Bastion Point ‘still not defused’

Press, 9 May 1978, Page 1

Bastion Point ‘still not defused’

PA Auckland The Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) should be aware of just how close the Bastion Point demonstrators came to an “ugly confrontation.” the chairman of the Auckland District Maori Council (Dr R. J. Walker) sa'd last evening. Dr Walker said he would have expected Mr Muldoon to have been a little more conciliatory. He was referring to a statement made by the Prime Minister yesterday in which he said: “There have been statements that the Government has backed off and that there is going to be a renegotiation of the agreement and so on. But it is quite clear the agreement the Government has made, with the Ngati-Whatua stands. “It is a generous agreement that has been recognised as a generous agreement by the elders, and the suggestion that it can be renegotiated is just not possible?’ the Prime Minister said.

However he said there might be some renegotiations of the details of the agreement. Dr Walker said last evning that on the day Messrs Joe Hawke ana Roger Rameka were to be arrested things “could have been quite ugly,” in spite of Mr Hawke’s previous appeal that protesters keep the peace. There had been some inflammatory statements by out-of-town people on Bastion Point. “Mr Muldoon really does not know how close we came to a confrontation,” Dr Walker said. “He should be looking at the situation a bit more carefully considering the difficulties we have had defusing it.” The issue was not entirely defused even yet. Dr Walker said. The Crown, meanwhile, is “considering the situation” of the protesters who remain on the point. The Commissioner of Crown Lands (Mr G. Mc-

Millan) said last evening there would be discussions with the relevant parties (including Mr Hawke) over the next day or two. The Crown would make its decision in the light of those discussions. Asked to what extent the agreement could be altered, Mr McMillan said he could not answer that until the Ngati-Whatua had put proposals to him. The Crown had already agreed to what the elders had asked. Asked if he had been in touch with Mr Muldoon or the Minister of Lands (Mr V. S. Young) during his negotiations with Mr Hawke at the week-end, he said he had, but he would not say with which one he had spoken. The president of the Auckland Trades Council (Mr Bill Andersen) said last evening that the “green ban” remained in force. “There is no way we will allow private interests to exploit that land.” He said the council called on all parties con-

cerned with a “just settlement” to intercede and convert the protest leaders’ mission into a positive series of events.

The decision by the Bastion Point protest leaders voluntarily to leave the land they have been occupying for the last 16 months was "a triumph for restraint, common sense and equity,” Mr Young said yesterday. The two leaders, Messrs Hawke and Rameka, had earlier walked off Bastion Point accompanied , by two senior Maori elders.

Mr Young said the restraint on the part of the Government, the common sense of the Ngati-Whatua elders, and the equity in the manner in which the final land-use proposals were made and accepted had cleared. the way for the Bastion Point landuse scheme to be implemented.

“Negotiations with the Maori elders over the details of the scheme will continue, and it is up to the elders to determine

the extent of Mr Hawke’s participation in these discussions,” he said. The Minister said legislation setting up the trust board of the Ngati-Whatua would be prepared for introduction in Parliament later this year.

He said the 1978 Bastion Point scheme would ensure that the largest area of Bastion Point — about 29 acres, including the houses in which members of the tribe who are still together now live — would be vested in a trust board of the Ngati-Whatua. “Twenty-two acres will be public reserve accessible to all. The area of compatible town-house development by the Housing Corporation is limited to approximately five acres and a site has been set aside for the Youthline Trust,” Mr Young said. “In accepting that the Ngati-Whatua of Tamaki have a moral right to hold land on the Auckland Isthmus, the present Government is acknowledging something that successive

governments over the last 70 years have avoided.” Mr Young said the scheme had been accepted in principle by the NgatiWhatua elders at a meeting in Auckland in February.

Mr Muldoon, the Minister of Maori Affairs (Mr MacIntyre) and himself had been present at the meeting.

The scheme had also been accepted by the Govment, the Auckland City Council, the Auckland Regional Authority, “and by virtually all the people who have an insight into the long history of the ownership of the land — in fact, by everyone except the protesters on the point. In the Supreme Court last month Mr Justice Speight ordered the defendants to desist from illegally occupying the land at Bastion Point, he said.

“In his judgment the Judge held that Bastion Point was Crown land, occupied without right, title, or licence by the protesters.”