KEY POINTS:
Another stand-off is looming in the protracted dispute over who will get eventual ownership of a valuable Far North farm property when the 2275ha Stony Creek station is returned to Maori claimants.
Members of one claimant group who strongly dispute a Crown proposal to return the big farm to a local trust board have occupied a farmhouse on the station, 10km south of Mangonui.
The cattle and sheep station, formerly owned by Landcorp, is now held by the Office of Treaty Settlements on behalf of the Crown, who have entered into an agreement in principle with Ngatikahu ki Whangaroa Trust Board and six local marae it represents.
The agreement, if approved by hapu members, would return the property, its land, stock, plant and equipment to all hapu via the trust board, but some members of one, Ngati Aukiwa, dispute the process and say they alone have aboriginal (native) and customary title to the land.
About a dozen Ngati Aukiwa members have now moved into a three-bedroom house on the farm after it was left vacant last week by an employee who left the station.
They said they were told by police they were trespassing. "We said we weren't. We moved into a vacant house and we're occupying it," said one of the group, Wilfred Peterson jnr. The group have had between 10 and 20 people at the house since last weekend and say they will stay there indefinitely.
Mr Peterson said the farmhouse occupation was part of a plan of action agreed by hapu members late last year after Deputy Prime Minister and Treaty Negotiations Minister Michael Cullen, and other government ministers, were forced to abandon nearby Taemaro Bay on December 22 where the agreement in principle involving Stony Creek and other lands was to have been signed with the trust board.
The agreement was signed later that day in Kerikeri.
The current occupation, described by the Office of Treaty Settlements as illegal, is the latest in a long series of incidents on the property which have involved unauthorised movement of stock, fenceline cutting, trespass, a 49-day occupation of the station's shearers' quarters and woolshed and, more recently, the unauthorised felling and removal of 200 shelter belt pine trees.
Heather Baggott, Office of Treaty Settlements deputy director, said yesterday the occupation was illegal and police were told at the time it began.
Various options were being explored "to address this longstanding issue" and these were being discussed with the trust board, she said.
Generally during treaty settlement negotiations, a lot of work had to be done between the signing of an agreement in principle and a deed of settlement.
Kaitaia Senior Sergeant Gordon Gunn said police were aware of the situation at Stony Creek and were talking to the Office of Treaty Settlements.
It was "a work in progress" to try to find a solution, but police had not been asked to evict the house occupiers.
