Mapp Wayne: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Foreshore and Seabed Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:621;Page:17091] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I will talk about new clause 61 “Determination of applications for customary rights orders”. This clause is as Mr Jones is wont to tell members and the media whenever he has the opportunity the Auckland Anniversary Regatta clause—as if the Auckland Anniversary Regatta needs it. For the last 164 years I guess the organisers have been in doubt in about November of each year wondering: “Are we going to be able to hold this regatta? Will people stop us having our races on the harbour?”. In reality the member well knows that that simply is a nonsense. 
Yes it is true that I asked officials of the Fisheries and Other Sea-related Legislation Committee whether the regatta met the criteria and we went through them. Had it been going before 1840? Yes it had. Did it involve particular people with cultural practices? Yes it did—they all wore white flannel and so forth. Were the people in clubs? Yes they were. Yes it meets the criteria. The question is what is the point. Why are we passing law to allow that group to go to the High Court at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars to get an order to do something that that group always could do and always will be able to do? That group does not need the assistance of the New Zealand First - Labour cabal; it does not need it to deliver some sort of benefit that is completely unnecessary. I concede the point that the regatta fits the criteria; I ask the question: so what? This truly is an example of the time of Parliament being wasted to provide rights that are completely—[ 
Interruption 
] On this particular part we are wasting the time of Parliament. The Government with its New Zealand First allies is trying to put in place something that is unnecessary. 
It had other choices and Mr Brownlee has put those extremely well. There are a large number of New Zealand families who are not Maori and who have had long-established relationships with the coastline over many generations but they will get no advantage from this bill. Yet surely they have established customary rights. The Government’s answer will be that 1840 is a magical date but what that does in practice is provide a benefit to Maori only. It has come up with this in essence fiction about the Auckland Anniversary Regatta to justify that principle. That is what it is all about. It is a fiction to justify separatist and sectional law. 
If the Government were honest it would provide a more realistic date that recognised the true history of our country. That date would obviously be quite a long time ago because it is the nature of customary rights to be established by families over generations but it would recognise the reality of this country. By and large the modern country of New Zealand was settled by Maori prior to 1840 and by those from Britain post-1840 by and large with the great core of that settlement occurring in the 19th century. That is the fundamental core of our nation. Those peoples have been added to in more recent times—and indeed were added to in the 19th century—by peoples from all over the world. For all I know the Chinese community may well be able to establish customary rights in parts of Dunedin for instance. We have to have a date that truly and realistically accommodates the breadth of New Zealanders if these kinds of clauses are to have real life force and meaning. 
Surely the Government which says it wants to reach out to all New Zealanders and embrace them in some kind of inclusive law should have a proposition that actually does that. This provision totally fails. When Mr Jones uses the example of the regatta he actually brings these proposals into some kind of disrepute. He knows that it is not an issue. He knows that the Auckland Anniversary Regatta did not ask for it because it did not need it.