It turns out that the silly ‘no-one owns it’ option for the foreshore and seabed is John Key’s ‘elegant solution’. Here he is defending the proposal:
“It is a concept where you don’t get into the emotional debate of ownership. Now it sounds a bit foreign when you think about it, but no-one owns the air, no one owns the sea and we live happily in that sort of environment.”
Um. John, look up Bernstein v Skyviews & General Ltd – a landowner has owns such airspace above their land as is necessary for the ordinary use and enjoyment of their land and the structures upon it. And my understanding is the Crown owns the sea out to international waters – it has the power to control all use of that sea except for innocent passage and other exceptions under international law. So, not the best comparisons John.
And Tariana Turia has rejected the con straight off. But Key has decided to play hard ball:
“My preference would be to repeal the law, come up with a better solution, have general buy-in and have it be acceptable. I’m not going to shove it down the throats of Maori. If they say they don’t want it, then they don’t want it. And we can always leave the legislation as it is.”
Ouch? See that? ‘This is my offer, take it or leave it’. Perhaps he has seen the Maori Party back down on so many things over the last year he expects they’ll fold again. But this is the foreshore and seabed. This is the big kahuna for the Maori Party. If they were to buy into Key’s silly no ownership option, it would be their death knell. They are not going to be bought off, even by letting Sharples write a new national anthem.
Key is about to find that promising a bed of roses is easy, but building that bed involves dealing with lots of thorns.
This is going to get very interesting.
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