Unredacted legal advice exposed by Newsroom this week to Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith that his plan to roll back Māori customary marine title would “trigger a strong response from the courts” and “raised significant wider strategic legal risks for the Crown” hints at the enormity of the Second Foreshore and Seabed Confiscation.
The First Foreshore and Seabed Confiscation launched by Labour caused so much political damage in split Māoridom from Labour and formed the Māori Party.
The solution to the many legal issues the First Foreshore and Seabed Confiscation generated has now been reshaped by this new Government’s anti-Treaty and anti-Māori agenda which will see even more perverse thresholds created to ensure Māori can’t claim customary marine title.
This after Shane Jones and Paul Goldsmith were caught colluding with the Seafood Industry to ensure Māori customary marine title was miniscule.
What the latest documents related by Newsroom show are real concerns from many within the Crown that this attempt to smoother customary rights would lead to decades of legal warfare where the Crown will be repeatedly challenged on every front.
The lawyers are warning the Minister that an attempt at legal confiscation may be interpreted by the courts as a need to create “affirmative duties to protect Māori culture via the Bill of Rights Act”.
This Government is goading the courts into protecting Māori from itself!
The relentless attack against the Treaty and Māori aspiration, be it cultural, social or economic, is a shattering of much of the pragmatic ground Māori and Pakeha have managed to build so far in our Country’s history.
In 1851, future NZ Parliament Politician, James Richmond wrote that he longed for the day in NZ, “when the preposterous Treaty of Waitangi will be overruled” and the “ridiculous claims of the natives to thousands of acres of untrodden bush and fern will no longer be able to damp[en] the ardour and cramp the energies of the industrious white man”.
ACT, National and NZF want to cement into place 19th Century white settler privilege and pretend that is the epitome of Democracy.
