Right to veto culture and fauna for Maori

Ngati Kuri kuia Saana Murray, 86, is the last of the original claimants. Photo / Clive Crombie

No more Spice Girl hakas, no more moko designs on cigarette packets, no more tiki-motif salad servers.

If ministers accept new Waitangi Tribunal recommendations, Maori would have a right of veto over the use of cultural imagery, and would advise the Government on any patents that use indigenous animal or plant matter. They could get first dibs on DoC contracts like pest control in national and forest parks.

The report could be a spark in the political tinderbox of election year, offering to restore to Maori far more authority than was ever proposed by the Court of Appeal in the foreshore and seabed case.

Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson said the issues were "very novel" and the Government's response should not be rushed. "Rights are never absolute," he said. "There are public and private interests to consider, as well as other factors like the fiscal situation."

He wouldn't be drawn on whether the Government's response would become an election issue, but warned that there were "shades of the foreshore and seabed debate" in the divided reaction to the report.

After 20 years in the making, the tribunal's 1000-page report was presented yesterday at Roma Marae in Ahipara - the tribal home of the last surviving claimant, 86-year-old Ngati Kuri kuia Saana Murray. Astonished at how much momentum the claim had gained since she lodged it, she told media: "I met so many people. It's so interesting."

Ko Aotearoa Tenei - This is New Zealand is the tribunal's first whole-of-government report, recommending wide-reaching reforms across conservation, language, intellectual property, health, law and science. It is a response to "Wai 262", a Waitangi claim filed in 1991 by six claimants from six iwi, Te Rarawa, Ngati Porou, Ngati Kahungunu, Ngati Wai, Ngati Koata and Ngati Kuri.

But Maori Party MP Rahui Katene, daughter of one of the original claimants John Hippolite, said the report had been watered down and politicised.

"The claim is about tino rangatiratanga or Maori control of things Maori," she said. "The report goes nowhere near dealing with that."

The tribunal identified only one breach of the Treaty of Waitangi - the Tohunga Suppression Act, 1907, which banned rongoa (traditional healing). The act was repealed in 1962. But Katene was scathing: "To say there is only one breach is really ignoring the reality of what happened to each of those claimant iwi, and iwi all around New Zealand."

Lawyer Annette Sykes, counsel for one claimant group, said her claimants had asked Mana Party leader Hone Harawira about taking their concerns to Parliament.

And Associate Health Minister Tariana Turia said the Maori Party caucus would discuss the report tomorrow.