June 15, 2021
Regional approach to fast track takutai moana claims
The Minister of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations hopes a new process for the Marine and Coastal Areas Act will allow the claims to be cleared in 10 to 20 years.
Andrew Little says since the April 2017 deadline for lodging claims, both the High Court and the crown agency responsible or direct negotiations have been struggling to timetable to more than 370 claims – and the process could have taken 100 years to complete.
Te Arawhiti has spent the past year reviewing the process and talking to iwi, hapū and whānau claimants about the resources needed for them to collect their evidence of customary rights and to come up with a faster process.
"What we've done is worked out roughly 20 parts of the coastline for Aotearoa and we will work with all the claimants in each of the 20 sections of coastline. We will take the next year or so to work out how we are going to work together, what resourcing is needed and how we will get on to process the various claims and that will shorten the time quite considerably to deal with the claims as they have been lodged," he says.
Andrew Little says the process should be able to deal with competing claims and the concerns of non-Māori interests.
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