'Settle shore row quickly'

By AUDREY YOUNG POLITICAL EDITOR

A pivotal figure in the row over foreshore rights says the dispute must be settled swiftly.

Waitangi Fisheries Commission chairman Shane Jones said delays would encourage acrimony.

The commission funded eight iwi to take a claim for ownership rights over the Marlborough Sounds to the Maori Land Court.

Mr Jones would not divulge the amount spent by the commission on the case but it is thought to be more than $1 million.

He said the commission had begun funding the case under former chairman Sir Tipene O'Regan, who had championed the cause.

There had been concerns that local iwi would become "irrelevant bystanders" as the Marlborough Sounds was opened up for economic growth in their tribal area.

"The Fisheries Commission role was in the context of wanting to expand the Maori presence in the business and activity of fishing."

The Crown objected to the case being heard, saying the Crown as the sovereign authority owned the foreshore and seabed.

But five judges of the Court of Appeal unanimously held that customary title is not extinguished by the transfer of sovereignty and upheld the preliminary finding that the iwi may hold customary title, pending an investigation of the Marlborough case by the court.

Plans to assert Crown ownership in law provoked a Maori revolt and backdown. Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen will tonight meet the Maori Council as he tries to find a compromise.

Some want the case to just proceed through the court but Mr Jones said hundreds of iwi taking their own cases could take 30 years and be divisive.

"I personally would not like to see 100 cases to the Maori Land Court and each case is converted to a battle about whether or not all New Zealanders are welcome and able to enjoy what I think is regarded as a Kiwi birthright: open, unfettered access to coastal space, for swimming, for fishing, for boating."

Referring to the 11 years it has taken to formulate an allocation model for fishing quota, cash and shares now valued at more than $700 million, Mr Jones said: "If there is one lesson that I personally have learned from the implementation of the [Maori fisheries] settlement, any allocation decisions must be taken rapidly and they must be implemented swiftly." Mr Jones said iwi leaders should seize the opportunity to take the heat out of the situation and make the process work.

But he cautioned the Crown to be wary of a symbolic compromise for Maori.

"A lot of iwi will be wary of the notion that some symbolic reference could be made to Maori title of the seabed and the foreshore.

"People remember somewhat sourly Mr Muldoon's stunt of recognising Taranaki ownership of Mt Taranaki then all of a sudden vesting it back in the Crown.

"To go down that route, it would be seen as a vacuous gesture and any Maori that agreed with it would be pilloried by their own people."

A solution would "depend on the quality of the reciprocation".

"If we conveniently overlook, fudge or ignore that reciprocity then that's where these sorts of issues are going to get a hell of a lot worse."

He believed there was a level of "acceptance and tolerance among Kiwis in general that Maori may very well have rights in the coastal area but they should not have exclusive private ownership of the coast".

But at the core of the issue was people's deep attachment to a quarter acre with freehold title. "There is just no constituency in Parliament or in the general voting public for transferring that concept of title down to the beach."