National may help Turia's seabed bill

Cook Islands artist Faimau Robati adjusts the giant kauri fish-hook given to the Maori Party yesterday. Picture / Mark Mitchell

National says it will consider supporting a Maori Party bid to overturn the Foreshore and Seabed legislation.

Yesterday the Maori Party marked the first anniversary of the election which saw it return four MPs to Parliament by unveiling its first legislative proposal, the Foreshore and Seabed Act (Repeal) Bill.

A member's bill in the name of party co-leader Tariana Turia, it would repeal the controversial act - which played a pivotal role in the creation of the Maori Party - and annul consequential references in other acts. To pass it would first have to win the ballot and then gain enough support from other parties.

National's support would be essential for the Maori Party to have any chance of succeeding in one of its bedrock policies.

Yesterday Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples invited National to help repeal legislation each party had opposed for different reasons.

"We're hoping we can talk with National about the whole way they look at Maori policy and things," Dr Sharples said.

"What we are asking them is, you've got an agenda and this wasn't on it. Help us put it back and then you go and do what you want to do with it and we will go and do what we want to do with it, but let's get it back first, get rid of this bill and then we will start again."

National Maori Affairs spokesman Gerry Brownlee said Dr Sharples had made an interesting proposition and his party would look at the bill.

"We've always said it is an unsettled matter," Mr Brownlee said.

"This bill, while it would return us to the status quo, would also return us to the problem that was perceived to be there in the first place ... I can make no commitment either way until we've had the chance to sit down and look at their bill in the context of the current legislation."

If the bill made it to the House and gained National's support, Labour would be faced with a replay of the acrimony which surrounded the passage of the act in 2004.

With Act and the Greens likely to support the bill and New Zealand First and the Progressives to oppose it, the votes of United Future's three MPs would be pivotal.

Dr Sharples acknowledged there was a risk if the act was repealed that legislation the Maori Party liked even less might replace it.

"We have no guarantee and that's the exciting part really. It's what this House is for, you create possibilities, and that's what we've got to do."

Party supporters gathered at Parliament yesterday to mark the election anniversary.

Carvers from Northland and Rarotonga presented the party with a giant matau, a fish-hook carved out of kauri. The work was inspired by the hikoi protesting against the Foreshore and Seabed Bill.

* The matau or fish-hook presented to Maori Party MPs was carved by Kerry and Monique Strongman and Faimau Robati, not by Ropata Paora as stated in an earlier version of this report.