Tricky foreshore

OPINION: Prime Minister John Key lined up a pair of fat and easy targets at Waitangi, writes The Southland Times in an editorial.

Maori extremists and their culture of entitlement and separatism, and the "problem, what problem?" Pakeha who want to stump no more than cheap tokenism to address the wrongs of the past.

Depicted in those terms, few would disagree with the view that both groups can run along and leave it to the rest of us to sort out our cultural issues.

If anything, however, the problem lies more with the huge majority in this country who would not wish to identify themselves in either group, but still have a great deal of scope for disagreement. Such as people who woud say that for all the deal-making already carried out, the fact that Maori remain on the crappy end of almost every social statistic we have doesn't really justify a climate of job-well-done backslapping when it comes to truly redressing the wrongs of the past. Or people who retort that those statistics should tell us the big spending on past grievances hasn't been the best way to go about fixing social wrongs at all.

So it's not as though there are just three forces at work here – the two extremes and a mainstream that knows exactly what it wants.

A striking example is the foreshore and seabed law, for which Mr Key sees a potentially "elegant" solution once the extremists are sidelined. He's not wrong about the potential, but there is still plenty of scope for division even after foaming zealotry or blind inertia are dealt with. Take away the extreme views and there's still plenty of room for close-quarters infighting.

Labour leader Phil Goff says what he wants is an absolute guarantee of public access, and respect for customary rights. The more central players in the negotiation process – National and the Maori Party – wouldn't rise from their seats to disagree, but complexities arise over much more than whether it is necessary to change the existing law to achieve this.

Mr Key cautions the Maori Party not to push hard for too much. Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples wants to see some form of customary title in Maori hands, though he casts this as part of a co-management ethos rather than anything acquisitory. Maori, as we are so often reminded, see themselves as guardians and caretakers; they aren't big on this colonial business of ownership.

There's absolutely no question that public access is an absolute requirement – the public would accept nothing less. The recent Curia poll suggested about two-thirds of us aren't all that troubled about who owns the foreshore and seabed in any case, as long as public access is guaranteed.

But that doesn't mean that negotiational progress is going to be briskly straightforward. The ownership and management of a public resource remains a difficult matter to resolve when, on the one hand, the main parties aren't like-minded about what is entailed by ownership and entitled by management/guardianship.

There remains a suspicion that among Maoridom there may yet be a small bunch of wide boys looking to make money after all. But then we would say that, wouldn't we? We're the media – the guys who have been presented with charges to get access to Waitangi. Apparently, that's not an entitlement, then.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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