Editorial: Lakes better given into tribal hands

COMMENT


When the National Party leader first invoked the principle of "one law for all" to challenge postcolonial policies, he tapped a rich vein of popular discontent and for a few months the mantra was widely recited. But when Don Brash came to Rotorua to revive his fortunes this week, the principle did not resonate quite as well. For one thing, the cause he has taken up this time concerns lakebeds, where property rights are not quite as clear-cut in the public perception as foreshore and seabed.

Lakes are landlocked and a good deal of their surrounding land is often private property. The same is true of the coast but lakeside property is more conspicuous, nowhere more so than around the lovely Rotorua lakes where many adjoining residents appear to enjoy an amenity not readily accessible to the public at large. Lakeside residents have brought a legal action against the Government's proposed settlement of a Waitangi Treaty claim which would give Te Arawa ownership of the 13 lakebeds. Residents might have a case but it may not be as compelling as the public claim on beaches and sea.

The residents' case, eagerly taken up by Dr Brash on Monday, is that Te Arawa settled their claim with the Crown more than 80 years ago and the Government is not obliged under the treaty to renegotiate it now. By agreement in 1922 the tribe gave the Crown ownership of the lakes in return for the rights to take indigenous fish and an annuity which has been reduced to negligible value ($18,000) by inflation over the years. Te Arawa Trust Board, set up by the deal, took a claim to the Waitangi Tribunal in 1987 to have it renegotiated. They also complain that the Crown has failed to properly look after the lakes and their fish resources - a claim which, considering the lakes' well-publicised "slow death" from surrounding chemical pollution, is hard to deny.

Nobody, including the National Party leader, objects to raising the annuity or tendering the now-routine apology for history. But Dr Brash agrees with the objectors, the Rotorua Lakes Protection Society, that there is no need to give the tribe title to the lakebeds as well. They fear restrictions on public access, which Treaty Negotiations Minister Margaret Wilson says will be safeguarded. Even so, says the society's long campaigner Cliff Lee, non-Maori residents will feel like "second-class citizens". It would mean special treatment for Te Arawa, or rather, says Dr Brash, for Maori.

The difference is important. If issues of customary ownership are painted as favouring "Maori", it is easy to argue that they favour one race over another. If ownership is to be vested in a tribe, it becomes more difficult. What is a tribe but an extended family asserting a property right on the basis of long occupancy, care and use? If property rights could never be established over lakebed and seabed, it would be possible to refuse a tribe's claim. But since private boat ramps, jetties, fish farms and the like plainly exist, to deny the possibility of tribal maritime property rights is hardly upholding one law for all.

Te Arawa wants to take over management of the lakes in association with the Rotorua District Council and Environment Bay of Plenty. Considering the state of some of the lakes, a new management regime might be positively welcome. In offering title to the lakebed, Ms Wilson says Te Arawa will not be allowed to charge for access to the lakes and existing boat shed and jetty owners will have their rights preserved. Of course, that is just for now. As this case demonstrated yet again, treaty settlements are seldom truly final. Some have been rewritten in much less than 82 years.

Te Arawa have been patient and, as the Prime Minister observed, they have made a vital contribution to the development of Rotorua, particularly in tourism. With public access properly safeguarded the tribe can surely be entrusted with a nominal title to the lakebeds as recognition of special guardianship.