by Metiria Turei
What should we make of the decision of National to give my RMA/Conservation question about the coastal marine area to the Minister for Treaty Settlements?
Well, its difficult to give a question to a Conservation Minister who has been MIA now for weeks and weeks. And I guess they wouldn’t want to give it to the new Associate Minister who has only been appointed because the other guy isn’t in the country. Why bother having such a Ministerial position if there is no-one competent to fill it or to answer questions about it?
Maybe that is the heart of it. National’s RMA bill currently at select committee will remove the Conservation Minister’s power as effective ‘landowner’ to stop any developments in the coastal marine space. That power will rest with regional councils instead. In effect, as the Environmental Defence Society has said, the power to “permanently alienate” the coast will be in the hands of regional councils – many of whom are demonstrably weak in keeping environmental resources from the hands of developers out for a buck
The Government clearly has not bothered to consider impact on Maori, local communities or to the environment itself. The Conservation Minister has a statutory obligation to advocate for the environment. If the Minister doesn’t even have the normal rights that other landowners have to say “No” the coastal environment is left in the hands of councilors and private enterprise.
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Parliament by Metiria Turei on Tue, March 10th, 2009
Tags: , coastal marine area, conservation, foreshore, rma
More posts by Metiria Turei | more about Metiria Turei
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
I don’t understand. Does National want New Zealand’s unique ecosystems to be destroyed forever? What kind of person would want such a thing?
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>>unique ecosystems to be destroyed forever? What kind of person would want such a thing?
Hmm.. maybe a bit of mis-spelling there. Shouldn’t that ‘what’ in ‘What kind of a person….’ be ‘wat’ ?
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>>New Zealand’s unique ecosystems to be destroyed forever
Happened when the Maoris arrived…..
Pesky humans, eh.
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Oh Rand! Another Green pity party….National tries to address the issue….Labour acts like the fascists they are and denys Maori their day in court….but Nationals attempts equal bad….the end.
“Nothing new to see here…move along!”
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Is that a piss-take instead of saying ‘Oh God’?
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“Labour stole the foreshore from the maoris”… What basis do you believe the foreshore has ever been ‘owned’ by anyone let alone one racial group?
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Try Attorney-General v Ngāti Apa [2003] 3 NZLR 643, samiam.
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So Met;
How much do you reckon it will cost non Maori to visit the beach if you get your way?
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“What basis do you believe the foreshore has ever been ‘owned’ by anyone let alone one racial group?”
I think it’s pretty clear the foreshore was owned by someone, given they asserted their rights to it and others accepted the validity of this assertion (at least in principle, if not in everyparticular case).
But your right that it wasn’t owned by “the Maoris”, or any other racial group. New Zealand has a terrible tendency to define parties in racial or religious terms. The owners were particular political groupings (iwi or hapu). I’d guess Tuwharetoa, for example, didn’t own much foreshore. Race had nothing to do with it.
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I think it’s pretty clear the foreshore was owned by no-one. I have never accepted anyone’s ‘assertion of rights’ or ‘customary rights’ or whatever.
Here is an opportunity for The Green party to speak out for the foreshore itself, rather than ‘who’ ‘owns’ it.
The foreshore belongs to the foreshore, we are visitors.
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samiam, if you narrow the definition of “ownership” in the way you have, you reach the conclusion the no Maori owned any real property – ever!
That, of course, is an absurdity.
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That is not my point Toad. I’m not trying to extrapolate my position above the high tide mark. I’m trying to stop the land based ownership system being dragged down to the water. I’d like to think that mine is the least biased and most environmental position.
Got a better one?
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toad,
You have argued repeatedly that property rights don’t matter to you, and that they don’t in fact exist.
Specifically, you don’t want any checks on the state’s ability to tax and redistribute wealth, and to impose whatever conditions you like on supposedly private property.
Yet now, simply because it suits your purpose on this occasion, you are appealing to property rights.
Perhaps you should get back to us when you have worked out the inconsistencies in your policies?
If it’s legitimate for the state to redistribute wealth and impose the RMA, then it is equally legitimate for the state to seize any and all Maori land, under any pretext, or under no pretext at all.
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Property rights only apply to Maori in Toad’s world.
The rest of us have to apply through the RMA to plant a tree, cut down a tree, build a deck, paint the house, etc with the little piece of land we own.
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I’d also like to see a removal of property rights over land. I just don’t want that removal to begin by targetting one particular set of landowners.
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So I can move in to you house then.
Thanks.
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Removal of property rights? What I want is for them to not be established to start with.
I come from the position that foreshore is not property therefore property rights cannot exist.
Got a better one?
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samiam said: I’d like to think that mine is the least biased and most environmental position.
