KEY POINTS:
Prime Minister Helen Clark said today it was not helpful for the Maori Party to promote land occupations by Maori as a way of resolving issues.
Maori Party MP Te Ururoa Flavell today issued a call to arms for all Maori to assert their rights to occupy land
in relation to treaty settlement claims.
He said Maori had been left with little recourse but to take "direct action".
"If repossession of lands is what it takes for the Crown to recognise their rangatiratanga, then so be it,"
His comments came as a group of Hauraki Maori occupies a 1100ha block of Crown-owned land in the Coromandel Peninsula to protest against its planned sale.
They have been occupying the Landcorp block since Sunday saying the land belongs to them, their action is a repossession and the block should be handed back as part of their Treaty of Waitangi settlement deal.
Asked today about the Maori Party's advice to occupy lands, Miss Clark said: "I don't think this is helpful."
"I think there is a responsibility for those who come to public life to advocate proper process and lawful action and that's not what I'm hearing from those announcements."
Miss Clark said there was a process "going forward" with the Landcorp station.
"What this issue with Landcorp has thrown up is an unsatisfactory state of affairs which goes back to issues unaddressed in the 1987 allocation between Lands and Survey, Forest Service and DOC."
Mr Flavell's colleague Hone Harawira went to Whenuakite today to offer support to the Hauraki Maori occupying the land.
Mr Harawira had travelled there after attending a similar protest at the Rangiputa station on the Karikari peninsula in Northland.
The action in the Coromandel came at the same time as Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia was witnessing the transfer of the Whanganui Courthouse to local iwi which came as the result of another land occupation in 1995.
Mr Flavell said the latest sales involving the Landcorp station had been mishandled by the Government which did not even appear to know that the Office of Treaty Settlements had refused the land when offered it by Landcorp.
He said the Maori Party would support any "repossession" if that was what was needed to get the Government to the negotiating table.
State-Owned Enterprises Minister Trevor Mallard was holding a press conference this afternoon on how the Government proposed to deal with the Landcorp issues.
- NZPA
