Editorial: Taupo claim simply a scene-setter

COMMENT


Ngati Tuwharetoa's attempt to charge for the use of air space above Lake Taupo could hardly have come at a worse time. It is akin to lobbing a sinister new weapon into a landscape seared and soured by issues surrounding the ownership of the foreshore and seabed. The response has been predictable. National Party leader Don Brash described the proposed charge as an example of the "treaty industry" running out of control. He might have been more circumspect. Above all, this claim must be kept in perspective, and the narrowness of its ambit recognised.

Clearly, this is not an all-embracing attempt to secure air rights above Lake Taupo. It is not, as Dr Brash mischievously put it, a claim which, if taken to its extreme conclusion, would add huge additional costs to an Auckland-Wellington airfare. Patently, no person can make a claim on airlines for the right to use the airspace above their property. Nor, indeed, is Ngati Tuwharetoa claiming this. If such were the case, the tribe would be seeking money from those who operate scenic flights over Lake Taupo from land-based airfields.

What Ngati Tuwharetoa is after is income that it believes it is being wrongly denied from lake-based or river-based commercial activities. The proposed air space charge appears to be the lever for extracting revenue from operators who use Taupo's waters but pay the tribe nothing. Ngati Tuwharetoa says the 1992 Deed of Settlement with the Crown, which gave it ownership of the Taupo lakebed and the bed of some of its tributaries and streams, entitles the Tuwharetoa Maori Trust Board to charge a licence fee to commercial operators. The air space charge would affect structures on or over the lakebed or riverbeds - the likes, for example, of bungy-jumping and hole-in-one golf, both of which have the lake or the water of a tributary as an essential part of the activity.

The notion of the proposed charge could also be said to have its genesis in tikanga Maori's frequent reference to the indivisibility of the land, water and air. That, of course, cuts little ice amid the nitty-gritty of a modern legal framework. But that very framework, and its applicability to the property-right uncertainties arising from the 1992 settlement, is another reason for keeping the Ngati Tuwharetoa claim in perspective. It is likely that the air space charge is part of the opening gambit in what could be a complex set of negotiations. It is, perhaps, in effect a bargaining tool, one the tribe would be happy to drop as it pursues its real goal.

Clearly, the trust board's main source of dissatisfaction is the amount of money it is garnering from the present fee arrangements with the Crown. These involve the Departments of Internal Affairs and Conservation charging licence fees for boat ramps, trout fishing and charter boats, and fees for marina berths and moorings. The proceeds are split 50:50 between the Crown and the tribe.

Ngati Tuwharetoa are unhappy with an annual income of just $400,000 from the system of boat marinas and launching ramps, jetties and wharves. The fees, it seems, are low. The tribe's ultimate ambition may be simply to lift these charges, thereby making its revenue from that source more relative to the $800,000 it derives as a half-share of trout-fishing licence money. To reinforce that point, it is also threatening to cancel licences granted for structures such as jetties and wharves.

Negotiations with the Government that will clarify Ngati Tuwharetoa's property rights start next week. These are essentially narrow in nature, dealing only with uncertainties arising from the 1992 settlement. The tribe has set the scene with a proposed charge that, whatever the reasoning behind it, most will regard as a flight of fancy. Certainly, it is ill-timed. Perhaps, however, it is not totally ill-judged. Fanciful notions are the easiest to set aside when hard heads get down to business around a negotiating table.