By AUDREY YOUNG AND NZPA
Customary rights holders will have a power of veto over activities on the foreshore that will have a significant adverse effect on that activity, a specialist law body has told a parliamentary select committee.
Whether the Foreshore and Seabed Bill gives a veto power has been the subject of dispute between the Government and Opposition parties.
Transpower, the national grid operator, argued at an early hearing on the bill that holders of customary rights under the law could jeopardise its ability to lay cables - a position retracted the next day after great displeasure from Government quarters over its submission.
The bill vests ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown. It also sets out ways in which Maori can become registered as holders of customary rights orders or ancestral connection orders over particular areas of coastline and the greater say they can have in the management of the area.
Appearing for the Resource Management Law Association, Jim Wiltshire agreed under questioning that the bill provided a power of veto to customary rights holders, but it was a two-step process, not automatic.
It was up to the relevant territorial authority to decide if something would have a significant adverse effect on the customary right.
"But once they have made that finding, then it seems to me that the customary right holder does have a veto."
There was also no ability for an intended user to go to court to mitigate against or give remedy to an adverse effect.
The Resource Management Law Association took no view on whether the law should be passed, Mr Wiltshire said, but made suggestions on changes to make it workable.
The legislation should be clearer on the extent to which adverse effects should be considered, and he cited the example of a proposed use that might limit customary fishing from a particular reef.
One could understand that doing something to the reef itself could limit the customary right.
"What happens when an industry is to be established 100m, 200m, 1km, 10km up along the coast?"
There could be questions about physical and cultural effects but, he asked, where was the limit?
"Is there a limit or is the limit at the top of the mountain?"
Ngati Kahungunu chairman Ngahiwi Tomoana told the select committee the bill was a sham and a device to get the Government re-elected.
"But it has no merit in law, it has no merit in good governance and it has no merit in good government.
"We see comparisons with Margaret Thatcher invading the Falklands in order to get re-elected, President Clinton going into Bosnia and President Bush going into Iraq."
Mr Tomoana said the bill was "stealing from our soul, our cultural soul".
"It's not about the physical land, it's not about the water, it's not about the salt. It's about an attack on the soul of Ngati Kahungunu.
"It's about loss, it's about a loss of dignity, it's about the loss of mana, about the loss of prestige and it will have repercussions for future generations."
Mr Tomoana said references in the bill to ancestral connection sounded a bit like unlawful sexual connection "and we believe this legislation is meant to shaft us".
Power of veto under debate
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