Proposed Foreshore and Seabed law “bound to disappoint” says academic

AUT University Professor of History and Treaty specialist, Dr. Paul Moon, has stated that the Government’s bill to replace Labour’s 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act is “bound to disappoint” those who have campaigned for greater Maori rights to the foreshore and seabed.

Dr. Moon has identified two aspects of the Bill which he believes will lead to many Maori rejecting it.

The first is the high threshold set for hapu for proving entitlement to customary title. “The hurdles that hapu have to jump in order to prove their right to customary title are prohibitive in many cases”, he says, “and will leave the majority of coastal hapu empty-handed. Proving exclusive use and occupation since 1840 ignores some of the more complex issues of entitlement.”

Dr. Moon says the second deficiency lies with the probable manner in which the Crown will manage the process. “Every indication is that the Government will want to act quickly to determine which hapu will and will not receive customary title. My concern with this is that the often intricate history of ownership will be overlooked in the process, and the consequence of this could be a new generation of claims to the Waitangi Tribunal from disaffected hapu and iwi”, he says.

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