Heatley Phil: Maori Fisheries Bill — In Committee 
Heatley Phil: Maori Fisheries Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:15633] 
PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) 
: 
 Part 7 relates to amendments to the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act which of course kicks in when Maori have to go to the courts. In particular Part 7 deals with mediation issues. An issue to do with mediation might arise in relation to coastline boundaries to the population of a particular iwi group particularly those that are withdrawing from a larger iwi—perhaps in the case of Ngati Hine from Ngapuhi or Rongomaiwahine from its principal iwi group—or to other issues that may need to be resolved. 
There is no doubt in my mind or in the mind of the National Party that Maori groups will go to mediation in relation to this legislation. It is vexed legislation simply because it tries to push forward the situation of the Maori settlement so that Maori can just go fishing. But in many ways the legislation falls short because it contains significant flaws and we have been through those clearly clause by clause this evening and last week. 
However I would particularly like to address the mediation clauses in this part. We may have a situation such as the one we talked a little bit about earlier where there are coastline disputes. When the bill was introduced I referred to coastline disputes in relation to quota allocation. Quota is allocated on coastline so if an iwi can determine clearly that its coastline fits a certain boundary from point A to point B but another iwi says that that interlopes into its area and there is an area of dispute as to where one iwi’s coastline ends and another iwi’s begins then originally the former iwi could not pick up any of its allocation. Even if it had 99 kilometres of a 100 kilometre coastline boundary that was acknowledged by everyone as being its coastline and 1 kilometre that was under dispute the whole allocation relating to the entire 100 kilometres would be locked up in the dispute. 
 We made changes to the bill in the Fisheries and Other Sea-related Legislation Committee which have been reported back to the House and voted on this evening. Now we have a situation where the allocation of 99 kilometres if they are not in dispute can go ahead and Maori can go fishing while the dispute over the other 1 kilometre is resolved. That is good. 
Pita Paraone proposed amendments to both Parts 1 and 5 whereby if particular Maori groups—he used NgaiTahu as an example—had had coastline boundaries and other issues that might come under dispute already examined by the courts and if a judgment had been made in their favour and a Crown treaty settlement had resulted from those court decisions then those issues should be beyond question. Those are the amendments Pita Paraone brought to the Committee and the National Party voted in favour of them tonight. Now of course more iwi will use the mediation clauses in Part 7 because this Government refused to support Pita Paraone’s amendments. That is shameful. All we will see now is Maori and iwi right across this country dipping into Part 7. Part 7 comprises just a few short pages but unfortunately because they deal with disputes in the courts with mediation and with all the problems that may result from the preceding legislation we will see those clauses used most within Maoridom over the next few years—because there will be mediation and there will be disputes. A lot of those disputes could have been fixed here tonight not least by the clauses proposed by Pita Paraone had the Government supported them. 
I commend this issue to the Committee.