Biggest Waitangi Tribunal inquiry ends

One row of seats was reserved for claimants who died before they had a chance to witness the final hearing. Photo / Peter de Graaf

After seven years, hundreds of witnesses, 31 weeks of hearings and more than 500,000 pages of evidence, including 10,000 pages for the claimants' closing submissions alone, New Zealand's biggest Waitangi Tribunal inquiry is drawing to a close.

Friday was the final day of the final week of hearings in Stage II of Te Paparahi o Te Raki, the Northland Inquiry (or Wai 104), which is examining Ngapuhi's 600-plus Treaty claims, at Waitangi.

No date has been set for the tribunal to publish its findings, and the government has suspended talks over who should negotiate a settlement on Ngapuhi's behalf, but completion of the hearings was a significant milestone for the country's biggest iwi.

Claimants gave their final evidence at Otangaroa Marae, near Kaeo in July. Last week it was the Crown's turn to respond one last time.

Topics traversed included the confiscation of land for unpaid rates, the foreshore and seabed controversy, the Hole in the Rock, and whether the Crown was responsible for Northland's long-standing economic woes.

Tribunal member and historian Ann Parsonson grilled Crown lawyers on the impact of rates, saying families who stayed on the land to "keep the home fires burning" were often forced to give up land to pay rates arrears.

She asked what action the Government had taken after a 2007 report found Maori land was often over-valued, and hence charged too much in rates, because valuations were based on market value even though the land could not be sold.

Responding to questions about the foreshore and seabed, Crown counsel Geoff Melvin conceded that the Crown's belief in 1840, based on English common law, that it owned the foreshore and seabed was mistaken.

However, the Crown would have regulated the foreshore and seabed in any case as one of its legitimate kawanatanga (governorship) functions.

Earlier some claimants argued that economic deprivation in Northland, especially among Maori, was a direct result of government actions, starting as early as 1840 with the imposition of customs duties that ended Russell's booming exports and the subsequent shift of the capital to Auckland.

Crown counsel Kevin Hill said topography, isolation, poor soils and a boom-bust economy based on extractive industries were more important factors in Northland's lacklustre economy.

He conceded, however, government land purchase and tenure policies had played a part, and the government had failed to ensure Maori retained enough land to form an economic base.

The tribunal's Stage I report, which dealt with broader issues of sovereignty and the Treaty of Waitangi, released in 2014, found Ngapuhi chiefs did not cede sovereignty when they signed the Treaty.

The Crown position held British sovereignty was attained by Governor Hobson's proclamations of May 1840 and their publication later that year.