Foreshore choice overrides iwi

CRAIG SIMCOX/The Dominion Post

SEABED SOLUTION: John Key said yesterday that the Government was pressing ahead with a public domain as its preferred option for resolving the dispute with Maori over ownership of the foreshore and seabed.

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The Government is set to override a powerful iwi leaders group over its opposition to placing the foreshore and seabed in the public domain.

Prime Minister John Key said yesterday that the Government was pressing ahead with a public domain as its preferred option for resolving the dispute with Maori over ownership of the foreshore and seabed.

The Iwi Leadership Group, a forum of some of the most powerful Maori leaders, met on Friday and unanimously rejected the public domain proposal.

Mr Key said though the group was influential, its members did not speak for all Maori. He also rejected their suggestion that if Maori were to forgo their rights to the foreshore and seabed, private land owners should be expected to do the same.

"That is unacceptable to the Government ... If you look at the makeup of those 12,500 [freehold] titles, about 3000 are Maori-held anyway. [But] they are freehold, fee simple titles. That is not what we are debating in terms of the foreshore and seabed. That's customary title, quite a different issue."

The Government is thrashing out a final solution to the foreshore and seabed dispute.

It issued a discussion document earlier this year, favouring a plan to declare the foreshore and seabed public domain, meaning that no-one can own it. Under that proposal, Maori would be able to seek customary, though not freehold, title through the courts.

The 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act passed by Labour to staunch opposition from Maori would be repealed. That would be a symbolic victory for the Maori Party, which campaigned for repeal.

But Mr Key said the Iwi Leadership Group was not the only one battling the Government's preferred option for settling the dispute – there were also sticking points with the Maori Party.

He reiterated the Government's position, however, that it would rather shelve the repeal than make further concessions, even though it would mean retaining the 2004 act.

That was despite his view that the law represented a "weeping sore" in race relations.

There would not be much point repealing the act if the Maori Party did not agree with its replacement. "If the Maori Party doesn't support it, I don't see how Maoridom will see it as settled."

Maori Party MP Hone Harawira has said the Maori Party supports his proposal for vesting the foreshore and seabed in iwi with guaranteed rights of public access for everyone.