Insults fly over the other retrospective law the Government is trying to pass

Monday, 13 October 2025

“It’s a shameful bill, and its a dark day when we don’t protect property rights,” Labour MP Duncan Webb told Parliament on Thursday, about another retrospective Government bill interfering with ongoing court hearings.

The Government has been under fire in recent months for trying to pass lending law changes that would retrospectively change the law under which the country’s largest bank, ANZ, is being sued in a class action.

The planned law is intended to cushion the bank from having to cough up substantial sums, should it lose the case, and critics say it strips plaintiffs of some of their legal rights, undermining their case, and undermining trust in the rule of law.

But a second Government bill came up for debate in Parliament last week in which retrospective law change is once more being proposed.

It’s the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) (Customary Marine Title) Amendment Bill, which the Government says will provide “clarification” to the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011 brought in by a John Key-led National government to replace the disastrous 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act introduced by Helen Clark’s Labour government.

The 2004 law led to the formation of Te Pāti Māori, which supported the Key government’s 2011 act, which restored iwi and hapū rights to seek customary title to marine areas including harbours, river mouths, beaches and seascape, through the courts.

These customary marine titles (CMTs) do not hinder public access or shipping, or confer ownership of Crown-owned minerals including petroleum, gold, silver and uranium, but they do carry what the Government says are “valuable rights”, including over non-Crown minerals, fishing, and involvement in planning.

Government minister Simon Watts told Parliament on Thursday that courts had been recognising extensive CMTs.

“Parliament clearly did not intend CMT would be available at that scale,” he said.

A law change was needed as the courts had set too low a bar for iwi and hapū to prove they held uninterrupted customary marine rights in areas of the marine environment, he said.

The tests for CMTs needed to be “exacting”, and Watts said the bill “carefully balanced the recognition of Māori groups, customary rights with the legitimate interests of all New Zealanders”.

Its intent was to “achieve fairness for all those that have interest in coastal areas”.

Labour, Green and Te Pāti Māori MPs decried the bill in the strongest terms.

Webb said it was “stripping property rights from Māori”, and to make it even worse, he said: “They are going to strip away that retrospectively, and that is a constitutionally abhorrent thing to do.”

Four CMTs recognised by courts after the Government announced its planned law change in July last year would cease to be recognised, and they would have to be re-litigated under the new law.

Three more claims currently going through the courts would have to restart, and, unlike in the case of the ANZ class action, the Government had budgeted money ($15 million) to pay for the fresh legal costs that would generate.

In Parliament, Webb sought to cast the Government’s plan as being intended to enrich business interests.

“There is no reason for it other than keeping their crony mates happy so that they can get the consent they want to exploit coastal areas whether it be for sand-minding, whether it be for fishing, wind farming, whatever it might be,” he said.

Te Pāti Māori MP Tākuta Ferris began his speech by directing the strongest te reo Māori insults at the Government.

He called it “kai o te kurī” (food of the dog) and “upokokōhua”, a word the Te Aka dictionary calls a “very strong curse, an insulting swear word”.

Parliament’s translator rendered the phrases as “This Government is completely despicable”.

Ferris said the 2011 act had been a “band aid” negotiated by a National government to cover the injury caused by the 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act.

“The biggest contemporary theft, confiscation of land, Te Tiriti o Waitangi rights land, happened in 2004, whanau - not 1904, not 1804, but 2004,” he said.

But, he said: “They don’t like the band aid that was put on in 2011. They are ripping it off.

“Here we are, having to deal with it again.”

One hapū that had proved its right to a customary marine title was Ngāti Kere, Ferris’ own hapū.

“Now he wants to take it away,” Ferris said, referring to Watts.

The Ngāti Raukawa iwi, Ferris’ iwi, had also proved its right to a CMT.

“He wants to take it away,” Ferris said.

Ferris finished by quoting Justin Tipa, chair of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu: “Let’s be clear. This is not about recognising the legitimate rights of all New Zealanders. This is about removing the legitimate rights of Māori.”

Ferris posed a question to the public in his speech: “Who would you rather have looking after the interests of the coast? Māori, or the liberal corporates over there?”

While opposition MPs made long, impassioned speeches, Government MPs, other than Watts, made only brief statements. These centred on an absolute right of Parliament to pass law.

“It is the Parliament of New Zealand that sets the laws of this land,” said National’s Carl Bates.

Jenny Marcroft from NZ First said: “This bill fulfils a coalition agreement between NZ First and National. We believe these changes address NZ First’s focus on the sovereignty of Parliament.”

It balanced the interests of all New Zealanders in what happened in the marine coastal space, she said, and addressed a “rights creep” that threatened critical infrastructure like ports, and the economy.

However, National’s Rima Nakhle recalled the “destructive, damning” 2004 law National had worked with Te Pāti Māori to fix with the 2011 law. However, she insisted: “We are going back to what this house intended.”

Green MP Steve Abel said: “This bill is the most anti-Treaty act of this government, far worse than the Treaty Principles Bill, only because it will pass.”

The bill would confiscate Māori rights, he said.

Abel said the Government claimed to have a property ideology.

“Yet they don’t uphold the first property rights of this country ‒ Māori customary rights,” he said.

“They don’t really believe in property rights. They believe in the right to accumulation of capital of those who would exploit nature,” he said.

“Māori went to court, won in court, and the Government went ‘Hang on, we can’t have that. We had better fix it, and undo it’,” he said.

The bill set the test of Māori to prove customary title so high, it would dissuade any iwi or hapū from going to court to prove they existed, he said.

“It stabs Māori in the back again. It exists in that long and tawdry tradition of Crown betrayal of iwi Māori,” he said.

“This is exactly the laws we apologise for when we do the [Treaty] settlements,” he said.

“The Government gives back a little of what was stolen with one hand, and steals even more with the other. That is what this bill does,” he said.

And, he promised: “This wretched bill will be the first bill on the repeal list of things we will do to uphold the Treaty of Waitangi when there is a change of government in one year’s time.”

Abel referenced the 700-year-old Anaweka voyaging waka, found in 2011 in Mohua Golden Bay.

“For most of the last 1000 years they [Māori] have circumnavigated and sailed and gone through the harbours and the inlets, and up and down the estuaries, and they have built their homes and their rohe, and they have interacted with the takutai moana, the marine coastal environment. It is a simple fact of history.

“And yet we seem to be here questioning whether Māori have customary use of the marine coastal environment. How ludicrous. What a preposterous thing to be contending.”