September 27, 2012
Waikaremoana challenge to water policy
Today’s consultation hui at Lake Waikaremoana is been seen as a good test for the Government’s water policies.
Labour’s Maori affairs spokesperson, Parekura Horomia, says the deputy Prime Minister Bill English is treating consultations on the Waitangi Tribunal’s shares plus suggestion as a box that needs to be tickled before the Government goes ahead with the sale of shares in state owned power companies.
But he says the particular circumstances of Lake Waikaremoana means that will be hard to justify.
“Waikaremoana is one of the few places where Maori actually, if they stretched it, have total control of the bed and everything above it and it is one of the few places where an energy company has dragged the water out of their own mana whenua rights and generated it into a commercial saleable commodity,” Mr Horomia says.
He says the Government is using the consultation road show as a way to wind up non-Maori against the claims.