United Future
Hon Peter Dunne

Government Proposals for Seabed and Foreshore - Urgent debate

It is important for two reasons. The first relates to the particular resolution of the issue before us, and is secondary to the second of the reasons—secondary both in order and in importance—which is that the way we address and resolve this issue will say much about the way we will move ahead as a nation. This country stands very much at a crossroads. It is a crossroads forged by this country’s having to look at its history, and now, having to contemplate its future. It seems to me that over the last couple of decades we have become quite adept at looking at our history and at drawing every conceivable lesson imaginable from it. We are far less adept at considering the implications of that history for our future. While the process of fronting up to events in our past that we may not be proud of, or that have been divisive or confiscatory, has been important, it is equally important that now we do not become trapped in a frame of mind to the extent that this country becomes simply about “us” and “them”—whoever “us” and “them” might be. There is no future for New Zealand in a nation that is divided. There is no future in this country for a people who feel that there are different standards applying to different groups—geographic, ethnic, age-related, or whatever. That is the true significance of this issue. If we accept the proposition now being advanced by the Government by way of resolution—a good starting point, I think—that the foreshore and seabed are, depending on the terminology used, “the public domain”, or the property, in that loose sense, of us all, and that this new concept of “we, the people” is becoming important, then we need to start to think through the implications of that. I reject the comments made by the previous speaker that any attempt to debate these issues openly and fearlessly is somehow engaging in—and I am not sure whether this was the term she used; it was certainly the inference I drew from her speech—racial hysteria, or racial division. If we have become so frightened in our country of talking openly about issues that affect all of us and the futures of all of us, then we are in a very sad state. One of the things that have been quite useful as this debate has proceeded over the last few weeks—and I have been one who has experienced discussions with a large number of New Zealanders in every walk of life about it—has been the tone of the debate. The tone has not been one of bitterness or of anger; the tone has been one of sadness. How has this country got itself into this position, in which we are on the verge of starting to tear ourselves apart? Part of the reason we are on that verge is that we have been too unwilling for a long period of time to confront these issues, for fear of the sort of label imposed upon us by the previous speaker. We have to break out of that. Whatever our particular viewpoint, we have to break out of the straightjacket that there are certain taboo subjects we cannot dare venture into for fear of treading upon a racial landmine. That is not the spirit of New Zealand; that is not the way forward; that is not the way we will resolve this issue. Let me come back to this concept of the public domain. As I said, I think it is a useful starting point. I say that a little tentatively because that is exactly the way I feel, but the notion that it tries to capture, in my view, is that every single one of us in this country has some indefinable part of our birthright recognised on that foreshore and seabed. Every single one of us has an equality of right to the access and the enjoyment of those particular areas, and, if that is so, then it follows that every single one of us, in an indefinable way, has a sense of ownership of that foreshore and seabed. We may choose to define ownership in different ways, but the reality is there: we all have a stake in their ownership. For 163 years that ownership stake has been represented by the entity we know as “the Crown”. In the absence of anything else, it is very difficult to move on from there. I accept the point the Deputy Prime Minister makes about the sensitivity of the meaning of the word. That is absolutely true, but it does not remove the reality. Things do not exist in a vacuum. There are sensitivities and they need to be addressed, to be recognised, and to be accommodated, but they are not accommodated by pretending they are simply not there. That is why I come back to this phrase: “the public domain”. Maybe what we are starting to do in New Zealand—and I think it will be a good thing if we are—is recognise that one or two of our concepts are a little outmoded. The irony of the Crown is, as my colleague Gordon Copeland points out, really that until the late 1980s and the financial reforms underway at that time we did not talk about the Crown, we talked about the public sector—the Public Finance Act and the public balance sheet. Now, this notion of “the Crown” has been imposed upon us to try to reflect our statehood. So the notion of “the public domain”, or “we the people”, or “the people of New Zealand” is equally relevant. My point about where-to-from-here is that, if we are to start down the path that the Government solution proposes, we must recognise that whether we call it “the Crown”, or the “people of New Zealand”, or “the public domain”, or whatever, “we, the people”—all of us—have a stake in the solution, because all of us have a stake in the ownership of the territory we call New Zealand. I say “ownership” in that broad sense, because it does mean different things to different people. If we accept that proposition, then I believe we are part of the way towards a solution. But there is still quite a gulf to get over before we even get to that point, and I want to bring up a couple of other matters that get in the way of getting there. We are talking about providing for the Māori Land Court to give some flesh to the bones of customary title, customary use—although that is probably secondary now that the fishing settlement has been made—and customary ownership. My concern about that is that the absence of a specific definition potentially creates a situation by which that court, ruling in the way that courts do, could rule in a way that completely subverts the process we are attempting to undertake by the first part of the solution. So when we talk about the public domain we could well find definitions applied by the court to title, to use, and to access that cut across that concept of the public domain as something indefinable held by all of us. That is why I say that we need to have far more work done on clarifying those definitions—preferably by this Parliament—before we can proceed further down this path being embarked upon at present. It is the start of a journey. It is an important journey, and over the next few weeks New Zealanders of good will from every political flavour, and from every other flavour in New Zealand, must come together to work for the common good—the common weal, which, again, is a variation of that term, “the public domain”. If we do not, then not only will this issue fester, but, contrary to the previous speaker’s assertion, we will be sending a message far and wide that the great New Zealand dream shared by all of us—of being a nation in which people of different backgrounds, different cultures, and different histories can come together and live in peace, harmony, and common spirit—will have been shattered. That is not the future I want for New Zealand; that is not the future I can see this country going down.