Reassurance for lessees about claim

Press, 2 December 1987, Page 8

Reassurance for lessees about claim

By

JANE ENGLAND,

Maori Affairs reporter

“We are not landlords sucking blood out of the community. We never have been. We have no wish to destroy the community in which we participate,” said the chairman of the Ngai-Tahu Maori Trust Board, Mr Tipene O’Regan, yesterday.

Mr O’Regan was presenting evidence on the Arahura section of the Ngai-Tahu land claim, a claim which those presenting it have said could change the face of the West Coast.

“Nothing has proved worse for race relations in this area than the annual witchhunt engendered by the leases and which is usually carried out through the local paper between the Mayor of Greymouth, Dr Barry Dallas, and myself,” he said.

The incorporation at present owns “minimum” residential lands and Mr O’Regan hoped it would increasingly look to commercial leases, he said. Mr Dallas later said he shared many “common problems” with Mr O’Regan and he hoped they would find common ground. In presenting his evidence Mr O’Regan tried

to reassure lessees about

the claim. “We will not be throwing any little old ladies into the street It is in our interest to have contented and happy lessees who have entered into a fair rental agreement” he said.

The claimants contend

that the Crown breached the spirit and intent of the Treaty of Waitangi by: • Unilaterally imposing the form of leasehold on the Maori owners now known as Maori Reserved Land Leasehold.

• Unilaterally imposing the Crown trusteeship on the lands and preventing any functional relationship of the owners with their lands from 1878 to 1976. • Refusing to contemplate an amendment to the injustices suffered by Maori lessors’ repeated

representations over that period to the present day. Mr O’Regan said that the proposed amendments to the terms of the leaseholds would produce the “absolute minimum” in stress to the lessees who would be secure in their occupancy, subject to ordinary business conditions. The Ngai-Tahu Maori Trust Board has proposed that:

• The perpetuality of renewal should be converted to term leasehold over a period of two full terms (42 years). • The rent should be freely negotiated between the parties subject to the Arbitration Act.

• The Crown should com-

pensate the Mawhera Incorporation for expenses in remedying those matters which it has incurred and further compensate it for those which await resolution and remedy. • The rental review

period within the lease should be changed to five years in the case of rural and residential land. The borough and citizens of Greymouth had the benefits of confiscated land for over a century without paying any compensation. The land had been “im-

prisoned” in perpetual leasehold under the Westland and Nelson Native Reserves Act, 1887. Mr O’Regan said it meant the owners could never again enjoy the rights of ownership. The rent from leases on 21-year rent reviews had been far outstripped by the general rise in land values, he said. The percentage was fixed at 4 per

cent on urban land and 5

per cent on rural land. The original lessees and their successors had bled nearly a century of capital from land that belonged to someone else through the Crown’s introduction of a system which

could be described as

“legislative theft,” he said.