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It's Modern Day Confiscation

Māori are stuck in a time machine with this Coalition Government driving us backwards, treating us like second class citizens and trying their hardest to extinguish our customary rights and practices.

On Friday this Government announced they are going to make it more difficult for Māori to make customary claims on our coastlines. This sounds eerily similar to what we experienced 20 years ago with the Foreshore and Seabed debate. If they get their way Māori will have to prove continuous, exclusive use and ownership of the area since 1840, regardless of Crown actions by Pākehā over our private property rights.

It's announcement is the largest confiscation of Māori whenua we have seen since the illegal confiscation of Māori-owned land since the 1860’s by European settlers who branded the displaced whānau as, “Māori rebels”. The only difference here is it’s being done in broad daylight.

I was there 20 years ago when Winston Peters pushed us and he’s doing it again. In 2003 Winston Peters went to then Prime Minister Helen Clark advising her that he had 13 MP’s that would vote to Nationalise the Foreshore and Seabed putting it into Crown hands. I recall in November 2004 Mr Peters describing it to the media as, “The best Christmas present a country could have”. The extinguishment of his own whakapapa and whenua rights.

There is no doubt that up to 95 per cent of the whole coastline was subject to the Ngāti Apa decision. Because of the “Iwi versus Kiwi” rhetoric a number of Māori MP’s in the Labour Government determined that the best thing to do was to get a piece of legislation that gave our people an opportunity to fight another day, rather than lose it all in one hit. I was one. Dame Tariana Turia left to form Te Pāti Māori.

What’s happened now is Mr Peters has come back on the scene as part of the current NZ First Coalition agreement and is asserting exactly what he wanted to do back in 2003.

The problem with that is we (as usual) incrementally and painfully went through a due process, went to the courts and proved our cases. The Whakatōhea Case is the prime case that was heading towards the Supreme Court because the Court of Appeal found in favour of Māori, particularly in regard to the fact that you can’t have exclusive rights if they have been interrupted without a consultation process and our consent.

After surviving this and other tests Whakatōhea then set the benchmark and once the Court of Appeal had ruled on that, the Supreme Court then needed to either affirm or overturn it. This has taken 20 years of litigation under the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 and then under the Marine and Coastal Area Act 2011.

Some people spent millions of dollars going through procedures, Waitangi Tribunal claims and court cases to land at a place where a six percent party is going to destroy private Māori property rights overnight. ACT keep banging on about private property rights and how their mates are the landlords etcetera. But as soon as it comes to Māori property rights; they are second class, they don’t count, they don’t exist because they belong to brown people. If they belonged to white people it would be a completely different conversation and we all know it. It’s your typical double standard that this Coalition Government are becoming infamous for.

The Crown also intend changing the Takutai Moana financial assistance scheme reducing the amount of funding available to assist Māori to advance their claims. Access to the law is only for their rich mates. Another age old tactic by colonisers.

Notwithstanding is the lack of alignment or acknowledgement of Tiriti o Waitangi. In addition the conflict of interest that exists with the Crown appearing as an interested party in applications before the High Court thus acting as both an interested party and funder.

In short, it is getting harder and harder for Māori to accept a Government brazen enough to ignore democratic due process.

The number of attacks on Māori rights are never-ending. From access to our mokopuna through to denial of our language, to our ability to vote on Māori wards at local authorities; without a doubt they are putting our country back 50 years or more. And this will do a grave injustice to our race relations and the building of a proper nationhood.

The problem for Māori is because they are the punching bag everyone is lining up and being consented and endorsed to give us a good kicking.

You can only continue to do that for so long.

For the past 40 years, Waipareira have provided free services and support for whānau of all ages in West Auckland – health, legal, housing and education.

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