Coastal Coalition
Committed to retaining the Foreshore and Seabed in Crown ownership
www.CoastalCoalition.co.nz
Media Release
14 September 2010

Deliberate Misinformation Campaign Harms the Public Interest

“Claims that the government’s proposed foreshore and seabed law would ‘restore the right of Maori to go to court’ and that they would have to ’prove exclusive use and occupation of the area since 1840’ are incorrect and misleading”, the Coastal Coalition’s spokesman Dr Hugh Barr said today.

“By publishing claims that are clearly incorrect, the news media is doing the public a gross injustice”, Dr Barr said. “Even if Maori advocates have not read the Bill, surely the media should be accurate about what it says”.

“It is clear that the new foreshore and seabed bill legislates to give power to Ministerial politicians to decide, by secret negotiations with tribal groups, whether billions of dollars of public assets can be given to Maori tribes. They don’t have to prove their case in an open court of law at all” .It is only if the Minister thinks the tribe’s case has no merit, that tribes will be forced to go to court, and may have public scrutiny”.

“This is a very dangerous situation where politicians can do backroom secret deals that involve vast tracts of our coastline with no public oversight or scrutiny at all.”

“The media should be screaming from the rooftops that this is dangerous legislation as far as the public interest is concerned, and locks the public and most other interest groups out”.

“Further, claims that that tribes need to “prove exclusive use and occupation of the area since 1840” are incorrect since the bill has watered down the criteria to the point where it has little meaning, by allowing claimant groups to have ‘transferred’ their occupancy to non-members of the group.*

“The New Zealand public rely on the media, in their role as the ‘fourth estate’ to act as a public watchdog. That means bypassing the government’s and iwi’s slick spin on this matter and looking at how the new bill has changed crucial definitions that will, in spite of what the government is saying, open the floodgates to Maori tribal ownership and control of New Zealand’s precious coastline”, Dr Barr said.

*NOTE: Customary Marine Title can be awarded to an applicant group (Clause 60) if “it holds the specified area in accordance with tikanga; and has exclusively used and occupied the specified area from 1840 to the present day without substantial interruption. “Consequently significant interruption is allowed, but not “substantial” interruption, a much lower test. But given the negotiations are in secret, even these restrictions may provide little real constraint” Dr Barr said.

The new bill extends the definition of customary marine title to include a new concept, ‘transfers’ (Clause 62) to make claims easier to succeed: viz a customary transfer is not, of itself, evidence of substantial interruption of the exclusive use and occupation by the applicant group of the specified area, where a customary transfer means a transfer of a customary interest in a specified part of the common marine and coastal area after 1840 if the transfer was between or among members of the applicant group; or from a group or members of a group who were not part of the applicant group to the applicant group or some of its members; and the transfer was in accordance with tikanga; and the group or members of the group making the transfer had exercised exclusive use and occupation of the specified area from 1840 to the time of the transfer; and the group or some of its members to whom the transfer was made have exercised exclusive use and occupation of the specified area from the time of the transfer to the present day.

ENDS

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