Post by Kiwi Frontline on Jun 20, 2017 5:49:07 GMT 12
Dear Editor (Sent to Sunlive / Weekend Sun 12/6/17)
The soothing words in the article ‘Hauraki Maori apply for Customary Rights’ (8/6/17) deserve further discussion.
Under common law the foreshore and seabed was owned by the Crown, but a rogue Court of Appeal Court decision raising the possibility of Maori customary rights to the coastline triggering a tsunami of opportunistic Maori claims. As a result, the Labour Government passed the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004, reaffirming Crown ownership to benefit all, but still allow Maori claims through the High Court.
This was not a ‘highly contentious’ law and few tribes bothered to lodge claims.
The article states in one paragraph “safeguards the rights of the general public, who will continue to have legal access to all coastal and marine areas”, this to be contradicted in an earlier paragraph “If granted, a marine title would allow a group to ‘protect’ wahi tapu” (ban the public)?.
Just by registering, tribal groups pick up important rights to be notified of any developments in their claimed area, and can get paid mining royalties (backdated to the lodgement of claim) if their claim is approved.
Some lodged claim applications seek the right to ‘take’ dolphins and whales, penguins and seals, mine the area for minerals and extract sand – free reign to exploit our coasts!
All claims should be vigorously opposed.
GEOFF PARKER Whangarei
Dear Sir, (Sent to Sunlive 7/6/17
Not a word of P.Dey's letter ( Sunlive, 26/5 ) in response to B. Moon's realism re' compensation for Maori land "wrongfully taken" was correct or even sensible. The following excerpt is taken from an old article on the matter.
To Maori of the time, loss of largely unused land was more significant as a loss of Mana than anything else. Only later, and as a result of European colonisation, technology and hard work did land begin to assume its economic potential and value.
While the intrinsic aesthetic, spiritual, and ecological value of land for all peoples is obvious, it only acquired economic value in the modern sense, in New Zealand, through
the advent of colonisation.
The purely economic value of unmodified land to primitive societies rests soley upon what naturally occurring resources a hunter / gatherer could glean from it. Its modern economic value depends upon what it can produce under skilled human stewardship. Thus the economic value of natural raw materials in the earth, be they minerals, oil, gold, timber or whatever, is relative to the knowledge and technology required to locate, recognise, extract, process, and utilise them. Natural resources of any kind do not acquire economic
value until human beings transform them into useful commodities by dint of their intelligence and industry.
Land grievances would not be such an effective weapon of the Maori activists if it was understood that loss of land per sec was not such an economic disadvantage to them as they claim. Obviously, economic advantage cannot accrue from land until it is managed to economic ends. Similarly, economic disadvantage can only result from land lost or sold to the extent that it was, or would have been economically worked.
To this very day a significant proportion of Maori land is under utilised in the economic sense, or is leased to others to who manage to their economic benefit.
In cases where Maori land was eventually worked by them in post colonial times to their own economic advantage, this too only became possible by virtue of social / economic circumstances resulting from European civilisation.
One way or another Europeans had to take possession of large enough areas of productive land so as to be in a position to create the beginnings of a domestic economy and eventually a modern democratic nation.
It is not necessary for Maori, or anyone else to actually possess land to share in the bounty it produces in the hands of skilled, hard working people. As social order gradually began to establish itself, desired commodities could be procured by trade, or money could be earned to purchase goods and services.
The apparently deep anguish of Maori over loss of land is largely theatre, a strategy in the cause of the real aim, which is all about political power and becoming a socio / political elite served by the "Tauiwi".
Strictly speaking land, ( an everlasting thing ) should not be owned by any person, (a transient thing ); but it should always be controlled by those who can make the best use of it for both themselves and society as a whole.
To those with such a proper attitude towards land the question of its ownership would be far less pertinent than its role as a provider of required consumer products and employment...........
COLIN RAWLE. Dunedin
Dear Editor, (Sent to the Weekend Sun 5/6/17)
P Dey is at it again with his nonsense claim that “the value of land wrongfully taken from Maori by past governments is more than $30 billion.” and in W Parish he appears to have made himself one recruit (Sunlive, 26/5/17)
As everybody knows, north of about Kaikoura, the Pre-European tribes had kumara to supplement their meagre diet obtained from hunter-gathering. The speed with which they adopted the potato and the quantities they consumed indicate clearly the vast improvement in diet European foods offered them – who sees fernroot on supermarket shelves these days?
With these dramatic changes, much land became surplus to Maori needs and they almost fell over themselves in their eagerness to exchange it for European material goods, with some land sold two or three times over by different claimants. “Stolen”, Mr Dey? Stop deluding yourself.
Whether that land is worth $30 billion today is utterly beside the point. It was sold for what it was worth at the time. Governor Fitzroy, not our most successful governor, did get it exactly right on this point: "What is it that makes land valuable? It is labour … in addition to the price of the land it is for bringing out labourers, and tools, and seeds, and cattle, in ships; for … roads, and bridges, and surveys, and many other things. The payment for the land only is very small.”
