MEDIA RELEASE
17 March 2016
MAORI PARTY PANUI: Raupatu in 2016?
Māori have a long history of fighting for our whenua. In less than a century, we lost 95 percent of our land. Much of it by force or stealth. The Crown has facilitated and instigated this dispossession.
The Māori Land Court, originally named the Native Land Court, earned the familiar title “te kooti tango whenua” – “the land-taking court” for its role in further alienating Māori from our remaining lands.
Following the Māori Land March in 1975 where Dame Whina Cooper coined the call of our struggle “Not one more acre”, the enactment of Te Ture Whenua Māori Act 1993 represented a victory in Māori land law. With its focus on promoting the retention, use, development and control of Māori land as a taonga tuku iho it comes as no surprise that in 2016, with less than five percent of the land remaining in Māori title that many Māori view any proposed changes to the 1993 Act with a great deal of suspicion. As Te Ururoa often acknowledges these are not so much matters of the head, but issues of the heart: “Ko te whenua e hangai ana ki te ngākau Māori”.
The current reform of Māori land law has been 17 years in the making. Māori landowners have repeatedly asked for more control over the governance of their land so it is easier for them to use as they see fit, while retaining its intergenerational ownership.
The Ture Whenua Māori Bill, which is due to go into Parliament this year, strengthens the protections around land retention. It gives owners the option to raise the bar on the selling of Māori land so it would be virtually impossible to sell it. Under the current Act, a vote by 75 percent of all shareholders is required to transfer Māori title into general thus making it available for sale. In the Bill, owners have the ability to raise that threshold to 100 percent. The Bill has also changed the rules around customary land so it can no longer be sold.
How then can opponents call this a modern-day land grab?
The Labour Party is encouraging people to sign a petition calling for the end to the reforms with an emotive call to “Help protect Māori land for our mokopuna”. The Mana Party has ramped up the personal attacks on Te Ururoa in social media. Apparently general media outlets aren’t too discerning either, with opinion pieces published that include incorrect information on key points.
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