Rt Hon Winston Peters

New Zealand First Leader

Member of Parliament for Northland
2 JUNE 2016

Oral submission by New Zealand First Leader and Northland MP Rt Hon Winston Peters to:

Local Government and Environment Select Committee on the

Resource Legislation Amendment Bill

These proposals are an albatross around the neck of future Maori progress.

New Zealand First in January this year and in February, in various media releases and speeches, the latest only last Friday to Federated Farmers Waikato, has pledged 12 votes for full RMA reform but with one serious condition.

That is the removal of separatist and race-based proposed laws starting with the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill.

It speaks volumes that the New Zealand people are being asked to sign up to planning laws where rights are based on the colour of one’s skin. That is, race based.

Be in no doubt that planning and environmental law, just like our judicial system, must be colour-blind. New Zealand First refuses to support the separatism these retrograde legislative proposals represent.

The question is where and when did the bill’s proponents have their “Road to Ngāruawāhia conversion”.

How many Maori and in what percentages have demanded a separatist planning system?

What research has been done with Maori that suggests they want more separatism?

How many Maori have appeared before the select committee and demanded they want a race-based planning system?

In the voluminous Resource Management Act the word “Iwi” appears 48 times but in this separatists-based amendment the word “Iwi” appears 154 times!

Sir Bob Jones had to fork out $4,500 for a resource consent and a cultural impact assessment, after consulting with 13 Iwi, all because a reinstated window looked over a designated heritage site in Auckland.

Can any MP tell the public where the 13 Iwi have come from!

National has already altered the RMA to transform Iwi into consenting authorities.

Unelected iwi representatives controlling and charging for processes as flimsy as the one that Sir Bob Jones ran into. TV3’s The Story showed everyone the rort of cultural impact assessments that this Bill will encourage.

Iwi Participation Agreements - proposed through Clause 38 undermine the Rule of Law. Unelected tribal representatives will be able to veto decision-making by elected councillors. Just where is the democracy in that?

These are sweeping constitutional changes by stealth designed to produce states within a state. This is a recipe for anarchy.

Maori are part of the New Zealand community and not a separate entity. These proposals don’t seem to understand that most fundamental fact.

There have also been changes to the rules for farmers using stock drinking water so that they will have to obtain a consent. Can someone explain that to the farmers of North Canterbury destocking right now? Farmers will be held over an Iwi barrel, where Iwi will approve who gets the water and who does not. This is the sort of madness others may applaud but New Zealand First does not.

So be under no illusion that these Iwi Participation Agreements are about that white gold called water.

Water is a God-given gift but the government opened up a racial can of worms when it privatised the power assets and put a dollar figure on the value of water. As New Zealand First warned back then; Iwi now want their slice of the action and all Kiwis, Maori and non Maori, are going to pay for it.

In 2014 Tūwharetoa and Mighty River Power signed a partnership agreement over Lake Taupō.

It is only the starting point because following Dr Smith’s consultation document on freshwater, National’s ally, the Maori Party, responded like this:

“The chapter begins with the statement “No one owns the water”. Most people don’t understand what Treaty rights to water are or why they exist. It’s an unhelpful starting point for public discussion…The discussion document does acknowledge that the Waitangi Tribunal recognised that hapū and iwi do have proprietary rights to control access to and the use of local waterways”.

Can anyone tell New Zealanders what “control access to and the use of local water” actually means?

And whilst we are it, it is a betrayal of one political party behind this bill’s claimed principles, “equal citizenship and equal opportunity”. This is what the National Party claims to stand for, something this bill most definitely does not.

These proposals speak with a racist forked tongue, for while farmers, businesses and homeowners have been told the government has got their back, these proposals are evidence the government has caved into a separatist apartheid agenda.

In conclusion when did the Maori people ask for this or is it like the Maori flag we have now which arose after consultation at 21 hui where less than a thousand Maori in total turned up.

That’s less that quarter of a percent of all Maoridom.

May I suggest with respect that allowing such processes evinces a certain contempt for Maori suggesting they and we don’t understand the precepts or the fundamentals of democracy itself.

And if the cost is of concern to government why are they loading extra costs on to applicants in this way.

We stress that New Zealand First will support fundamental RMA reform but only if that will stop this separatist drift which is of no help to the mass majority of Maori but where any benefit is accrued to a small Maori elite making the demands in the people’s name.

The challenge to the National Party is whether it is letting personal enmity get in the way of what is right for New Zealand.

ENDS

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