Māori don’t own the sea: Winston Peters says current act is expensive, divisive and pits iwi against iwi

An estimated 10,000 people marched on Parliament in 2004 in a hīkoi to protest the seabed and foreshore legislation. Photo / AFP, RNZ

Deputy Prime Minister leader Winston Peters says a proposed change to the Marine and Coastal Areas Act will bring the test for Māori customary rights back in line with longstanding practice.

Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith intends to introduce an amendment to overturn a Court of Appeal judgment that lowered the threshold that to get customary marine title an iwi or hapū must prove it exclusively used and occupied an area from 1840 to the present day, without substantial interruption.

Peters says that test was in Labour’s original Foreshore and Seabed Act, which he supported, but the current act cooked up by National and Te Pāti Maori had proved expensive and divisive, pitting iwi against iwi for control of the coast.

“Now you’ve got this argument going on about Māori owning the sea. We know, as Pasikifa people, nobody owns the sea. It’s a gift of God and we’ve used it as our highway all of our history and all of our DNA. That’s what makes Māori history important but you’ve got people defying gravity and saying European concepts of ownership are what would fit Māori,” Peters said.

Peters says the debate is being driven by radicalised university lecturers making up things that are at odds with the teachings of previous generations of Māori scholars like Ngata, Pomare and Te Rangi Hiroa.

Te Pāti Māori president John Tamihere – who was in government during the 2004 debate – says the Government’s planned rewrite of the Marine and Coastal Areas Act will be the largest confiscation of Māori interests since the 1860s.

The Government says it disagrees with the Court of Appeal’s interpretation in a case defining the customary interests of Whakatōhea hapū and neighbouring iwi in the eastern Bay of Plenty, and it intends to change the act passed by the National-Māori Party Government in 2011 to set the bar higher for claims.

“It is not an impossible test, it’s a high test,” Goldsmith said.

NZ First leader Winston Peters.

Tamihere says in 2003, when he was a Government MP and Labour was contemplating legislation in the wake of the Ngāti Apa judgment, Peters offered New Zealand First votes to support a bill nationalising the foreshore.

Labour instead left the door open for customary rights claims, which Peters and his coalition partners now want to close, Tamihere said.

“This has taken 40 years of litigation under the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 and the 2011 Marine and Coastal Areas Act. Our people have spent millions of dollars going through procedures, Waitangi Tribunal claims, court cases to land at a place where a 6% party is going to destroy the rights.”

Adam Gifford, WateaNews.com