Key urges foreshore reality check

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Prime Minister John Key has urged Maori leaders to inject "a dose of realism" to negotiations over the foreshore and seabed.

Mr Key yesterday met the powerful Iwi Leadership Group at Waitangi, where a replacement for the controversial Foreshore and Seabed Act was high on the agenda.

The Government has agreed to repeal the controversial law, which in 2004 stopped Maori from seeking customary title to the foreshore and seabed through the courts.

However, recent developments suggest negotiations for a replacement to the law have slowed.

"We can make progress but there needs to be a dose of realism," Mr Key said yesterday.

"It's a negotiation and there will have to be give and take on both sides.

"We've made our bottom lines pretty clear, which is access rights to all New Zealanders."

An apparently confidential document emerged online this week, suggesting some iwi were unhappy with Government proposals for a replacement law.

Tainui chairman Tukoroirangi Morgan, who sits on the Iwi Leadership Group, earlier said a replacement law would be "a litmus test for the levels of tolerance across this country".

"Any subsequent change to the current legislation would have to walk the gauntlet in terms of meeting expectations for Maori across the country."

Speaking ahead of the Waitangi celebrations this weekend Ngapuhi chairman Sonny Tau said the foreshore and seabed legislation was "the biggest theft of Maori land that there ever was in modern times".

Mr Key yesterday said a solution was "potentially reasonably close". "But we're at that point of all negotiations where we see whether we can make progress."

He is expected to make only an oblique reference to negotiations in his speech at Waitangi this morning. It is understood he will refer to a "respect for the rule of law and for property rights" – without mentioning the act specifically.

Mr Key is promising to deliver a Waitangi address every year to mark the country's national day. The first, today, is expected to stress that the Government's foot is "firmly on the settlement pedal" as it moves to settle Treaty claims by 2014.

"It's my intention to make that address an annual address because I think leaders around the world actually do reflect on their national day," Mr Key said yesterday.

"I'll be talking to issues relating to the Treaty settlement process and my reflection of where New Zealand is at when it comes to race relations."

The speech is expected to call for all New Zealanders to move beyond the settlement phase, while conceding that the 2014 deadline will be hard to meet. This Government has so far signed four final deeds of settlement and has agreements in principle with another 12.

Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples said finding a foreshore and seabed solution was "really difficult". "We've had a lot of meetings with iwi leaders, with committees, with groups, with government and with our advisers trying to work through it.

"It's very difficult to really reinstate kaitiakitanga [guardianship] in such a way that our people have what we had before – customary rights."

- © Fairfax NZ News