Gardiner to head foreshore hui

By AUDREY YOUNG political editor

Seasoned National Party supporter and trouble-shooter Wira Gardiner will run the Labour-led Government's potentially volatile consultation hui with Maori over the foreshore and seabed proposals.

And Waitangi Fisheries Commission chairman Shane Jones wants his organisation to ditch its "backroom" role for a more active involvement with the Government because he fears the debate will turn into one over sovereignty.

The foreshore hui will be the second occasion this year on which Mr Gardiner has contracted his services to the Government.

He stepped in to reorganise the Maori broadcasting funding agency, Te Mangai Paho, after a financing scandal.

Mr Gardiner, a former Maori vice-president of the National Party, has had plenty of experience running consultation hui.

He bore the brunt of abuse when he fronted as the head of the Ministry of Maori Development in the mid-1990s when the National Government held hui on its "fiscal envelope" policy, which set treaty settlements at $1 billion.

National Party leader Bill English is relaxed about Mr Gardiner's involvement.

"It is telling that they [the Labour-led Government] are using someone who is an open and confirmed National supporter to run it, a guy who increasingly has the credibility to sort out the holes they get themselves into."

The Labour caucus is expected today to sign off plans for 11 consultation hui to begin on Thursday next week and to end on September 26.

At issue will be the proposed law to declare the foreshore and seabed part of the public domain and to give the Maori Land Court the ability to recognise customary rights of hapu on particular parts of the coastline.

But the proposed law would curb any power the land court might seek to grant freehold title to the foreshore and seabed.

A Marae-DigiPoll survey of Maori voters last week suggested that Maori were split over different parts of the Government proposals.

It found 49 per cent support for the public domain concept, but it also reported that 53 per cent wanted the Maori Land Court to be able to award freehold title to the foreshore.

A meeting of the Waitangi Fisheries Commission is expected today to discuss taking a more prominent role than it has so far in the formulation of the new law.

The commission financed the iwi claim to the Marlborough foreshore and seabed which has prompted the new law.

But Mr Jones said yesterday that the commission had taken a back seat for too long and wanted to help shape the legislation.

The commission had hoped to play "a facilitating backroom role and allow iwi to come to the fore [and] act in a unified fashion that assuaged the anxieties of the public and promoted a solution to the Government".

"The vacuum that was left after the Court of Appeal decision has been filled with voices that are strident, that are promoting ideas of sovereignty which belong in another forum," he said.

"We didn't spend nigh on a million dollars pursuing this issue through the various courts for it to be squandered in the face of loud rhetoric and stubborn posturing."

The commission had the expertise to advocate on issues including Maori rights in marine reserves, Maori aquaculture settlements, Maori customary rights and Maori co-management options with local Government.

Several hui have been called by Maori, the most recent of northern tribes at the weekend, where Mr Jones is said to have received a poor reception for promoting the commission as a "pragmatic broker".

National MP Georgina te Heuheu questioned the prospect of the commission setting itself up as a broker "given that it has taken them over 10 years to get an allocation model off the table and given that that model is still being challenged in the High Court by a number of tribes".