Group opposed to iwi sale of Shelly Bay land for development loses caveat
Friday, 13 December 2019
A group wanting to reverse the sale of iwi land at Wellington's Shelly Bay has lost one round of the fight.
A caveat that would have stopped dealing with three out of four parcels of land has lapsed, a decision from the High Court in Wellington says.
Wellington City Council has given planning consent to dramatically change the former Air Force base on Miramar Peninsula in a $500 million proposal encompassing hundreds of apartments, along with other buildings.
The land was bought after Taranaki Whānui ki Te Upoko o Te Ika settled its Treaty of Waitangi claim and established the Port Nicholson Block Settlement Trust.
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The trust paid $15.2 million for four blocks of land at Shelly Bay, and the land was transferred to a trust company, Shelly Bay Ltd.
In the High Court Associate Judge Kenneth Johnston said evidence in the case was that by early 2016 the trustees thought they should get rid of the land and were talking to property developer Ian Cassels' Wellington Company.
In October 2016 trust members passed a resolution directing the trustees to stop any sale negotiations, report to members, and let the members decide what to do with the Shelly Bay land.
The judge said members' resolutions did not bind the trustees except in certain circumstances. The trustees continued their negotiations with The Wellington Company, the judge said.
By mid-2017 the trustees had agreed to sell three of the sites to a Wellington Company subsidiary and later the fourth site was to be sold and a partnership agreed.
A group opposed to the deals, Mau Whenua, lodged a caveat against the title of the fourth site, and soon after caveats on the remaining three sites. The caveats stop any further dealing in the sites.
Mau Whenua has another court claim that aims to ultimately reverse the sales and restore the land to the trust.
Some of Mau Whenua's members are members of Taranaki Whānui.
Mau Whenua recently had to establish the legal grounds to keep the caveat on three of the sites, but the judge said Mau Whenua could not show an arguable case that it had an interest in the land that could be protected with a caveat.
However other grounds alleging a breach of trust and that the buyer received the property even though it knew of the breach, could be dealt with at a full hearing of Mau Whenua's claim, the judge said.