Waitangi Bill may damage lessees

Press, 10 February 1988, Page 2

Waitangi Bill may damage lessees

By OLIVER RIDDELL Federated Farmers considers South Island high-country pastoral lessees would be damaged by the Treaty of Waitangi (State Enterprises) Bill now before Parliament. In its submissions to a Parliamentary select committee it wanted the bill to give owners who were the subject of a resumption claim over their land some standing before the Waitangi Tribunal. Under clause 10 of the bill an owner or lessee had no standing before the tribunal when it was considering a claim for its original owners to resume the land, the federation said.

So a successor in title to a State-owned enterprise could lose title to land as a consequence of a tribunal decision before which he had no standing. This situation would arise at the end of this year when the sunset clause governing the work of the Lands Department, which had inherited the titles to Crown lease lands from .the old Lands and Survey Department, went out of existence. This land would then belong to Landcorp, which was already administering it on behalf of the Lands Department. The federation also recommended that the bill be changed to allow the

Waitangi Tribunal to consider changes in ownership, possession or any other interests in the land which was the subject of a claim. It wanted to exclude from the jurisdiction of resumption claims any land that, at the date of its transfer to a Stateowned enterprise, was subject to a lease under the Land Act, 1948, which permanently alienated land from the Crown by granting the lessee a perpetual right of renewal. Land owners should also get the legal aid entitlement equivalent to what the bill was extending to Maori claimants, the federation said. ,