It may be Sam, but it ignores history. It would also be the most environmental position to have no toxic waste dumps, no sh*t in our streams and rivers, and no increase in our carbon emissions too, but reality is we do. We can’t just undo what has happened in the past by proclamation.
wat said: You have argued repeatedly that property rights don’t matter to you, and that they don’t in fact exist.
I have not. I have argued for a tax on capital gain – not a tax on assets.
big bro said: The rest of us have to apply through the RMA to plant a tree, cut down a tree, build a deck, paint the house, etc with the little piece of land we own.
And Maori would have to apply through the RMA to undertake development of the seabed and foreshore too (if they were able to establish ownership). Just becasue you own property doesn’t mean you can do whatever you bloody well like with it. Land owndership and land use are different issues.
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It is exactly how history has kept things. Before the first immigrants arrived VERY recently, the foreshore functioned exactly as it does today, unowned.
I think what you mean is one group’s version of history. I suspect that most people have lived their lives assuming that neither they or anyone else owns the foreshore. That’s history too. Lets keep it that way.
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“So I can move in to you house then.”
Actually, I am vaguely looking for a flatmate. But I’m quite happy about user rights and agreed rules on how they are distributed. Removing property rights doesn’t mean going to the law of the jungle.
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toad,
You completely miss the point. Probably deliberately.
The imposition of the RMA and the taxing of workers’ income for redistribution are the acts of a government which considers there are no limits to what it can legitimately do, and which is certainly not bound by any notion of property rights.
That being the case – and since you firmly support such a state – you cannot now appeal to property rights when it comes to Maori land claims. They don’t exist, remember?
Put another way, if the beaches are returned to Maori on the principle of upholding property rights, then any and all state handouts and benefits-in-kind (plundered from other taxpayers) must, under the same principle, cease at the same time.
Sam Buchanan,
“So I can move in to you house then.”
It wasn’t a question. I can move in to your house, since you deny land rights.
And no, I don’t want a flatmate. You’ll have to leave.
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wat, since when did income become property? Income is what you earn, property is what you own – fundamentally differnet concepts.
As for the RMA, if someone bought the property next to where you live and turned it into a half-way house for paroled rapists or paedophiles, I suspect you would be the first to complain. With no consent process (which is what you appear to advocate), anyone can do anything with their property, regardless of the impact on neighbours or the environment.
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I recall that Scrooge McDuck, after many attempts to scare and harass Donald into selling his house, simply built his trombone factory on the surrounding land and begun product testing all around the house in question.
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“Just becasue you own property doesn’t mean you can do whatever you bloody well like with it.”
Thankfully that is about to change, I hope you like the sound of chainsaws.
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toad,
- “since when did income become property? Income is what you earn, property is what you own – fundamentally differnet concepts.”
Huh?
Please do explain this theory further.
If I barter and provide a service in exchange for some eggs, are those eggs not my property?
If I provide that service for commodity money, such as gold, is that gold not my property?
If I provide that service for government fiat money, is that cash not my property?
Could I elect to be paid directly in something you recognise as real property, like shares in a land-owning company perhaps? Would that mean you had to keep your stealing hands off it? If so, suppose I then converted that “real” property into cash. Has is magically ceased to be my property.
And note that, if income is indeed not property, protected by inaliable property rights, then it is not just the state that can freely confiscate any and all of it, anyone would equally be free to take the income of anyone else.
If a farmer spends all summer growing a crop to provide income, is that not his property?
Please explain exactly what you mean.
-”As for the RMA, if someone bought the property next to where you live and turned it into a half-way house for paroled rapists or paedophiles, I suspect you would be the first to complain. With no consent process (which is what you appear to advocate), anyone can do anything with their property, regardless of the impact on neighbours or the environment.”
You cannot impose your externalities on other people, because it impacts their property rights. It is a question then of legitimate expectations.
As it happens, if a half-way house for paroled rapists or paedophiles opened next door to me, I would also expect to be able to exercise my legitimate right to open carry a sidearm.
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Go live in America Wat, enjoy.
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Toad,
How is income not property?
Income can come in many forms of which currency is the most common, currency is a medium of exchange and is as good as the goods you can buy with it; currency is therefore property. Since income is property earnt through action removing a portion of that income is removing a portion of the property the other person would otherwise have and is impinging apon property rights. Though the degree by which this is proper is debatable it is generally accepted that some is necasary for the good of society. If a good can be obtained from the common ownership of the foreshore then it is no different at all.
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toad Says:
March 11th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
wat, since when did income become property? Income is what you earn, property is what you own – fundamentally differnet concepts.”
