Tribunal hears saga of land lost

Maori lost swathes of land in the Bay of Islands, including islands now used as millionaires' hideaways, as recently as the 1970s, the Waitangi Tribunal was told.

Claimants, Crown representatives and Tribunal members spent Monday touring the eastern Bay of Islands to see first-hand the places relating to the hearings at Waitangi. This week, it was the turn of Ngati Kuta, Patukeha, Te Kapotai and Ngati Manu to air their grievances.

The 150-strong party boarded Fuller's Dolphin Seeker at Opua for a three-hour cruise that took in pollution issues in the Waikare Inlet, a pa razed by the British in 1845, despite the chief's neutral stance in the Northern Wars, islands lost in 'rating sales' in the 1960s and 70s, and land taken under the Public Works Act and never returned.

Back ashore the tour continued by bus on the dusty roads of the Rawhiti Peninsula with a full, formal welcome at the area's three marae.

Earlier Matutaera Clendon (Ngati Kuta) pointed out his former family land on Moturua Island, lost to the then Bay of Islands County Council, in collusion with government agencies, via a 1968 rating sale when the owners could not keep up with rates demands. Most of the island is now owned by millionaires.

"It's now a rich man's paradise. Both Patukeha and Ngati Kuta feel very aggrieved over the loss of Moturua," Mr Clendon said.

Similar issues were highlighted in Manawaora Bay, where some of New Zealand's most expensive holiday homes co-exist with Maori settlements whose residents struggle to pay their rates.

Arapeta Hamilton (Ngati Manu) recounted the events of May 13, 1845, exactly 168 years earlier, when British troops took retribution for the sacking of Kororareka by attacking Te Kapotai's settlement at Waikare, burning it to the ground, killing its livestock and driving its inhabitants into the bush.

A month earlier British forces arrested chief Pomare and razed his pa, Otuihu, opposite modern-day Opua, even though Pomare was flying a truce flag and played no part in the Battle of Kororareka. The pa's up to 1000 inhabitants included 131 Pakeha.

Mr Hamilton said Ngati Manu was the most destitute of all Bay of Islands hapu, with just 2500 hectares of its original 55,000 hectares of land left, while more contemporary concerns included the discharging of sewage directly into the Bay from thousands of boats, some of which were lived on year-round. A pumping station at Opua for emptying wastewater tanks was used by the big commercial operators but rarely by smaller vessels. Richard 'Blandy' Witehira (Patukeha) said land for the Cape Brett lighthouse and keepers' homes had been taken under the Public Works Act but never returned, as required by law when no longer needed for the original purpose. The hapu also had a long-running dispute with tourism companies taking boats through the Hole in the Rock (Motukokako) but hiding behind maritime laws to avoid paying the island's owners.