Raising the stakes

A couple of weeks ago I argued that there was nothing for pakeha to be be afraid of in the government's foreshore and seabed proposals. I was planning to do a followup on the flip side of this - that there are good reasons for Maori to be afraid - chiefly, that the proposals abrogate due process and makes any rights recognised subject to the arbitrary whim of Parliament in a way that they weren't before. But I never got round to it, and now the Waitangi Tribunal has beaten me to it, panning the government for inconsistency, eliminating due process, and failing to properly consult. The Tribunal won't release its report until Monday (which will ensure that I have blog-fodder for next week), but it apparently reccommends that the government step back and allow matters to progress through the courts.

Whether that is possible at this stage remains to be seen, but it certainly raises the stakes. The Waitangi Tribunal is not a court, and its judgements are not binding - but that does not mean that they can simply be ignored (as National would like to pretend). Ignoring the judgement will foster the impression among Maori that the Treaty is a one-way street - cited by the government as legitimising sovereignty, but ignored whenever adhering to it would be inconvenient or politically costly. And they'd be right. Meanwhile, National will no doubt be doing their best to whip up fear and hysteria over Maori owning the entire coastline and preventing us from giving ourselves skin cancer - which isn't going to help matters.

I've said it before: any real solution to the foreshore has to be acceptable to the vast majority of New Zealanders, including the vast majority of Maori - otherwise it will simply fester and be relitigated whenever there is a change of government. This is too important to fuck up. It's to National's discredit that they continue to play politics with the issue, rather than trying to work together to find a solution acceptable to all.

As for what that solution will be: I'm not sure. The government's proposals aren't bad, and are perfectly acceptable if Maori sign up to them. But if the government cannot get a consensus on that, it is probably best to let it proceed through the courts. That would be consistent, and it would be treating Maori as equal under the law (something Don Brash is keen on - except, it seems, when it might be to their advantage). The Court of Appeal decision suggested the barriers to fee simple title would be high and that exclusive title would be granted only rarely. If that turns out to be true, then following due process is unlikely to significantly interfere with the customary right of all New Zealanders to go to the beach - or at least, not any more than existing millionaire owners already do.