Crap….your income is what you recive in trade for the productive hours of YOUR life spent in earning it……it is your property just as surely as your body and your mind are……but Greens hate the idae of any personal and not open to the collective…
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samiam,
Please feel free to contribute, and not just with sheep noises.
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Income is property why is Toad saying that it isn’t???
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samiam,
Just for you. This lady does live in America…
“a rape victim shot and killed an attacker in Cape Girardeau, MO when he broke into her home to rape her for a second time this week. The 57-year-old woman shot 47-year-old Ronnie W. Preyer, a registered sex offender, in the chest with a shotgun after he cut the power to her apartment and then broke through her locked basement door. Preyer had previously broken into the woman’s home, punched her in the face, and then raped her in her bedroom. ”
http://www.learnaboutguns.com/2008/11/03/woman-shoots-rapist-who-came-back-to-rape-her-for-a-second-time/
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I thought I was making fish noises? Baaaa
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Having removed EVERY initiative, however meager, towards assisting NZers to adopt behaviours designed to mitigate climate change, this crowd of environmental vandals who call themselves a Government, have a very secret agenda regarding the foreshore. The plan is, that by continuing to exacerbate Global Warming there won’t be any foreshore – as we know it today! Thus by ignoring one problem they eliminate the other! BRILLIANT!!
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# macro Says:
March 11th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
> The plan is, that by continuing to exacerbate Global Warming there won’t be any foreshore – as we know it today! Thus by ignoring one problem they eliminate the other! BRILLIANT!!
completely untrue.
Any area that is covered by the sae at high tide and not at low tide is foreshore. With a few metres of sea level rise, a number of suburbs of Wellington, Napier, Dunedin, Christchurch, and probably many other cities, will become foreshore. I refuse to believe that any more than, say, two-thirds of the National Caucus are naive enoght to think they could solve the problem that way.
Could it be that they actually want to get fee-simple title to the foreshore in the hands of poor hapu who will then sell it to National’s friends in the Business Round Table? Normally I wouldn’t think National would dare do something so unpopular, but they might if they could convince voters it was the Maori Party’s fault.
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whats wat suggesting ???????????
That woman in nz should have guns to protect them from double rapists ?????
Seeing as a car crash is the most likely way a stranger is going to hurt or kill me do I need a gun to shoot their car ?
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I think Wat just loves winding us up. If not, well then I am worried!
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daddyO
What would have happened if the woman had not been armed when the rapist returned?
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kahikatea
I’m well aware of the definition of foreshore..
It was meant to be “ironic”.
The foreshore as we know it today will however become seabed as you point out. How will that affect “customary rights”?
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# Sam Buchanan Says:
March 11th, 2009 at 10:24 am
But your right that it wasn’t owned by “the Maoris”, or any other racial group. New Zealand has a terrible tendency to define parties in racial or religious terms. The owners were particular political groupings (iwi or hapu). I’d guess Tuwharetoa, for example, didn’t own much foreshore. Race had nothing to do with it.
………..
In today’s world it is a genetic connection to a place that provides entitlement to a share in that “ownership”.
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I wonder how many people are aware of the greens stance on Foreshore and seabed? They probably recall the actions of the Labour Govt when there was a perceived threat and think that no govt would be so crazy. Govt’s seem to do things by stealth however, as when they change rules on foreign ownership.
Meteria will be an interesting co leader. You red greens have one problem and that is your thoughts and opinions are radical and dated.
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“Labour stole the foreshore from the Maoris”
So Metiria favours a series of tribal cantons?
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SAMIAN, you stated:
“It is exactly how history has kept things. Before the first immigrants arrived VERY recently, the foreshore functioned exactly as it does today, unowned.
I think what you mean is one group’s version of history. I suspect that most people have lived their lives assuming that neither they or anyone else owns the foreshore. That’s history too. Lets keep it that way.”
SAMIAN, you stated:
“It is exactly how history has kept things. Before the first immigrants arrived VERY recently, the foreshore functioned exactly as it does today, unowned.
I think what you mean is one group’s version of history. I suspect that most people have lived their lives assuming that neither they or anyone else owns the foreshore. That’s history too. Lets keep it that way.”
So Samian, several hectares of FORESHORE in Whangamata (an area periodically inundated at high tide during the lunar cycles) is confiscated not just from one particular racial group, but FROM ALL OF US and given to some very shady business people with FORIEGN INVESTORS behind them.
Is this not exclusive ownership of the Foreshore? and is this is ok?
Their “ownership” has given them the right to exterminate any absolutely protected species in the area, which they have done, and endanger and or dislocate others.
That’s harmful destructive ownership of the foreshore for you!
If the local Maori simply want ownership so as to be guardians of the area and protect the waterways that regulate the water quality flowing over the pipi beds so they can collect some good Kai, I say hell! Give it all back!
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