Claim a ‘challenge to settled rights to land’

Press, 23 September 1988, Page 4

Claim a ‘challenge to settled rights to land’

By

PAT TAYLOR

in Greymouth

The relief sought by the claimants before the Waitangi Tribunal challenging the leasing policy of Maori land adopted by the Crown was “to be blunt, a challenge to settled rights to land in the form of leasehold titles,” the tribunal was told at its hearing in Greymouth yesterday.

Dr W. G. G. A. Young, appearing for the West Coast Maori Leaseholders Association, said that the titles had been bought and sold. “They are the subject of mortgage securities. They have all the protection that the Land Transfer Act can confer. "In this case the claimants have been speaking with two voices. On the one hand there is the recurrent assertion that settled titles are not, at least yet, under challenge. But the settled leasehold titles which my clients have are very much under attack in these proceedings.” Dr Young, who made a 62 page opening submission on behalf of the. leaseholders, said that the claimants appeared to have “drawn a distinction in their minds between

freehold titles, which are apparently accepted as being, for the moment, free from challenge, and the leasehold titles which my clients enjoy. “This is a distinction without a difference. “From the evidence given by Mr (Tipene) O’Regan last year, a reason for the challenge to the leasehold titles is the concern on the part of the claimants that there is a limit to the willingness of the Government to fund compensation payments.” The inference to be drawn from that was that “the claimants here are seeking their compensation as a result, in part, from the lessees of the Mawhera Incorporation. “The approach is regarded unenthusiastically by the lessees. “In saying one thing

(‘we are not challenging settled titles’) but in doing something else (making an outright attack on settled titles) the claimants damage their credibility,” said Dr Young.. “The work of this tribunal, in one real sense at least, is political. In cases of this sort your jurisdiction is confined to the making of recommendations. “There is public concern, as real as it is sometimes misinformed, as to the nature and scope of the claims which are being submitted to you. Those concerns are not going to be diminished if claimants boldly attack settled titles. “If a Land Transfer Act leasehold title is not safe in Greymouth, why should any title be safe in Wellington or Auckland? There are enough miscon-

ceptions and there is far too much ignorance about the work of this tribunal. If the tribunal is to achieve the task which has been set it, and to arrive at a final lasting settlement of claims going back now 150 years, a sense of restraint is necessary on all sides.” Later in his submission, Dr Young said that if the claimants had established that there had been a relevant breach of Treaty of Waitangi principles, “and that is a big if,” then the issue arose as to what should be the proper remedy. “The present lessees are not directly parties to the Treaty. They have not acted in breach of Treaty principles and, as a matter of general principle, it is quite wrong and irrational for the claimants to focus on the lessees as

those who are effectively required to fund their compensation.” he said. The assertion that the lessees had had “a good run and now must effectively pay for it,” was simplistic. “The proposal by the claimants then is that this group of 900 or so lessees, whose only common characteristic is that they happen to be tenants of the Mawhera Incorporation, should, by that fact alone be selected to fund the compensation and to make the recompense that the claimants are seeking. On that basis, the proposal made by the claimants is manifestly unjust.” Dr Young said that it was also manifestly impolitic. The leaseholds which the tenants of the Mawhera Incorporation held were titles.