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East coast Maori are seeking an urgent hearing to stop Te Runanga o Ngati Porou's proposed Foreshore and Seabed deal with the Crown.
The Foreshore and Seabed Act vests ownership below the hightide mark in the Crown but also sets out a path to redress for iwi - including direct negotiations. Under the February agreement, Ngati Porou has gained a wide range of rights, consultation, veto and co-management rights.
Over the next two weeks it is undertaking a ratification process with hapu from Cape Runaway to the Turanganui River in Gisborne. If that process is successful the agreement will be sent to Parliament to be enacted. But sections of two, Ruawaipu and Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti, have filed an urgent hearings application with the Waitangi Tribunal asking that the process be halted.
Spokesman Darrell Naden said that's because Maori are being asked to pay too high a price for what they receive in return from the deal. Clauses in the settlement would see foreshore and seabed claims in the Waitangi Tribunal cancelled.
The settlement is also significant because both groups want to challenge the Government in court for compensation for "confiscation of their foreshore and seabed".
The settlement would also scupper that action, Mr Naden said.
After the tribunal's activism last year when it released two damning reports which ultimately changed the way the Crown and Maori interacted, he believed there was every chance that the tribunal could halt the process - even temporarily.
He was also critical that the settlement was likely to "drag" in his claimants even if they didn't ratify it because of overlapping hapu boundaries. If they exercised rights under the settlement it was likely to be in areas of disputed boundaries.
"Even if the claimants manage to opt out of the settlement their rights and interests in their foreshore and seabed areas will still be affected by it," Mr Naden said.
Te Runanga o Ngati Porou lawyer Matanuku Mahuika, who helped nut out the deal, questioned whether claimants represented the majority of interests of each grouping or only individual interests within the hapu.
He said the belief that challenging the Government in the High Court, Waitangi Tribunal or even the United Nations, would bring about a better outcome was misleading and ultimately wrong.
