Ewen-Street Ian: Aquaculture Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ewen-Street Ian: Aquaculture Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 14 December 2004. Volume:622;Page:17746. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
IAN EWEN-STREET (Green) 
: 
 The 20 percent allocation of aquaculture space to Maori is a very strange course of action for the Government to take. I basically support the allocation but the Government seems to have gone about it in a very odd way. The National Party talks about unfinished business. I accept that there is some question about that but I do not really want to visit that question. What the Government is trying to do right now is to legislate for a full and final settlement. Crown Law opinion states that the Crown does have the right to do so but my reading of it is that the Treaty of Waitangi settlements must be negotiated. There has not even been consultation with iwi Maori on this settlement. How can the Government legislate for a settlement when it has not even consulted with the people it is settling with? The 1992 deed of settlement stated that Maori were entitled to 20 percent of all new species as those species were admitted to the quota management system. Green-lipped mussels and I understand oysters are not part of the quota management system so they are not triggers for entering into a Treaty of Waitangi settlement either. 
It seems to me that the Government is creating a potential loophole. On the one hand it says that this is a full and final settlement of the Treaty of Waitangi claim but on the other hand it leaves the door open for Maori to say it is very nice to have the 20 percent for which they thank us very much but that now they will go ahead with their treaty negotiations—and we would support them in doing that. Another problem—a practical problem—that this legislation brings up is the idea that the 20 percent of space allocated to Maori will be “representative space”. How does one actually identify what representative space is? It is not just 20 percent of an area. Water space actually varies in much the same way as land does: there is high country which is not very productive and there are lowlands which are very productive. So it is not simply a matter of saying Maori can have a particular space and that it is equal to a space that has already been taken. It is probable that the space that has already been taken by existing marine farmers will be the best space that was available so anything that is given to Maori is likely to be less than average. So how do we find the space? It is a real practical problem. 
The legislation states that Maori are to get 20 percent of all new space. On the surface that seems straightforward enough notwithstanding the productivity question. I have heard some very odd comments from various people who say that that does not mean actually 20 percent; it means 40 percent. The question of 40 percent comes up only because the legislation states that from 1992—the year of the deed of settlement—until the present there has been existing space and 20 percent of that is to go to Maori. If that space cannot be bought or obtained in some way by the Government and passed on to iwi Maori then the amount has to be made up from new space. It could be that Maori will get up to 40 percent of the new space in order to make up for the 20 percent that the Government cannot give them from the existing space. It is a bit complicated but at the end of the day taking the existing space and the new space together the amount is 20 percent and not 40 percent. The amount is up to 40 percent of the new space but not 40 percent of the overall space. 
Another question that has come up is the use of Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd as the allocation body using the model from the fisheries settlement. Almost without exception—I think there was one exception—the iwi groups that made submissions to the Primary Production Committee opposed the use of Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee. Now we must be doing something right if everybody dislikes it. The problem was that we kept asking those groups who they did want to be the allocation group if they did not want Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee and their answer was that they wanted to negotiate directly with the Crown. Obviously when there are multiple groups all around the country it simply will not work like that. So for better or for worse we have decided that Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee is the organisation with the skills to do the job. At one level I do accept the Maori argument that the Government is just passing off a complex problem to another group and saying to Maori that it is their problem and that they should get on and deal with it. 
There have also been questions raised about who gets the allocated space in a mixed area. Let us say a piece of foreshore has open water and a harbour and there are two adjoining iwi one having the rohe of the open water and one having the rohe of the harbour. If the open water is not suitable for aquaculture then basically that is just tough bikkies for that particular iwi.