Minister confirms seabed and foreshore change, limiting Māori rights

Tuesday, 5 August 2025

The Government will change the law to make it harder for Māori to claim customary marine title — despite the Supreme Court upholding the original high threshold for doing so.

The Government has revived its plan to make it harder for Māori to claim customary title to marine and coastal areas.

Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith confirmed Parliament would soon debate the final stages of a law change that will retrospectively remove some Māori rights to the seabed and foreshore.

The change would force around half-a-dozen claimants back to court, with the law change retrospectively undoing settled claims dating back to July 2024. That was when Goldsmith originally announced his intention to change the law.

This decision is expected to stir further protest from Māori and those concerned by the coalition Government’s policies regarding Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith has confirmed the Government will change the Marine and Costal Areas Act.

When the plan was first announced last year, Te Pāti Māori MP Tākuta Ferris told Stuff the Government was playing with fire if it was serious about this proposal.

“There will be some fireworks ahead” he said.

Te Tai Tonga MP Takuta Ferris predicted “fireworks”.

The last time a government legislated to retrospectively remove Māori rights to the seabed and foreshore, in 2004 under Labour, the historic Seabed and Foreshore Hīkoi swarmed Parliament. It also split the Labour Party, leading to creation of Te Pāti Māori.

In response, the National-Te Pāti Māori coalition created the Marine and Coastal Areas Act which settled on a compromise. It said nobody owned the seabed or foreshore, but Māori could claim “customary title” if they could prove they had “exclusively used and occupied it from 1840”.

Customary marine title is not ownership. But it does mean that the holder of that title can have a say about resource management applications which impact that marine area.

The Government plans to amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act, making it harder for Māori to claim customary title to the foreshore and seabed. Critics anticipate increased protests and controversy.

A customary title also does not prohibit fishing or other recreational activity in the area.

Goldsmith told Stuff, on Tuesday, he would wait to see if this move would spark similar protest.

“Time will tell. We would have expected to have passed this legislation in December. There was concern, but look, there are a wide variety of views,” he said.

He first announced his intention to change the law in July. At the time, he said the law would change by the end of last year.

But that change was put on ice after the Supreme Court issued a judgement which appeared to align more closely with the Cabinet’s view about how the Marine and Coastal Areas Act should be applied.

“It’s trying to achieve a balance where there is an opportunity to claim customary marine title, but balanced with a basic expectation of all New Zealanders to have a say in what goes on with their coastline,” he said.

Goldsmith said he still believed that courts had made it too easy for Māori to make claims to customary marine title.

As a result, he said the Government would change the law by October to make those claims harder.

Essentially, this law would be changed because the Government disliked a Court of Appeal decision from 2023 that related to three Bay of Plenty iwi. Legal commentators argued that judgement, known as the Whakatōhea decision, made it somewhat easier for iwi to claim undisturbed connection to marine areas.