Government sidesteps foreshore 'veto' pressure

By AUDREY YOUNG political editor

Try as it did, the National Party could not get Government ministers to use the "veto" word in Parliament over its foreshore and seabed policy plans.

The right for Maori to "say no" was the closest ministers would go.

Ministers sought to dispel the suggestion that Maori would be given a special separate right.

They argued that customary rights - which might include a veto power in some circumstances - were derived from common law that applied to everyone.

Ministers also repeatedly said that customary rights were "property rights" that should be safeguarded as strongly as other people's property rights.

Or, as Attorney-General Margaret Wilson put it, "one law for everyone".

It was the first question time of the year and was dominated by Maori issues, with heat from the foreshore plans, National's "one law for all" campaign and the shambles of Waitangi Day last week.

National leader Don Brash and MP Wayne Mapp got no argument from Prime Minister Helen Clark and Ms Wilson that under the foreshore proposals Maori with recognised customary rights in the Maori Land Court would be able to stop others' activities on the foreshore that had a significant impact on those rights.

That is what the Solicitor-General, Terence Arnold, QC, told the Waitangi Tribunal when describing the Government's policy.

His comments are at the centre of a National Party campaign attempting to show that the Government is falsely minimising the impact the plans could have on beaches.

Both women were asked about a "veto" right but they ignored the term, and instead described customary rights as a "property right".

Ms Wilson said that if customary rights were recognised in the Maori Land Court under the new proposals, "then the same rights and consequences would attach to any property right".

"For example, if I had an easement over a property and someone wanted to develop over my easement, then I would have the right to be able to say no."

She used the example of someone wanting to erect a jetty where there was an established customary right to launch a waka.

Helen Clark told Dr Brash that he represented a party "that puts a lot of store on property rights".

"A customary right is a property right and is expected to be respected," she said.

NZ First worked in tandem with the Government to attack Dr Brash and National in the face of its campaign against race-based funding.

Deputy leader Peter Brown asked whether Reserve Bank scholarships for Maori and Pacific Island employees under the governorship of Dr Brash were "a needs-based scheme or a race-based scheme".

Both Dr Brash and Act leader Richard Prebble attached weight to a Holmes poll showing that 90 per cent of participants thought Dr Brash was on the right track.

Dr Brash said it showed most people thought Helen Clark was creating a racially divided nation "with two sets of laws and two standards of citizenship - is she telling 90 per cent of New Zealanders that they are wrong?"

Helen Clark said his own party had inserted Treaty of Waitangi clauses in 28 pieces of legislation.

Asked by Mr Prebble why her Government was persisting with "policies based on race, not need", she quoted an extract from what turned out to be Mr Prebble's maiden speech and said she agreed with the sentiment:

"The treaty that was unique in the history of the world, a treaty between two peoples agreeing to share a nation."