Thursday 18 March 2004

Stephen Franks

Treaty of Waitangi & Maori Affairs Press Releases

Labour's emerging willingness to revert to Crown ownership of the foreshore is completely irrelevant - no one can tell whether it's a concession until they see the fine print of rights they want to concede to Maori over that Crown property, ACT New Zealand Maori Affairs Spokesman Stephen Franks said today.

"It's now clear that `public domain' was just mystification, designed for cosmetics. What really matters are the rights under the new `customary title' Labour is promising Maori over virtually the entire coastline, on the basis of claimed `ancestral connection'," Mr Franks said.

"Attorney-General Margaret Wilson says they won't give anything more than existing Maori privileges under the RMA. That is probably untrue - even if it is true, those RMA consultation and veto powers can be turned into blackmail rentals.

"For example, Mayor John Banks has just had to agree to pay 50 cents per tonne ransom fees to Ngati Wai for sand they've never owned.

"The real things to watch for, however, are the `customary rights', which the Crown proposes to acknowledge over Crown land. Nobody knows what they will be.

"NZ First Leader Winston Peters' deal over a Treaty Royal Commission, in return for reversion to Crown ownership of the foreshore - without knowing what customary rights will be created - is like agreeing to pay a Lexus price for a Lada because the dealer promises to put a Lexus badge on it," Mr Franks said.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>