The Green Party is vowing to make sure all stolen land is returned to tangata whenua by introducing legislation including removing a historical claims deadline for breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and establishing a process for private land.
The Hoki Whenua Mai policy comes after the party launched a discussion document on Waitangi Day last year, with further provisions around reforming the Public Works Act - which allows for the taking of Māori land - and removing the 2008 claims deadline.
“The Aotearoa we know today has been built off of Māori land, much of which was wrongly taken through breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi over the last 183 years,” said Marama Davidson, Green Party co-leader.
“As Aotearoa approaches the 185-year anniversary of the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and the 50-year anniversary of the Treaty of Waitangi Act, the time is now to reflect on next steps to ensure the promise of Te Tiriti is honoured and wrongs are put right.”
Davidson said their policy would recognise tino rangatiratanga and repair the harms of the past.
“We will do this by organising a commission of inquiry into land dispossession to investigate land taken through breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
“We will remove the 2008 deadline to lodge new Treaty claims and reinstate the ability for the Waitangi Tribunal to make recommendations in relation to privately owned land, as that land comes on the property market.”
The Hoki Whenua Mai plan will amend the Public Works Act to stop whenua Māori being taken in future and provide a path for the return of land previously taken, Davidson said. This was something the party had campaigned on ahead of the 2020 election.
The plan would also end perpetual leases, returning full control of the whenua back to Māori landowners.
Other aspects of the policy include an investigation into alienated Māori land, a process for returning it and revisiting all Treaty settlements to ensure they are just and enduring.
On Department of Conservation land, Davidson told the Herald that they ultimately supported it being returned to tangata whenua but needed to ensure iwi and hapū were adequately resourced to be able to manage it.
Their current policy was to ensure governance of conservation lands and waters was within a Te Tiriti framework – including outside of the settlements process – while engaging with New Zealanders.
Initially, the Green Party will amend the Reserves Act to require decisions under that Act to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. This would also apply to reserves operated by local councils and others.
By enabling new historic claims, the party also saw future redress potentially including return of title to specific areas of conservation land and other Crown lands that were wrongfully taken from Māori landowners.
“This may include collective redress that recognises overlapping claims by different hapū, and it may include establishing governance structures that bring together representatives of different ropū and a genuine Tiriti-based partnership with the Crown,” the policy document reads.
The settlement process has seen close to $3 billion provided in redress across close to 100 settlements for breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, or slightly more than the annual budget for the Department of Corrections.
Those settlements were often designed to compensate for loss of land, including where it was taken by force - raupatu - and excluded any discussions around land that had changed into private hands.
Critics have argued this experience had denied many iwi and hapū the right to have land taken from them returned, which was especially problematic now with rising property prices pushing any land purchases further out of reach.
The party also proposes an investigation into the dispossession of whenua across the country, including that seized because of public works and rating arrears, wrongfully alienated through the Native Land courts and through improper transactions.
A Commission of Inquiry would look into dispossession and redress and revisit Treaty settlements to ensure they were just and enduring - something the party campaigned on ahead of the 2020 election. The commission would not limit the time frame in terms of breaches but we given a three-year work programme.
Other options the party has proposed include that mana whenua would be given right of first refusal over any land deemed to have been wrongfully alienated, and the Waitangi Tribunal powers restored to make recommendations, including private land.
As outlined in the policy document from last year, a fund for the process would be established along with a registry to give current landowners the option of signing up, regardless of land status.
Green Party Māori Development spokesperson Teanau Tuiono said indigenous control over land would also help boost biodiversity.
“Returning land to tangata whenua is the right thing to do to address the ongoing injustices that Māori experience.
“Aotearoa can be a place where active kaitiakitanga led by tangata whenua guides our relationship with te taiao, ensuring our tūpuna whenua, awa, and maunga are cared for.”
The Act Party meanwhile has been campaigning for a referendum on the Treaty principles and co-governance - something National leader Christopher Luxon has already ruled out supporting - and believes the Government has already gone further in the settlement process than was envisioned in the original document.
Leader David Seymour said the Greens’ policy would see more “chaos and division” such as what was evident during the occupation at Ihumātao in 2019 happening across the country.
He also said now including private property would create much uncertainty and litigation for people who owned the land currently.
Davidson said she believed their policy would do the opposite.
“Ihumātao was about recognising an injustice. This is about resolving those injustices before that occurs.
“I thought they were a party of realising property ownership? When something’s wrongly taken, that needs to be rectified.
“That’s what this policy is about. It is because of the 182 years of injustice that we won’t be able to carry on in a positive way.
“If we sort this out, rather than wait for people to have to occupy their own land, everyone will be far better off.”
Davidson said the Treaty settlement process had been heavily weighted in favour of the Crown and was neither fair nor just.
this is a way of actually proactively addressing that injustice, rather than having to make decisions about developments that end up in the toilet because we haven’t taken a proper look at the original injustice.
Davidson said to those who might oppose the view they were revisiting the settlement process, the Treaty was “never supposed to be settled”.
“It was supposed to be honoured. It’s about having good working relationships together.
“The vision of our tupuna was to actually form strong, authentic relationships of sharing power.
“But instead, there has been injustice and ongoing breaches of Te Tiriti that benefit the Crown. This as a way of righting that wrong.”
The Green Party’s Hoki Whenua Mai policy:
The Resources Minister came to the select committee sporting a Make NZ Great Again hat.