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Source: ONE News -
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Parliament faces another long haul over foreshore and seabed legislation, and this time the government and opposition parties are determined their task won't be surrounded by divisive controversy.
A government-appointed review panel on Wednesday released its report on the Foreshore and Seabed Act, recommending its repeal and saying interim legislation should be put in place until the politicians work out a way to recognise Maori rights to coastal areas.
It said the 2004 Act failed to recognise Maori property rights in the way those rights were recognised by the courts, and advanced the general interests of the public at the expense of Maori.
Attorney-General Chris Finlayson and Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples issued a joint statement saying the government will carefully study the report and respond to it in August.
Finlayson said that in the process, he intended ensuring the discord around the Act disappeared.
Labour Party leader Phil Goff emphasised the importance of not creating division.
"We have a real opportunity here to bring people together and to find resolution, to reconcile competing differences," he said.
"If the Act is to be repealed it has to be replaced by something that creates certainty, and that certainty has to include free public access to our beaches, to our foreshore and seabed."
Prime Minister John Key said the government is going to take its time and gave an assurance that whatever happened, public access to coastal areas will not be restricted.
Dr Sharples, co-leader of the Maori Party which was the driving force behind the review, said access to the beaches has never been an issue.
"Customary title is vital, that's our whakapapa, it is our very existence, that is the definition of Maori," he said.
"It has to appear in the solution."
Exactly how it appears in the solution will be talked through for many months.
The Maori Party expects interim legislation to be enacted next year which will stabilise the situation while a replacement for the Act is negotiated.
The Green Party, which has always opposed the Act, wants it repealed as soon as possible.
The Act was the most difficult piece of legislation the previous Labour government had to deal with during its nine years in office.
It followed a 2003 Court of Appeal ruling in the Ngati Apa case that it might be possible, in some instances, for Maori customary title to convert into freehold title.
That raised the possibility of parts of the foreshore and seabed coming under Maori control, and fears that public access to beaches could be restricted.
The previous government was not prepared to accept that position and legislated against the ruling, causing widespread unrest among Maori and the resignation from the Labour Party of Tariana Turia who went on to form the Maori Party.
