Shirley Ken: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Shirley Ken: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:621;Page:17074] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (ACT) 
: 
 I want to address Part 3 and in particular clause 35 which is about the jurisdiction of the Maori Land Court in respect of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act. I would like to respond to some comments made by John Tamihere and Dover Samuels in this debate because they claimed that ACT was saying that taniwha and tikanga Maori would be abused. I take the point that John Tamihere made. I would like to think that all New Zealanders were respectful of genuine urupa sites. They are real they do exist; and it behoves us all to be respectful of them. I agree that many New Zealanders are not as respectful as they should be.  
The difficulty is that when we pass general laws like this which are essentially an amendment to the Resource Management Act and give wide powers we should not be surprised when they become a moving feast. I ask members opposite how they explain the taniwha that held up Transit New Zealand on State Highway 1 at Meremere. How do they explain that? These same provisions of acknowledging Maori spiritualism etc. were abused grossly abused and how many people in the Chamber know how much Transit New Zealand had to pay to make that taniwha go away? The interesting thing about taniwha is that if one pays enough money they will go away. One pays a bit of money here and they go away but then they pop up somewhere else. That is the problem with this sort of legislation.  
I believe that spiritualism should be respected and in a tolerant society everybody’s spiritualism should be protected. But it is not the role of the State to try to define and codify spiritualism including tikanga Maori and that is what this bill is all about. That is why every iwi that came to the Fisheries and other Sea-related Legislation Committee was so offended by the temerity and the arrogance of this controlling Government to define and set limits on tikanga Maori. We have Father Christmas the Easter bunny leprechauns and hobgoblins but we do not legislate for them. We do not legislate for the tooth fairy nor should we because they are moving feasts. That is the problem with the Resource Management Act today. It is meant to be the sustainable management of natural and physical resources but all of a sudden we have all these unnatural and metaphysical nebulous things that we have to bear in mind.  
Now we are setting up foreshore and seabed reserves and the Labour Maori caucus members told us in the  
New Zealand Herald  
this morning that it will be 10 percent of our foreshore and seabed.  
Brian Connell 
: How much? 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY 
: Ten percent and that is on day one—that is just for openers. Members should not be surprised when we have nonsense legislation like this and provisions that are based on spiritualism that some people—not all people—will abuse it. We had the wahi tapu at Welcome Bay in Tauranga which I am very familiar with. The matter involved private property and a local group claiming guardianship imposed a wahi tapu through the Historic Places Trust. They claimed urupa. The urupa turned out to be an old 1920 fence line but it was very convenient for that particular group to try to restrict and control the use of that private property. That is the sort of thing that this nonsense legislation invites.  
The ACT party asks why Maori are denied due process through the courts to get a real property right because that was what was really at stake. The Court of Appeal indicated that this situation would not be widespread that it was rare. Maori should at least have retained the right to establish a full and proper property right which the ACT party would have supported. But it is this nebulous ill-defined property right that caused the problems. It is things like the Resource Management Act which is socialist legislation for confiscation on nebulous concepts. No one knows what it means. It can mean whatever we want it to mean. However property rights are clear and can be respected. If there were specific important urupa sites then I would like to see them in a clear protected property right. That is how they would be properly protected.