Process cuts chance to mine minerals, says Ngai Tahu leader

The area's mussel industry is worth over $200 million. Photo / Hawkes Bay Today

Ngai Tahu will largely be cut out of claiming any form of ownership of the tidal area because of unjust tests used to decide customary title, a tribal leader says.

And with no ownership rights the tribe will be denied any chance of future mining of the area, says Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu kaiwhakahaere (chairman) Mark Solomon.

His tribe is one of a number in the South Island that could struggle to make the grade for customary title, which confirms a limited form of ownership that cannot be sold and guarantees public access.

The tests say Maori must show continuous and exclusive use of an area under claim since 1840. Land ownership abutting the foreshore is a good indicator of where hapu or iwi will be successful in gaining customary title.

Maori own 278.8km, or 3.2 per cent, of 8832.9km of South Island coastal land.

Mr Solomon said if the tests remained unchanged through the Foreshore and Seabed Act repeal legislation it "absolutely takes us out of the picture". That was unjust when the Crown had already admitted through the Treaty settlements process that the reason Ngai Tahu lost land was because of the Crown's acts in acquiring tribal land. Exclusive use and occupation were effectively ended because of the Crown.

"In our land claim [settled in 1997] the Crown fully acknowledges that they took our lands under duress, that their actions were unconscionable. They furnish us with an apology over their actions but then they are going to use exactly the same [acts], put it on the table today and say the families ... have no rights. Where is the justice?

"What we want is a set of tests that aren't ... deliberately put in place to minimise the rights of Maori."

Ngai Tahu didn't address the issue when they were negotiating the lands claim, Mr Solomon said, because the Crown took land ownership of the foreshore and seabed only in 2004. That made it a contemporary breach of the Treaty, not a historical one.

Not qualifying for customary title would deny the tribe rights to mine minerals, whereas the repeal legislation, which is expected to be passed before the end of the year, would allow Maori with customary title to mine any mineral apart from Crown-owned petroleum, gold, silver and uranium.

"There is prospectively an opportunity for some iwi over minerals. I'd state ironsands as an example," Mr Solomon said.

A spokesman for Attorney-General Christopher Finlayson said he considered the tests fair. "The tests were designed based on comparable overseas common law tests and how those could be applied in the New Zealand context."