Key talks tough at post-Cabinet news conference. Says existing legislation (FSA) will remain if ‘public domain’ is rejected.

Very interesting.

L

Pākehā are no more — and according to the conventional wisdom, rather less — of a homogeneous block than Māori, and the diversity of views which exists needs to be taken into account. If the current legislative approach to the FSA fails, a future government could do much worse than a citizen’s assembly along the lines of that proposed by the Greens for electoral finance reform. This seems like just the sort of broad and deep intergenerational topic for which citizen’s assemblies are best-suited.

L

It’s the $64,000 question and it goes to the heart of the issue. I don’t know the answer, and it isn’t likely anyone else does yet either. I expect Labour is waiting to see how it all plays out between Nact and the Maori Party.

Thanks too for the back-ground Jenny. Very interesting.

But if it is to be a truly political process, I think some broader consultation needs to occur with “non-iwi” – this would certainly have to include perspectives such as the Butterworth view. There seems to have been very little exploration by media or academics of what Pakeha actually think about the issue, beyond broad poll results and the defacto and presumed “voices of the people”. Regional Councils, for example, might engage in such a process.

Problem is IMHO, the last Labour government was telling itsef (and the public) there were no alternatives that wouldn’t beggar the country. Neoliberalism vs third world here-we-come

Maori were sold out, and they weren’t the only ones.

Apparently we can’t afford justice and a fair go for all our citizens in 21st century NZ, and it’s all the usual suspects chucked off the life-boat first. For the tangata whenua to still be in this position in their own land, their negative stats are hardly surprising.

This need to keep both sides generally happy is the huge advantage of the process being a political, rather than a legal process. It means electoral approval of some sort must be gained for whatever policy ends up occurring. Of course, electoral approval isn’t the only factor, and of course it doesn’t mean everyone has to be 100% happy with a proposal for it to stand — but it’s not like a legal process in which the team with the better lawyers wins.

L

So would you envisage that, if ownership of the F&S was decided in the favour of specific iwi, Pakeha would be forbidden from picking up driftwood from off the beach without permission, until that right had been legally established?

It could be a fair claim to make once the pre-existing dispute over the ownership of those resources has been resolved. It seems likely that some parts of the F&S had become a de-facto common, but whether, and to what extent, that was the case for a given area needs to be determined first. There’s also the problem that some areas had become abandoned, or partly abandoned, due to raupatu or other forms of alienation. Essentially, until the status of the tangata whenua claims to the F&S have been resolved, later claims can’t really be decided with any legitimacy.

L

The historian Graham Butterworth has made the comment that, in some respects, many Pakeha could claim customary rights to the F & S. They too, for many generations, have fished, gathered saweed for gardens, and driftwood for fires. The beach has been an adhoc “commons”. In part, these non-economic customs have been allowed to develop under the radar because the commons has not been over-exploited, except in respect to certain valuable shellfish and crustaceans.

If, post-peak oil, the job economy declines, which I expect it will, subsistence domains like the beach will be increasingly valued. That is the long view I think we need to take in this nation. Who “controls” the F&S could, at some future time, decide who survives and who starves.

At the time this law was enacted, the government was in pursuit of Bi-lateral Free Trade Agreements, which in common with the earlier discredited Multi-lateral Agreement on Investments, demanded that ‘all’ possible restrictions on limiting investment be removed.

This removal of limits to investment as demanded by foreign investors included any restrictions springing from traditional indigenous or customary title.

In fact this drive to strip indigenous people of customary traditional ‘usage’ rights did not start in New Zealand, but in Canada when Native Indian citing customary usage raised legal challenges to logging and oil exploration.

(This is why the world wide protest campaign that eventually sank the MAI, championed by the left around the globe, including here in New Zealand, was originally launched from Canada.)

After the collapse of the MAI, government’s around the world still committed to the neo-liberal Free Trade agenda tried to continue the drive to free trade with Bi-lateral Agreements.

The New Zealand Labour Government was in the forefront of this movement, striking a world first with a Free Trade Agreement with the repressive Communist rulers of China. Coincidentally Clark’s government were signing this agreement in Peking at the very height of that repugnant regime’s murderous crackdown on the indigenous people of Tibet.

The Labour Government’s desire to trample over any legal arguments around customary title to be heard in the courts, inevitably led to the international level. So as well as showing contempt for the people of Tibet, Labour also opposed the United Nations Declarations of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

On passing the F&S Act the Labour Government gave prospecting rights for the whole coast of the North Island to an Australian multi-national.

The National Government has carried on the same policy granting oil prospecting rights to the Raukumara basin.

The bottom line for the Maori Party must be the demand for a veto on this sort of exploitation of the Seabed and Foreshore.

The right of veto for tangata whenua over exploitation of the marine environment would be in line with the Maori concept of kaitiaki, or gaurdianship.

In my opinion, anything less than the attainment of kaitiaki granted by a veto power would be a breach of the Maori Party’s coalition agreement with National.

The question is, does Labour still oppose Maori having an effective veto over the exploitation of the Seabed and Foreshore?

Maybe someone would like to answer this question for me?

anti-spam asked

Tribal plutocracy isn’t on offer. Nobody wants it. Nobody thinks it’s a good idea. Nobody has suggested it. Nobody credible, in any case. It’s a straw man. References to traditions and so on aren’t a threat to the unitary state, they’re references another set of civic institutions to work within it; institutions which already exist but are hamstrung by the fact they’re gatekept by (mostly) Pākehā working within (mostly) Pākehā institutions who don’t understand or acknowledge them.

Māori are deeply invested in liberal democracy; a liberal democracy with Māori adaptations, such as mana whenua representation, the necessity to acknowledge and adhere to Treaty principles, a Treaty settlement process established in law to safeguard the original agreements of settlement. I’m not arguing that Māori have a “better” way; I’m arguing that nowadays, the way we have is largely the way they want to do things as well.

L