built on the manipulation of fear and the construction of a common enemy. So we have been confronted with imaginary images of Maori blocking our way to the beach charging us for access and fencing the beach off with barbed wire. That complete and utter fabrication has taken hold in vulnerable people who have begun to hate their neighbours. 
But there is not a shred of evidence that that will occur. Not a single politician has offered any evidence of that and tangata whenua have said again and again that open access is within customary law. In fact we all enjoy access to the shores of Lake Taupo and to Tokomaru Bay where tangata whenua do have recognised legal title. The Ngai Tahu settlement recognised mana and recognised title to reserves and lake beds while providing for public access and for good conservation management. 
As a nation New Zealand was founded on the notion of coexistence not conquest. Over the years we have not lived up to that. There are many hopeful initiatives going on to try to recover that dream of the two-hulled waka but there is deep-seated suspicion to overcome and those initiatives have been set back seriously by this stupid campaign. With the publication of the Government paper the talk now is all of legal solutions court determination of title and negotiation of rights but there is no point in talking about outcomes and solutions until we have a relationship to build them on. If the quality of the relationship between Maori and Pakeha and between the Crown and iwi is so soured that there is no trust but only fear and suspicion then no good outcomes are possible. 
The Greens do not believe that recognition of customary title needs to undermine recreational access to the beaches and that is what Maori have said too. We have two different cultural traditions here which can coexist side by side if the relationship is right and there is goodwill. If the relationship is bad no amount of legislating will fix it. People of European descent have a long tradition of the commons—what the Government paper calls “public domain”—meaning land that was owned collectively for the benefit of all. It was available for economic use like food gathering and for the enjoyment of the whole group but no one could break it up and sell it. That is how we have seen the beach throughout our history. Maori customary title was not very different from that. It was and is a collective right held under the principles of tikanga with an emphasis on use that preserves the gifts of the sea and shore for children and grandchildren. It conveys mana and the obligation of kaitiakitanga but it could not be individualised or sold—and nor should it be now. 
It is important to realise that Maori customary title could only become alienated when Pakeha law interfered and imposed Pakeha forms of ownership on top of it. The Maori Land Court was designed to separate Maori from their land by changing their customary collective title into freehold title for sale. That should not happen to the foreshore and seabed. Those who are clamouring for legislation to establish Crown ownership had better reflect on this: do they really think that that would protect the commons better than Maori customary title? We have had nearly 20 years’ experience of what can happen under Crown ownership. We used to think we collectively owned the railways the BNZ the leasehold land in the high country and the plantation forests. Maori customary title is arguably less threatening to Pakeha access to the beach than Crown title which under a future Government could be sold to private owners who really would exclude others. So there is no reason that two sets of customs and two sets of rights—complementary but overlapping—should not coexist. But first we have to step back from our fear and build a relationship. That means listening and understanding what is important to each other. 
The Greens are very relieved that the Crown has stepped back from its initial proposal to legislate to establish Crown ownership. Establishing exclusive Crown title would in our view have been a confiscation and a treaty breach. I am appalled that some members of this House still advocate that. We do support the legal establishment of public access provided it sits alongside the recognition of Maori customary rights. We are glad to see the resurrection of the concept of the commons which has been largely denied in our individualistic society but we are concerned at the downgrading of customary rights to merely “interests”. That does not adequately express the strong identification between a hapu and its coastal area. We are concerned at the suggestion that tangata whenua will have to go to the Maori Land Court to codify their interests and to have rights awarded to them. Where customary rights exist they exist now. They do not exist by virtue of a court decision but by aboriginal title. If every use claimed by a hapu has to be codified by recourse to the court we will have a legalistic nightmare. We do support recourse to the court where necessary to resolve disputes about customary title but not to establish every use right that goes with it. 
Perhaps the hardest principle for many New Zealanders to accept is that customary rights include a role in the decision making. If tangata whenua establish that their customary rights have been exercised since 1840 and still exist it is just not good enough for the Government to take for itself all the decision-making power about the management of that piece of the coastal area and to subject the local hapu to consultation. The only long-term future for a bicultural nation is to develop models of co-management. Shared decision-making which will not exist everywhere will be based on different models in different places and will take time to build but it will be an exciting journey. A few models are starting to emerge. Some regional councils are starting to involve tangata whenua inside the decision-making process rather than just treating them as another interest group to be consulted. We need more of those models. 
Customary rights also include rights to commercial development as the fisheries settlement has already recognised and provided for. In some ways that is easier to resolve because commercial rights operate under the same legal system for both Maori and Pakeha and can be resolved by an agreement on how to share the resource. Why should there not be a sharing of coastal space within aquaculture management areas for marine farming just as there is a sharing of fish quota? 
It should not alarm us that the outcomes are still not clear as long as we have the starting principles right but what puts the hope of building the two-hulled waka at risk is a 6-week consultation process. Building a robust building platform will need longer than that. The eagerness to row hastily and to tie things up in the ropes of legal security is of less enduring value than making provision for the selection of the right planks for the agreement. 
On Saturday I farewelled a very loved old friend who had died far too young of cancer. It was the first tangi for a Pakeha ever held on the Kaiaua Marae. It challenged both sides. It challenged Ngati Paoa whanaunga to accommodate some Pakeha custom on their marae including some people who did not understand tikanga and it challenged Stella’s friends and family who found a marae to be an unfamiliar place where they did not feel entirely comfortable. But I think that was deliberate because much of Stella’s life had been about challenging us to get outside our comfort zone and to listen to each other. Maniapoto had come the day before to pay tribute because Stella had been instrumental in the return of the Waitomo Caves to the iwi and she had also helped and challenged the iwi to manage them in a sustainable way. So there we have another example that everyone accepts of Maori title public access Maori economic development and environmental protection all working together because people had built trust and goodwill. 
Around 300 people gathered from both islands at Kaiaua Marae for Stella’s tangi. Te reo and English mingled in the ceremony. A few metres away were the foreshore and then the seabed of Tikapa Moana—the Firth of Thames. It is centrally important to Hauraki for kai moana to Pakeha for many kinds of recreation and to the godwits that fly there every year from Siberia. That marae is the place where in 1874 the chiefs of Hauraki gathered to discuss issues around the foreshore and seabed.