Turei Metiria: Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Turei Metiria: Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:670;Page:17185] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 What is it with all the men screaming today especially when we are hearing it from members of the House who were responsible for putting in place the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004? That legislation created in the first place the discrimination the inherent injustice and the confiscation that the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill is supposed to protect us from but dismally fails to. I note that other male members of the House who are part of this whole “man screaming” thing were also opposed to the 2004 legislation and had quite a different view in those early years from the one they have now. None the less we have this bill before us. It is a disgrace. 
The preamble is very interesting in the way it sets out the history of the process by which this bill has come about. I will briefly address a couple of issues. The preamble raises the question of discrimination. It states that concern was raised about the discriminatory effect of the 2004 Act on whanau hapu and iwi. That was highlighted by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the United Nations special rapporteur. That is quite right. The committee and the special rapporteur who visited here and produced a report highlighted the discrimination particularly around the unequal treatment of Maori and the unequal treatment of the different kinds of title. The Greens have raised this issue before and we will be dealing with it later on in the Committee stage. 
The issue raised is about the different treatment of the different kinds of title. On the one hand there is freehold title and on the other hand there is customary title. The different treatment of these kinds of title comprised a large part of the criticism of the United Nations committee. That issue was also raised by the ministerial review panel that was set up by the Maori Party to have another go at looking at this issue. Members should not forget that we have had three major rounds of public submissions on this legislation only to find ourselves dealing with exactly the same bill that we dealt with in 2004. Under the bill Maori land is still confiscated and Maori are still treated in a discriminatory way. The ministerial review panel was also clear that that principle of equal treatment had to be a core part of any further framework on how to deal with the foreshore and seabed issue. It said there should be equal and consistent treatment for similar cases in respect of Maori and other property rights. 
We know from this legislation that there are two areas of discrimination which I will briefly mention. The first is that the proposal to put in place public access applies only to those areas where there is or could be customary title. It does not apply to the more than 12000 private freehold titles in the foreshore and seabed. That itself is an explicit act of racial discrimination against Maori and against the Maori forms of title and land management. 
Hon Pete Hodgson 
: Which way would you fix it Metiria? 
METIRIA TUREI 
: The member asks whether that should be the case. If there is to be a principle of public access to the foreshore and seabed then yes it should apply equally regardless of the title. If there is to be some other consideration of the treatment of public access then let us consider that but if the principle is— 
Hon Pete Hodgson 
: Including Port Otago? 
METIRIA TUREI 
: Well that raises the question does it not? It raises the question of what we do then with the kinds of titles that councils might have or ports might have or other forms of industry. It might be that we could have a process that considers things like the safety of the public in those areas and the particular use of those areas. But if we do not have the basic principle that public access to the foreshore and seabed should apply equally everywhere and then look more carefully at only those areas where it should not for particular reasons what we have is discrimination in law—racial discrimination in law. That is what this bill is doing. It is putting racial discrimination into law because it does not consider issues of safety and it does not look at the kinds of ownership of the 12500 freehold titles that there are on the foreshore and seabed; it is very blunt and very broad. It applies only to whether there are freehold titles. Freehold titles are protected from the principle of public access which does not have to be provided but customary title held by Maori is treated as a secondary form as a lesser form of title and is therefore subject to public access considerations. That is discrimination. 
Another area of discrimination was raised in the Maori Affairs Committee which is referred to obliquely in the preamble. It is related to when the Government can remove the rights of a person over his or her land. In normal circumstances if one has freehold title and the Government wants to take that land for some form of infrastructure that it considers important the process is worked through under the Public Works Act. There is a process for looking at the value of that land and it is a fairly straightforward clear process for those who have freehold title. But if iwi hapu or whanau were to have customary title in a piece of land and the Government decided that it needed that land to build a road or a water pipeline through it the Public Works Act would not apply. In fact they would have to negotiate with the Crown and the Crown gets to decide on its own effectively whether any compensation would be paid at all for the acquisition of that land and therefore for the interruption of the rights of that whanau or hapu or iwi over that land. 
Again we have here the treatment of customary title as a secondary lesser form of title that does not have the same rights as private title and is not treated or valued the same by the Crown or by other agencies. If the Crown wants our customary title land it can go and get it and it does not have to give us compensation. It is entirely up to the Crown to decide whether it will do it. That is not the case if one has freehold title. It is another form of racial discrimination in this legislation for no reason for no justification at all. There is no reason why we cannot have the same principles for the use of land for important Government infrastructure to apply to freehold titles and to customary title as well. 
These are details beyond the principle and Parliament is well aware of the Green Party’s opposition to this legislation on principle but if we also look through the details we see that it just gets worse and worse. It is these details of discrimination that show how much of a failure the Maori Party - National negotiations have been over trying to resolve the inherent injustices that were put in place by New Zealand First and Labour in 2004. Those inherent injustices remain. The failed principles are still in place in this legislation and the failed details are still in place in this legislation just as they were in 2004. It is a great disappointment. 
The preamble sets out the history. The history is a lot dirtier in my view than these four recitals make clear. The preamble is very broad in the way that it discusses the issues. It tries to give the 2004 legislation a worse record than this one which of course is not true because they are effectively exactly the same. They effectively do exactly the same thing; they have simply been negotiated between different parties. 
It is a real disappointment to know that Maori MPs from across the House particularly from the Maori Party and National will be supporting legislation that has at least two—and there will be more—clear examples of racial discrimination against Maori against customary title and against tikanga Maori and that this legislation will be put into law in just a few days’ time.