Boscawen John: Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Boscawen John: Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:670;Page:17240] 
Hon JOHN BOSCAWEN (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 The ACT Party has a number of amendments to Part 2 and a number of issues to raise. I start this first call by saying that I hope we have the opportunity to raise those points during the debate this evening and as it continues into tomorrow on this part. I will talk specifically about two clauses: clause 14 which runs to 1½ lines and clause 17. 
Before I address those two clauses in this call on Part 2 I need to quickly respond to a number of points. This debate on Part 2 started with an introduction by the Minister in the chair the Attorney-General. The Hon Chris Finlayson was at pains to point out that New Zealanders would have access to the common marine and coastal area and that it was never an issue and had never been an issue but notwithstanding that he was prepared to succumb if you like to the urgings and the pressure of the ACT Party to amend clause 27 so that access to the common marine and coastal area would be without charge. In making those comments Mr Finlayson took the opportunity to take aim at my colleague Hilary Calvert. It was a very personal direct and hurtful aim. I am very sad that the Minister felt he had to stoop to those levels and I acknowledge the comments of Metiria Turei who rose to her feet immediately after his remarks were made. 
I will also comment very quickly on the point that Kelvin Davis made during his speech in this debate. It was interesting that he was subject to interjections from Mr Quinn I think it was who taunted him by asking why he did not make his comments during the debate in the Maori Affairs Committee. Well I suspect that Mr Davis would have liked to make those comments in the select committee but this Parliament is ignoring the fact that the Government used its majority on the Maori Affairs Committee to ram this bill through. 
We have a report from the Maori Affairs Committee. The official report of the committee is simply one page and attached to that is— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: The cross-interjections are too loud. Calm it down. 
Hon JOHN BOSCAWEN 
: We then have the Labour Party Green Party and ACT Party minority reports followed by 40 pages of recommendations from the officials. Normally the select committee would expect to see those recommendations incorporated into the drafting an amended bill would come back before the select committee and members of the select committee would consider it and look at the various amendments and at what was best and what was not best. The reason this debate will go on for so long is that the Government used its majority on the select committee to shut down that debate and shut down people like Mr Davis who was a member of that select committee. We now have to debate those things in the Committee of the whole House. 
I now move to clause 14 of the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill because it is the essence of this bill. Clause 14 is in Part 2 which is the part we are debating right now. People watching this debate on television or listening on the radio might ask what clause 14 says. Very simply it states: “The Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 … is repealed.” The Foreshore and Seabed Act is repealed and that is why we are here tonight. 
I will repeat a claim I made earlier this afternoon which was that the ACT Party has been entirely consistent on this issue the entire way. We are talking about property rights access to justice and access to the courts and on those things we absolutely support the Maori Party. We do not believe that this bill provides those things and we do not believe this bill is the right response but we absolutely support the Maori Party on the repeal of the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 and we absolutely stand up for the right of iwi and hapu to go to court. The ACT Party and I suspect the National Opposition at the time would have been the only members in Parliament who supported Tariana Turia when she first took her lone stand. I make it absolutely clear that our position on this bill is that we want to see that Act repealed. 
Having said that it is important to understand what the decision in the Ngati Apa case was. The decision was that iwi have the right to go to court. It stated that there might be unextinguished customary rights out there and that iwi have the right to go to court. I cannot emphasise enough that the Court of Appeal did not state that there were unextinguished customary rights or that there was customary title; it simply stated that there might be and that iwi and hapu had the right to go to court. 
One of the reasons we object so strongly to this bill and will fight against it so hard is that we believe it makes things so much worse. The Attorney-General constantly calls out “codification codification”. He says that we have to put rules in legislation so that judges will know what to do. In fact he is making it much harder for judges. If the Government had simply repealed the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 and that was all it had done then ACT could have supported that. Alternatively as Mr Parker has suggested if the Act had been repealed provision had been made for claims to be taken to the High Court and access to the common marine and coastal area had been guaranteed then the ACT Party could have also supported that. But the proposal is to repeal the Act and to put in place a series of tests for the granting of customary title. Those tests go beyond anything that has been provided for in any Commonwealth court in the world. There have been no successful cases in the United Kingdom Canada or Australia. It might interest members to know that the only claim that was brought for customary title or ownership of the seabed in Australia was lost. 
National has the gall to put it out there that this bill builds on common law precedent and decisions that have already been made in other countries around the world. Let me repeat that there has been no legal decision that passes customary title—or ownership because we are talking about something akin to ownership—to a customary title applicant. The reason the ACT Party opposes this bill so strongly is that the Government is assuming the courts will go and grant customary title over large areas of New Zealand’s coast. It is putting in place tests that in the eyes of the Government will reduce what is granted. In fact the effect will be to substantially increase the areas that may be transferred into customary title and when I say “transferred into customary title” I mean that the benefit will be transferred from all New Zealanders to a select iwi. 
That brings me to clause 17 “Continued Crown ownership of minerals”. This clause provides that notwithstanding the case where an applicant group might gain customary title all nationalised resources which means petroleum gold silver and uranium remain the property of the Crown. There are a couple of issues related to that. The first issue is the question of what does not—what has not been nationalised—and clearly one of New Zealand’s major resources that has not been nationalised is iron sands. The Ministry of Economic Development has estimated that this country has iron sands worth some $600 billion to $1000 billion—that is $1 trillion—off its coast. A large part of that resource lies off the coast of Taranaki and the Waikato. We might say that it belonged to iwi in 1840 but one of the fallacies of this bill is that the common marine and coastal area—