BRUCE MOON Nelson
sites.google.com/site/kiwifrontline/letters-submitted-to-newspapers/unpublished-letters
The soothing words in the article ‘Hauraki Maori apply for Customary Rights’ (8/6/17) deserve further discussion.
Under common law the foreshore and seabed was owned by the Crown, but a rogue Court of Appeal Court decision raising the possibility of Maori customary rights to the coastline triggering a tsunami of opportunistic Maori claims. As a result, the Labour Government passed the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004, reaffirming Crown ownership to benefit all, but still allow Maori claims through the High Court.
This was not a ‘highly contentious’ law and few tribes bothered to lodge claims.
The article states in one paragraph “safeguards the rights of the general public, who will continue to have legal access to all coastal and marine areas”, this to be contradicted in an earlier paragraph “If granted, a marine title would allow a group to ‘protect’ wahi tapu” (ban the public)?.
Just by registering, tribal groups pick up important rights to be notified of any developments in their claimed area, and can get paid mining royalties (backdated to the lodgement of claim) if their claim is approved.
Some lodged claim applications seek the right to ‘take’ dolphins and whales, penguins and seals, mine the area for minerals and extract sand – free reign to exploit our coasts!
All claims should be vigorously opposed.
GEOFF PARKER Whangarei
Dear Sir, (Sent to Sunlive 7/6/17
Not a word of P.Dey's letter ( Sunlive, 26/5 ) in response to B. Moon's realism re' compensation for Maori land "wrongfully taken" was correct or even sensible. The following excerpt is taken from an old article on the matter.
To Maori of the time, loss of largely unused land was more significant as a loss of Mana than anything else. Only later, and as a result of European colonisation, technology and hard work did land begin to assume its economic potential and value.
While the intrinsic aesthetic, spiritual, and ecological value of land for all peoples is obvious, it only acquired economic value in the modern sense, in New Zealand, through
the advent of colonisation.
The purely economic value of unmodified land to primitive societies rests soley upon what naturally occurring resources a hunter / gatherer could glean from it. Its modern economic value depends upon what it can produce under skilled human stewardship. Thus the economic value of natural raw materials in the earth, be they minerals, oil, gold, timber or whatever, is relative to the knowledge and technology required to locate, recognise, extract, process, and utilise them. Natural resources of any kind do not acquire economic
value until human beings transform them into useful commodities by dint of their intelligence and industry.
Land grievances would not be such an effective weapon of the Maori activists if it was understood that loss of land per sec was not such an economic disadvantage to them as they claim. Obviously, economic advantage cannot accrue from land until it is managed to economic ends. Similarly, economic disadvantage can only result from land lost or sold to the extent that it was, or would have been economically worked.
To this very day a significant proportion of Maori land is under utilised in the economic sense, or is leased to others to who manage to their economic benefit.
In cases where Maori land was eventually worked by them in post colonial times to their own economic advantage, this too only became possible by virtue of social / economic circumstances resulting from European civilisation.
One way or another Europeans had to take possession of large enough areas of productive land so as to be in a position to create the beginnings of a domestic economy and eventually a modern democratic nation.
It is not necessary for Maori, or anyone else to actually possess land to share in the bounty it produces in the hands of skilled, hard working people. As social order gradually began to establish itself, desired commodities could be procured by trade, or money could be earned to purchase goods and services.
The apparently deep anguish of Maori over loss of land is largely theatre, a strategy in the cause of the real aim, which is all about political power and becoming a socio / political elite served by the "Tauiwi".
Strictly speaking land, ( an everlasting thing ) should not be owned by any person, (a transient thing ); but it should always be controlled by those who can make the best use of it for both themselves and society as a whole.
To those with such a proper attitude towards land the question of its ownership would be far less pertinent than its role as a provider of required consumer products and employment...........
COLIN RAWLE. Dunedin
Dear Editor, (Sent to the Weekend Sun 5/6/17)
P Dey is at it again with his nonsense claim that “the value of land wrongfully taken from Maori by past governments is more than $30 billion.” and in W Parish he appears to have made himself one recruit (Sunlive, 26/5/17)
As everybody knows, north of about Kaikoura, the Pre-European tribes had kumara to supplement their meagre diet obtained from hunter-gathering. The speed with which they adopted the potato and the quantities they consumed indicate clearly the vast improvement in diet European foods offered them – who sees fernroot on supermarket shelves these days?
With these dramatic changes, much land became surplus to Maori needs and they almost fell over themselves in their eagerness to exchange it for European material goods, with some land sold two or three times over by different claimants. “Stolen”, Mr Dey? Stop deluding yourself.
Whether that land is worth $30 billion today is utterly beside the point. It was sold for what it was worth at the time. Governor Fitzroy, not our most successful governor, did get it exactly right on this point: "What is it that makes land valuable? It is labour … in addition to the price of the land it is for bringing out labourers, and tools, and seeds, and cattle, in ships; for … roads, and bridges, and surveys, and many other things. The payment for the land only is very small.”
BRUCE MOON Nelson
sites.google.com/site/kiwifrontline/letters-submitted-to-newspapers/unpublished-letters