KEY POINTS:
All Treaty settlements should be completed within 15 years at a cost of up to $3 billion, says the head of the Waitangi Tribunal.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the Federation of Maori Authorities, Judge Joe Williams, who is also Chief Justice of the Maori Land Court,
told delegates all claims should be settled by 2021.
The process would see $2 billion to $3 billion in largely commercial assets transferred from the Crown to iwi and hapu, he said.
The settlement total, the first qualified estimate by a senior tribunal official, is likely to put Judge Williams, who is appointed by the Crown, offside with the Government, which has refused to estimate a cost.
However, it is to a degree controlled by a $1 billion fiscal cap on settlements first put forward by the National Government in the early 90s.
At stake is the potential to be dragged back to the negotiation table with Tainui and Ngai Tahu, which have relativity clauses written into their $170 million settlements that allow for re-negotiation if the settlement process exceeds $1 billion.
A spokesman for the office of Treaty Settlements Minister Mark Burton said 2020 was the Government's expected deadline, but he declined to speculate on a dollar value, saying it was inappropriate while negotiations were continuing.
Meanwhile, Judge Williams has warned that settlement money will not continue to have any real impact on the income of individual Maori because of a burgeoning Maori population, expected to reach 750,000 by 2021.
"Unless oil is discovered on every block of Maori land, income growth alone will not keep up with growth in the Maori population and increasing engagement with tribal structures."
He said Maori must consolidate their more than 26,000 governance structures and invest in training to resolve the pervasive skill deficit that led to under-performing Maori assets.
"The short point is that the more Maori there are, and the more they are involved in tribal affairs, the greater will be the demand for a benefit at the other end.
"The number of trusts in which my whanau has interests could, in reality, quadruple their income and still not make a discernible difference to the lives of any but a few large shareholders in the hapu."
Maori needed to think more broadly about what could be achieved with assets, the judge said.
"We may have to shift our mindset from organisations designed to maximise individual dividends for shareholders to organisations whose primary role is to protect the ongoing survival of the tribe itself."