Brownlee Gerry: Foreshore and Seabed Bill Resource Management (Foreshore and Seabed) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Brownlee Gerry: Foreshore and Seabed Bill Resource Management (Foreshore and Seabed) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Volume:621;Page:17199] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 After many many hours of debate the House is close to passing this most unfortunate piece of legislation. I say “unfortunate” because if one looks back over the last 24-25 hours in this House and sees and feels some of the passion and the fire that has gone into the various speeches that have been offered by members in this House one will see that this is one of the debates—perhaps the debate—of this term of Parliament where members were truly showing why they had come to Parliament. They came here because they are passionate about making this country better and doing things that are in the best interests of this country. The Government thinks that that is what it has done. A very substantial number of the rest of us think that is exactly what it has not done.  
The National Party does not support this legislation has not supported this legislation and will not be supporting this legislation in the future. Is it not an irony that the National Party today finds itself in agreement with the Maori Party? It is quite an irony. If one looks at the commentary on the bill and sees the report back of the Fisheries and Other Sea-related Legislation Committee one will notice that the New Zealand National Party put in its minority view that the way to fix this issue was to deal with Te Ture Whenua Maori Act and to take a look at the Resource Management Act. Both of those pieces of legislation were just offered to the House as solutions by Tariana Turia from the Maori Party.  
I say to Parekura Horomia the Minister of Maori Affairs who has not covered himself with a great deal of glory over the process and passage of this bill that for him to simply point to this side of the House and say that we are the people who dwell in the dungeons of gloom and they are somehow the people of the light is quite wrong. I would challenge him to go out to the front of Parliament now and tell that to those Maori who have come here expressing their upset at the way this law is being passed. When it came to Te Ture Whenua Maori Act being passed in 1993 not one submission to that bill mentioned the foreshore or the seabed—not one. Not one speech in the Committee stage or the first second or third readings mentioned the seabed or the foreshore because the understanding was as far as all were concerned that they were owned administered and looked after by the Crown.  
When the Government saw what was happening as the Court of Appeal moved to its decision last year it should have talked to all parties in this House to uphold what had been a previously unanimously passed bill. But it did not. It ran off into its corner and decided to take a very partisan position—a partisan position that will come back to haunt it because this is the first time a Government in New Zealand has passed a law that is as overtly racist as this one. [ 
Interruption 
] I tell Mr Cunliffe the outgoing member for New Lynn that the next irony is that it is racist on two points. It is racist from the point of view that for the first time ever Maori are now going to be able to talk about their customary rights only in the context of what the courts allow. They will be able to exercise those rights only according to the wills wishes and whims of the Minister of Conservation. So to just say that there has been no diminishing of those rights is quite wrong. I would ask anybody to tell me where those customary rights around this country—rights that are being exercised now and have been exercised for hundreds of years—have actually caused a problem. That is not where the problems are in this country. The problems occur when Governments start to marginalise people—to as Mr Fairbrother would say codify what their rights are. That is where the difficulty comes.  
The legislation is racist on a second count because it tells any New Zealander no matter how long he or she has been here since 1840 that he or she can never have a right that can be recognised in a customary sense. I have to say that I simply do not understand that. Let us suppose that we are 200 years or 300 years into the future. Will we still be saying that 1840 was a break that if people are able to claim ancestry pre-1840 they have extra rights extra opportunities and extra ability to claim parts of the coastline in this country and to administer it but that if one came here after that one will not? That will not endure. It simply will not endure.  
The other thing that I would like to point out is the two very interesting clauses in the bill that weaken its intent and purpose quite significantly. The first is clause 112 and the second is clause 115. Those two clauses when taken together make it abundantly clear that the Labour Government intends still to deal to Maori an opportunity to hold title to various parts of the foreshore and seabed around this countryside. We know that those negotiations are going on. The Minister in charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations has told us.  
The thing that New Zealanders will find hard to understand is that while Labour is claiming to have sorted this out and while New Zealand First is claiming to have sorted this out in a very short time we will see areas—perhaps the first will be the Raglan Harbour on the west coast of the North Island—handed back to Tainui as part of their ongoing treaty settlement. We are now seeing the nods from the Tainui representative in the House. That makes the whole thing somewhat of a mockery. That is why also New Zealanders will start to turn with a little bit of venom on New Zealand First. They have not thought through their position on this at all clearly. They have not fixed it. They have created an opportunity for significant ongoing grievance. I appreciate that people such as Mr Jim Peters believe that they have done their best but I want to tell them that they had no obligation to fix what was a mess from the very first time it hit the floor of this House.  
Mr Dunne made a very impassioned speech to the House suggesting that we should all work together a lot more closely. Well we all know that Mr Dunne is essentially a man without a uniform strutting around looking for a parade to lead. Well this is not the one to lead because we have a Government that does not like talking to other parties in this House unless it needs a vote. 
 This issue has been out there since August of last year. As Dr Brash said it would have been very easy for the Labour Party members to say to the National Party the New Zealand First Party and every other party in this House: “Let’s have a bit of a behind-the-scenes talk about what we might do.” But there was none of that because that would be taking too much away from them.  
That brings us to the issue of the special select committee that the Government wants to set up to discuss the constitution. We will not be part of that. Even though we gave the Prime Minister 3 days to send us some information about the terms of reference nothing turned up. We thought: “Well if that is the case and we take the experience of the special select committee looking at the foreshore and seabed legislation where the Government spent a lot of people’s time listening to New Zealanders and then turned up with what was virtually a rewrite of the bill without reference to New Zealanders won’t that be exactly what it will do over constitutional issues as well?” Today this Government has signalled to New Zealanders why it is not fit to govern and why it will not govern beyond the next election.