Hon Rodney Hide Speech to ACT Wellington Regional Conference, Museum Hotel, Cable St,
Sunday, October 10 2010

A John Key-led National Government is ten times better than a Helen Clark-led one.

John Key is Prime Minister because of Epsom. That’s MMP.

Without Epsom, there’s no ACT. Without ACT, Helen Clark would still be Prime Minister. Why? Because without ACT, the Maori Party would have backed Labour.

If it were not for the good people of Epsom, the country would right now have Helen Clark as Prime Minister. Labour would be in power, propped up by the Green and Maori Parties.

We have a lot to thank the people of Epsom for.

At best, without Epsom, we would have a John Key-led government held hostage for every vote by the Maori Party and Hone Harawira. It wouldn’t be pretty.

Because of Epsom, ACT could assure the country on election night 2008 that John Key would be Prime Minister.

Because of ACT, we had a new Government. The Maori Party’s only choice was whether to be in Government, or out. ACT denied them the ability to play Labour off against National.

That’s the strategic role that ACT plays under MMP. It’s a vital role. But it’s not our only one.
ACT’s policy role is to nudge National to do the right thing. The high profile examples are:

• To set the bold goal of catching Australia by 2025; of having the Don Brash led Taskforce every year mark our progress, or our lack of it; and to offer a blueprint forward.

• Getting on top of government waste and spending (much more needs doing);

• Knocking out red tape, especially with the development of the Regulatory Responsibility Bill;

• The Productivity Commission;

• Three Strikes finally to respond to kiwis having had a gutful of repeat violent offenders;

• Aspire Scholarships to provide at least some students and their families with the choice of school. A choice that ACT believes every family should have;

• and so on.

ACT also gets to nudge National in the right to direction day-to-day outside our Confidence and Supply Agreement. Most notable achievements are the Taskforce looking to open up ACC to choice and competition, and extending the 90 day trial for new staff to all businesses.

We not only have Centre Right Government because of ACT – we have better Centre Right Government because of ACT.

I am very proud of ACT’s achievements. We made a big difference election night. We continue to make a difference.

But much more needs to be done. We can’t catch Australia with the policies of Helen Clark and Michael Cullen. We need to lift our performance on economic policy. It’s not clear that the Nats are serious about cutting red tape. The Regulatory Responsibility Bill will be the test. The ETS is a shocker. It puts big costs onto business, farmers, and families all for no environmental gain. It’s nuts. It should be dumped.

But what I want to talk about today is the direction the country is taking in race relations and treaty settlements.

We are off track. We are fostering further grievance and we are dividing our country.

Our failure is one of principle. We are allowing politics to overturn the timeless principles that provide the basis of all free, prosperous and peaceful societies.

It’s only by sticking to these principles that we can provide a clear way forward and negotiate tricky and fraught issues with integrity and provide outcomes that will endure.

You may recall my job hung in the balance for some weeks over the possibility of the Government deciding to reserve seats for Maori tribes on the new Auckland Council.

Ahead of Cabinet’s decision, Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples asked the Prime Minister and me to meet Auckland iwi leaders.

We heard very moving speeches. At the end of the speeches, the Prime Minister asked Pita if he wanted to reply. He said there was no need because he agreed with everything the iwi leaders had said, and they well knew his position.

The Prime Minister asked me if I would like to say a few words. I gulped, and then spoke.
I would like to think that I did the ACT Party and the country proud that day. I explained that I could not imagine what it must be like to have a one-thousand year connection to a place. I always feel somewhat rootless and displaced. I said I especially can’t imagine regarding natural features, such as volcanic cones and riverways in spiritual terms, and as living, breathing things, a part of me, and my ancestors.

My cultural heritage is entirely Judeo-Christian. The world to me is very beautiful but physical features are inanimate and are definitely no part of me. They are resources to be perhaps conserved for aesthetic and ecological purpose, or perhaps to be used in other valuable ways. But however they are used, the point to me is that they are there for us to use, one way or another.

It must be very hurtful and disgusting to see physical things with which you have such a deep and long spiritual connection dug up, diverted, pushed around, without care or regard for spiritual and historical value.
In a civilised society we must always respect the spiritual and religious beliefs of others. But it’s hard. We often fail to appreciate and to understand. And we often, all of us, fall short.

