Don Brash: Coast control ultimately in Maori hands

COMMENT


The Government's foreshore and seabed proposals are destined to cause the biggest expansion of the grievance industry the country has seen.

The proposals hitch another set of wagons to a Treaty of Waitangi gravy train that is already out of control.

The winners will be lawyers, bureaucrats and small sections of the Maori high-income aristocracy.

By blocking developments that would benefit everybody, the losers will be all other New Zealanders.

The Government has introduced a new undefined concept of 'public domain', and established a new right of "customary title", the latter presented as a harmless expression of "customary rights", but which, in fact, embodies vast powers, including veto powers.

How long will it take to know what all of this really means, and will it then be too late?

In all these matters, as New Zealanders have discovered to their cost, the devil is in the details. Those details are buried, and in most cases yet to be figured out.

The Government claims that public domain will vest full legal and beneficial ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the people of New Zealand. The detail of the announcement shows this is not the case at all.

The reality is that the customary title, to be awarded by the Maori Land Court, "will sit alongside public domain".

The use of the word "title" shows the real intent: it will ultimately give Maori the power to control the development of the coast.

How might that come about?

First, the Government documents make it clear customary title will allow the development of commercial activity arising from the customary use.

That means extraction of sand, protection of access routes and use of space for launching of vessels. It also includes tourism ventures.

This "development right" will mean an expansion of traditional customary rights. It means Maori will have the right to build boat ramps, jetties, reclamations for tourist hotels and buildings over the water, as in the Pacific Islands.

The only restriction is that they must comply with the Resource Management Act. That act is supposed to focus only on environmental effects, not issues of access.

Secondly, along with commercial development, customary title also gives Maori veto power over anyone else's development, whether commercial or recreational.

Anyone building a small jetty on a coastal property will need iwi consent.

It is likely to require a substantial payment to smooth the path for the consent. Anyone familiar with the extra costs incurred by consulting with Maori groups under the Resource Management Act as it stands - costs which in some cases do not much differ from stand-over tactics - will appreciate the damage this will do to the development process in New Zealand.

We can now understand why there was such a radical departure from precedent in the Te Arawa settlement concerning the 14 lakes around Rotorua. Te Arawa were given the power of veto on development and will be able to demand financial reparation.

Now we know that this settlement was not just an anomaly in that it went far beyond the 1992 settlement regarding the Taupo lakebed but was, in fact, the new direction which, we now see, is to be applied to the entire foreshore.

These additional costs will make some small sections of the Maori aristocracy much better off, but will make all other New Zealanders, including most Maori, worse off, by slowing, and in many cases blocking entirely, the potential for development of our resources.

Thirdly, Maori also gain a new role in the management of the entire coastline. The customary title gives commercial development rights, which over time will erode public access. In addition, the 16 bureaucracies will give Maori a dominant say in the use and development of the coastline, not only where customary title is granted but elsewhere as well.

All these committees will be taxpayer funded. Maori will gain access to more taxpayer funds to pay for consultants, lawyers and hui to allegedly "build capacity" to take part in this process.

This will be a money machine for lawyers.

There are huge conflicts of interest in all of this, and such conflicts invariably lead to corruption.

Maori interests can now be owners, managers and regulators, all at the same time, thereby ensuring their own developments can succeed, while blocking others if they can show to sympathetic authorities that their customary right is affected.

It is astonishing that the Government could establish such a conflict-ridden model; it is a recipe for disaster.

Long after this Government has gone, future governments will be trying to sort out the mess and total up the costs.

And yet the Prime Minister's initial reaction, at the time of the Court of Appeal decision that led to this mess, was that ownership of the foreshore and seabed has long been considered to lie with the Crown.

Her initial reaction was, in fact, the correct response, and is still the simple option backed by the National Party. Labour reneged on the simple solution simply because it feared its Maori MPs might collapse the minority Government.