Peters replays namesake's words

By AUDREY YOUNG political editor

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters invoked the famous "fight them on the beaches" speech of wartime British leader Sir Winston Churchill yesterday in linking the foreshore and seabed issue to "treaty-mongering".

He accused National of running an "odious campaign to foment disharmony by setting one group of New Zealanders against another" and said Labour and National had been complicit in "treaty-mongering".

"They have both fostered the treaty industry recklessly and foolishly, regardless of the damage - and regardless of the longer-term consequences," he said in a speech in Dunedin.

"There can be no winners from the current fiasco over the foreshore and seabed. All of us lose if we become a divided society."

It was absurd and incongruous for National to be taking up the cause of "one nation" when they had been instrumental "in giving the treaty juggernaut its momentum".

"National is complicit with Labour in 'treaty-mongering' - their fingerprints are all over the offending documents."

Mr Peters said both Maori and non-Maori suffered from the "treaty industry".

The treaty had supposedly created a basis on which New Zealand could go forward as one people but it was drifting apart because of the "misuse of the treaty".

"The treaty is being cynically reinvented and manipulated by people whose true agenda is division and disruption."

National and Labour were "aiding and abetting that agenda".

"We are determined to fight the danger that the treaty industry poses to the unity of our country. We urge you to join us in that fight whether it be on the beaches or the foreshore or the ballot box. We will never surrender."

Mr Peters' speech coincided with the release of a Marae DigiPoll showing his party had made huge gains in support among Maori voters, from 12.9 per cent in May to 20 per cent.

With six of his 13 MPs being Maori, and a goal to recapture the Maori vote from Labour next election, Mr Peters has not risked upsetting Maori by campaigning on the foreshore and seabed in the way that National or United Future has done since the landmark Court of Appeal decision in June.

That decision said Maori were entitled to make a claim for customary title of the foreshore and seabed in the Maori Land Court.

The Government's response was to say it would assert the Crown's ownership in law but an outcry by Maori has forced a rethink.

Mr Peters said New Zealand First would support any move that reinforced the party's belief that the Crown had legal title to the foreshore and seabed to hold in trust for all.

"Customary rights of use can still be protected this way but these rights cannot be extended to legal ownership of natural public resources on the basis of race." The party would take a similar position on other areas in which ownership might be disputed such as oil and gas, minerals, and flora and fauna.

Mr Peters said Labour was courting a revolution at the ballot box over the foreshore and seabed issue.

The Court of Appeal decision arose from a case taken by eight iwi to the Maori Land Court and was not a claim under the Treaty of Waitangi - though the Government's response may provoke a claim to the Waitangi Tribunal alleging a breach.

British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, June 4, 1940, to the House of Commons

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous states have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender ...