New Iwi Kiwi billboard show Key giving away foreshore and seabed

The Coastal Coalition today launched an ad campaign to warn the public about John Key's plans to give large tracts of New Zealand's beaches and Territorial Sea out to the 12 mile nautical limit to iwi. Key and the National Party want the legislation passed before Christmas.

Coalition spokesman Dr Hugh Barr said "The Coalition is launching this campaign because the government is keeping New Zealanders in the dark about the extreme legislative changes they are planning."

The first billboards will be appearing in Wellington and Auckland over the next few days. It is a variation of National's eye-catching 2005 "Iwi-Kiwi" billboard, with John Key championing iwi and giving them ownership rights, development rights, mining rights and veto rights. Kiwi, by contrast, get 'Visiting rights?'

"The original Iwi-Kiwi billboards wrongly accused the previous Labour Government of selling out the beaches to iwi. "This time it is John Key and the National Party that really are giving away our beaches" Dr Barr said. "And the public needs to know this clearly."

The Coastal Coalition is a broad and growing alliance of citizens who support the foreshore and seabed being the common heritage and responsibility of all New Zealanders. We believe it should remain in Crown ownership, not privatised to iwi, as John Key is proposing.

"Our coasts and beaches are New Zealanders' greatest playgrounds for public use. As well they are enormously important for development, aquaculture, and commerce. John Key wants to give all these development and leasing rights to iwi over large areas of our foreshore and seabed, and give them veto rights on anyone else developing or using the area." Dr Barr said.

"The Prime Minister can't even guarantee that iwi won't be charging the public for use when they get all these veto rights he intends to give them under customary title" Dr Barr said.

"The Prime Minister seems to have decided that Kiwis don't count and only iwi are important. Consultation with ordinary Kiwis has been a sham, and review panels have been stacked with iwi activists. Key is proposing that iwi don't even need to go to court to prove a case for title. They will be able to do backroom deals in secret with friendly ministers. There are even proposals the Government should work with iwi prove their case for ownership" Dr Barr said.

The Coalition will be rolling out more billboards in the coming weeks.

A high resolution image of the first billboard is available on the Coastal Coalition's website here: http://www.nzcpr.com/CoastalCoalitionResources.htm

For more information see www.CoastalCoalition.co.nz

ENDS

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