And so I can’t imagine a thousand-year connection and history to this place.

But there is another thousand-year heritage and tradition; one that we share and that we value. It hasn’t come easy. It’s been hard fought for. Our forebears have stood up for it and paid dear in doing so with their own blood, none more so than Maori.

That tradition is that Jack is as good as his Master. That each of us is special and equal as a citizen. That no one can lord over us as a chief or a baron and boss us about.

That Jack is as good as his Master demands that all positions of political power be open to each and every one of us. To both Jack and his Master. And to Jill.

And more than that, that each of us has a vote to determine who will hold these positions of great power, with each vote of equal and equivalent value. Jack’s vote carries the exact same weight as his boss. And Jill’s vote carries the exact same weight as Jacks.

It’s an amazing and powerful tradition. It’s what gives us our freedom and our democracy. It’s been hard fought for, and none fought harder than our Maori Battalion defending it.

And yet here today you are asking me to give it away. To overturn it. To give up on what our forebears died defending.

I can’t do it. And I don’t think you want to either.

Because that is what you are asking for.

A position on a council is one of great power and influence. Our hard-fought for tradition, over a thousand years,
is that any one of us can stand for such position, and we each get to vote for who will have this power, and for each of us, our votes are of equal value.

Jack is not as good as his Master if we allow iwi to simply appoint councillors to reserved positions. The rest of us, Maori included, can’t choose them. And more especially, can’t dump them should their decisions be disagreeable to us.

I have enormous empathy for the fact that in a democracy the majority will all too-often ride rough-shod over the views of minorities. But is that truly sufficient for us to throw out our democracy? And is it truly what we want, to hand great power over the many to the narrow few?

That’s the issue we have to grapple with here today and in Cabinet.

The Prime Minister concluded by explaining that the Cabinet had a tough decision to make. Afterwards, we chatted and several of the leaders were kind enough to say they had appreciated what I had to say, and that they hadn’t considered the implications for democracy of reserved iwi or Maori seats.

It seemed to me after that meeting that all the fury went out of the protest for Maori and iwi reserved seats. It was still a bone of contention, but the heat went out of the debate.

And, eventually, Cabinet decided not to reserve seats, and I got to keep my job and see the Auckland reform through to completion.

We succeeded because we stuck to clear principle. We didn’t strike a convenient political deal. And clear principle allowed us to argue the case with honour, integrity and respect.

That’s not what’s been happening.

But it seems to me that if we are to successfully negotiate the torrid and tricky waters of race relations and Treaty grievances, we must do so with clear and transparent principle. And not by what may be politically expedient for the moment.

So we come to the Foreshore and Seabed where politics and political expedience have ruled supreme. The result is increased racial tension, a more divided society, winners and losers, governments diverted from their purpose, the formation and rise of the Maori Party and a festering of grievance and disputes that will, unless we return to principle, endure forever, and cost us - I’m afraid - all very dear indeed.

Throughout it all only one political Party has held the same position from the beginning. Only one Party has had a clear view of what should be done. Only one Party has had a defensible position and policy. And only one Party has stuck to principle.

And that Party is our Party - the ACT Party. We can all be very proud of ACT’s consistent and principle position while others have flip-flopped around, added to the angst, and done nothing to resolve the issue.

ACT believes that every New Zealander is entitled to their day in court. That includes iwi. That’s what it means to live in a free and democratic country.

Labour panicked and overreacted in 2003 when the Court of Appeal said - in the Ngati Apa case - that groups of Maori might - just might - be able to prove they were entitled to recognition of their customary title over particular pieces of coastline.

The Labour Government should simply have allowed Maori their day in court.

The Court of Appeal said in 2003 that claims for customary title were unlikely to be successful in many cases because the test to prove customary title in common law is so strict.

And if a claim were successful, it would probably only apply to quite limited and discrete parts of the foreshore and seabed. That’s because iwi would have to prove continuous customary use and the exclusion of others since 1840.

It’s important through this to remember the 2003 case was never about the ownership of the entire foreshore and seabed. The constant claim that the 2004 Act ‘stole’ the foreshore and seabed from Maori is simply nonsense. It was solely about whether a claim could be heard.

