Labour buys ads to sell its seabed law

By KEVIN TAYLOR, political reporter

Labour is spending thousands of taxpayers' dollars promoting its solution to the foreshore and seabed issue in every community newspaper.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Helen Clark said yesterday that the advertisements were being inserted in community papers this week to promote the Government's moves to solve the contentious issue.

The Government last week tabled legislation it says will guarantee public access to the coast, vest the seabed and foreshore in the Crown, protect existing customary rights and recognise ancestral connection.

The legislation and its tortuous gestation came after a Court of Appeal ruling last year opened the way for iwi to apply to the Maori Land Court for private ownership of the seabed and foreshore.

Helen Clark's spokesman said the advertisements were being paid for out of the leader's budget, which can be used for promotion of policy, and would appear once in each community newspaper.

At least 50 community papers are published in New Zealand.

The spokesman said the Prime Minister had funding for such purposes - just as United Future did when it ran an advertisement in a Sunday newspaper criticising the Government's Civil Union Bill and National did when it erected billboards last year featuring former leader Bill English promoting one standard of citizenship.

"You can use your party funding as long as you are promoting a policy position," the spokesman said.

The advertisement, already run in some community papers, says the foreshore and seabed legislation will guarantee access for all New Zealanders and Crown ownership, and also recognise and protect existing customary rights and ancestral connection.

The spokesman said the cost of the advertising would run into thousands of dollars and may cost "tens of thousands".

Asked why community papers were being used, he said they had large readerships.

The legislation was tabled last Thursday and will be sent to a select committee for consideration.

National Maori affairs spokesman Gerry Brownlee said yesterday that the new law was plagued with "loose definitions" which would fuel the Treaty of Waitangi industry for generations.

He highlighted the use of the word "tikanga" in the legislation.

Under the proposed law, ancestral connection to the coastline may be decided by the Maori Land Court according to tikanga Maori, he said.

A search for "tikanga" in Learning Media's on-line Ngata Dictionary had returned 106 results.

Among them were: code, condition, convention, culture, custom, depend, element, entail, ethic, fashion, formality, must, normally, order, procedure, purport, rights, ritual, style, suppose, trend and trick.

"How can the Government write reliable, responsible laws when they include words which can be interpreted in a vast number of ways?" asked Mr Brownlee.

"It'll be a bonanza for treaty lawyers and leave a vacuum that will be filled by extremists and continued judicial activism."

What the ads say

* The foreshore and seabed legislation will guarantee access for all New Zealanders.

* It will guarantee Crown ownership of the foreshore and seabed.

* It will recognise and protect existing customary rights and ancestral connections.