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:17029] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (ACT) 
: 
 I will endeavour to bring this debate back to Part 2 which we are intended to be debating. Part 2 which includes clauses 6 to 27 concerns the rights of access. Clause 6 itself provides for a very qualified access and states that: “ ‘access rights’ means—” etc. but then it goes on to state in subclause (3) that: “The access rights conferred by subsection (2) may be exercised subject to any authorised limits including prohibitions on access that are imposed by or under an enactment including a notice in the  
Gazette 
” issued under these provisions.  
So what we have is the illusion of access. Of course that is what the Labour Government has been selling this legislation on. It has been saying that it is all about certainty and access. There is no certainty there is a lot of uncertainty and access is not guaranteed.  
Again the new clause 7A “Existing fishing rights preserved” provides that: “Nothing in this Act affects any rights of fishing recognised immediately before the commencement of this section …”. But as every Kiwi knows it is not just the action of fishing; one has to gain access to one’s fishing spot. If one cannot get on to the beach because a wahi tapu has been declared or one cannot go to a particular rock then one cannot fish. So access is denied and it is quite wrong to imply in clause 7A that all existing fishing rights are preserved because they are not. Under this bill they are not preserved. 
On the front page of this morning’s  
New Zealand Herald 
 the Labour Maori caucus tells us that up to 10 percent of the coastline—and that is just their first bid—will be in those foreshore and seabed reserves with committees of guardians and wardens guarding spiritual beliefs on our foreshore and seabed. Who believes for a moment that ordinary New Zealanders will have unrestricted access to go fishing in their preferred spot under that sort of regime? They will certainly not and 10 percent is just the first bid on day one. 
We then turn to clause 13C which states that all lands reclaimed are to be vested in the Crown. I would like the Minister in the chair to tell us the logic of that. Land is reclaimed for only one purpose and let us be quite clear that there is a very difficult statutory process to go through to get permission to reclaim land. One does not get it just like that. One would have to apply for a resource consent and get all sorts of dispensations. It takes several years and some people take up to 10 years to get consent to do a reclamation. So one runs the gauntlet. Reclamation is done for a specific purpose whether permission is sought for a marina for a port company or for some other legitimate use. But once reclamation has been approved it is land. So why henceforth vest that title in the Crown? What is the point of that? There is just no sense in it at all.  
Equally I would like to see our port companies with their own clear title. They are commercial businesses. As a trading nation they are the access to our nation for our imports and also the exit point for our exports. We want good commercial businesses running our ports. We do not want them run by the Department of Conservation but that is really what this bill is proposing. Of course the Greens were arguing that we should have free access round our ports. What a load of nonsense! We would be in breach of international covenants following 9/11 where we must specifically exclude free access and fence our ports so that we can guarantee the security of our containers.  
So there are very good commercial reasons why we need clear title clear property rights and to be able to exclude access in the foreshore and seabed for specific areas. But no this legislation states that it will all be vested in the Crown and that the Department of Conservation can look after that. What absolute nonsense! So it is not just Maori rights that have been trampled here. There are other clear commercial property rights that are being denied and stripped away.  
I would also like the Minister in the chair to explain the bit about accretion because it is not clear what the intention is there.