What the Labour Government did in 2004 was a foolish overreaction to one court case.

But what the National Party is now proposing is very much worse.

Our position in discussions with the National Party since the election has been consistent from the outset. Parliament should repeal the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004, return iwi to their legal position pre-2004, allow claims to the High Court, and legislate to guarantee free public access.

Chris Finlayson’s response has always been the same: that the courts would take too long and may not award iwi anything.

But then so be it. That is what iwi wanted. That is what Labour denied them.

So Chris Finlayson’s proposed Bill repeals the rightly hated Foreshore and Seabed Act, but then goes on to dramatically lower the test for iwi to prove ownership of the Foreshore and Seabed and greatly expands the extent to which iwi can own it. It is truly shocking. There is no principle underpinning it. It has no logic, no reason. It’s simply a deal hacked out by National with the Maori Party.

It sets us up for an endless political tussle over the extent of iwi ownership of the foreshore and seabed - a tussle that will be totally politicised, create winners and losers, and take generations to settle. If indeed final settlement is ever possible.

The problem is the Bill sets out to define rights of iwi to the foreshore and seabed and the test for how those rights are proved. So it’s now politicians and Parliament determining the extent of iwi ownership of the foreshore and seabed, not common law.

Worse, iwi don’t have to go to court to prove their case. They can just pop in and see the Attorney General and he can decide it for them. It can be decided behind closed doors, in secret, between a politician and iwi. Talk about crazy. The political arm wrestle will go on for years.

Finlayson’s Bill sets out that it’s to be politicians deciding who owns what beach, not judges. That ownership is to be decided by politics, not the law and facts of the case.

Chris Finlayson thinks iwi are entitled to about ten percent or 2,000 kilometres of foreshore and seabed. Quite how he knows that, I don’t know. And quite how he plans to hold the successful claims to that amount beats me.
But even if he is right, and ‘only’ 2000 kilometres of coastline falls into iwi control, do we want 2000 more kilometres of effectively privately owned beaches in this country? I say we don’t. And I believe most New Zealanders don’t either.

The Marine and Coastal Area Bill now before Parliament will lead to a proliferation of iwi owned beaches. That is its intent. That is its purpose. That’s not what New Zealanders want.

And Chris Finlayson and the National Party have no mandate to deliver it.

National back this extraordinary Bill. So too do the Greens. So too does the Maori Party, except Hone. And so too does Labour.

Only one party opposes it. That Party is the ACT Party. I joined the Hikoi in Wellington to protest Maori having their fundamental rights trampled by Helen Clark. But I now protest against the very Government in which I serve. I do so to save our beaches, our birthright that we all enjoy, and which in part defines us, and our way of life; where Jack and his Master can have a day at the beach with their kids.

Ladies and gentlemen, this issue is the most important political issue for fifty years. As John Boscawen, the great campaigner against the nutty ETS has said, “the ETS is about money - we can always find ways of redressing financial wrongs. But the foreshore and seabed legislation fundamentally and irreversibly alters our birthright as New Zealanders”.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me close by summarising our position on this most vital of issues:

1. We believe passionately in one law for all.

2. We believe that iwi claimants should, like any other New Zealander, be entitled to make a claim to the
Courts for a property right they believe they are entitled to.

3. We believe the High Court and not the Attorney General should decide who has customary title over parts of our precious coastline;

4. We believe private beaches, where the wealthy and the privileged can exclude the rest of us, are completely inconsistent with the ‘Jack is as good as his master’ ethos that typifies what it is to be a New Zealander.

5. We will continue to fight to ensure that, at the very least, all New Zealanders – provided they behave properly and respectfully – can have their day at the beach without being charged for it.

It’s time we stuck up for some principle in this country.

So is ACT standing in Mana? Hell yes. Someone’s got to stand up for some principle and for what kiwis believe in. So ACT will be standing in Mana.

And we can do no better than having a true Mana resident, a very smart and talented guy, and number nine on ACT’s list Colin du Plessis.

We’ve got an opportunity here ladies and gentlemen to send a message to our politicians – that’s by getting the good people of Mana out to vote for Colin du Plessis. And sticking up for our kiwi way of life and saving our beaches is one hell-of-a campaign issue.

Thank you.

ENDS