Davis Kelvin: Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Davis Kelvin: Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:670;Page:17220] 
KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) 
: 
 Before the dinner break I was talking about the wardens and the definition of “warden” under clause 7 of the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Bill. I think it is important for the record that we differentiate between the wardens appointed for the purpose of this legislation and wardens appointed under the Maori Community Development Act. The wardens under that Act are good-natured normally elderly people who stand at the gates of marae to direct traffic. For the purposes of this legislation wardens basically— 
Paul Quinn 
: Discrimination Kelvin! That’s terrible! 
Hon Shane Jones 
: Rark the wardens up! 
KELVIN DAVIS 
: I am sorry but I am having trouble concentrating because of the interjections not so much from Mr Quinn this time but more from my own colleague. The wardens will be responsible to a customary marine title group for the following functions: to assist in implementing prohibitions or restrictions entering wahi tapu for the purpose of performing their functions and advising members of the public of any applicable prohibition or restriction. 
The question is about how those wardens are to be identified by members of the public and how the public will know that there will not be any old Tom Dick or Hori turning up and telling them they cannot be in a particular place. That question needs clarification in terms of this bill—exactly what “warden” means. There was hysteria again from the likes of the Coastal Coalition that we would have Maori in sunglasses and with baseball bats scaring people off the foreshore and seabed. When we think that this bill probably relates to only 2 3 or 5 percent of New Zealand’s coastline and that most of the areas that we are talking about will be relatively isolated such as around the North Cape it is pretty unlikely that—and this is just to settle the nerves of the ACT Party and the Coastal Coalition—there will be a big Maori in sunglasses and with a baseball bat standing on the edge of the beach to warn people off. 
Members might go to the North Cape but I doubt whether in the history of all of Aotearoa New Zealand more than 2000 people over the last two millenniums have set foot on those beaches. If we left our cars at the road and walked in it would probably take about 4 or 5 hours to get there. I would say that if any warden was dumb enough to be standing there waiting for somebody to turn up just so that he or she could turn them away the chances are that that warden would probably be more likely to give them a cup of tea and welcome them to go and have a swim at the beach just because he or she would want to have some company. 
The warden issue needs to be settled. People need to know that we will not have big burly Maori frightening off everybody. There was another guy obviously another Coastal Coalition person who said he was scared that his surf life-saving club would not be able to practise surf life-saving. He said it was the oldest surf life-saving club in the Tauranga area he had been a surf lifesaver there for 50 years and now it was ridiculous that when somebody needed to be rescued from the ocean the club would have to ring up and ask permission from a warden or somebody like that so that its members could cross over the sand and get to the water. We said: “Mate have you read the bill?”. The answer was that he had not or if he had he had totally misunderstood it because if his surf life-saving club had been there for 50 years there is no way that that beach could be deemed to have been exclusively used by Maori and he had nothing to worry about. 
I want to talk about the wahi tapu. Again this issue got the Coastal Coalition’s back up. I cannot think of many areas—in fact I can think of only one area—underneath the high-tide mark that may be deemed to be a wahi tapu. It is the resting place at Takou Bay of the  
Mataatua 
 waka. According to our traditions the Mataatua came over and settled down in the Whakatane area somewhere. There was a bit of a ding-dong between a couple of brothers who were the chiefs on the waka and our tupuna Puhi—