AGENDA
GERRY BROWNLEE
Deputy Leader, National
Interviewed by SIMON DALLOW
PART 1
SIMON
From back in February when he called Labour MP John Tamahere a black fella, Gerry Brownlee's been in the news for his attitudes on race relations. After leader Don Brash's Orewa speech Mr Brownlee was appointed Maori Affairs spokesman for the party, since then he's been notable not so much for his policy pronouncements but for his debating skills in parliament. There he's been accusing the government of having a double standard with one privileged approach to Maori and another less privileged to Pakeha. He's been attacking John Tamahere and he opposes the government's foreshore legislation which he says places power in the hands of undemocratic Maori bodies and may continue uncertainty over the ownership of the foreshore and seabed for generations to come. He's with me now, welcome to the programme Mr Brownlee.
Select Committees reached a deadlock basically on the foreshore argument, you say you'd legislate for Crown ownership and I'm quoting to confirm what most people thought was the status quo before the Court of Appeal decision, why not allow the courts to determine this under due process.
GERRY
First point, I didn’t call John Tamahere a black fella.
SIMON
You asked the Speaker whether you could call him a black fella.
GERRY
In the context of John Tamahere you do what he always does which is talk about privileged whities.
SIMON
He called you a big fella, you asked the Speaker whether you could call him …
GERRY
That was in the context of a debate around that stuff and I think there's a lot of misunderstanding in this country about John Tamahere and his personal style and I just am not overly happy with that initial characterisation. Getting back to the foreshore and seabed.
SIMON
Why not due process?
GERRY
What do you mean by due process, it's been through due process, we have a …
SIMON
It's been pre-empted for the next stage of that due process though.
GERRY
We have an MMP parliament, we have a minority government, and right now the minority government wanting to promote that bill does not have a clear majority to pass it because they can't satisfy all of the other parties, we don’t like it, it's wrong, it has aspects to it that I like to talk about that are deeply offensive to most New Zealanders I believe and they then have to work with United who have concerns, the Greens who are so far out there that they’ll never be able to satisfy them, and New Zealand First who wants a much simpler regime around the declaration of public ownership.
SIMON
Why do we need the legislation at all at this point though I guess is the question, why not let the courts decide the scenario that existed because really this whole issue was prompted by a lot of scaremongering.
GERRY
It was prompted by greed and stupidity in the first place because you had firstly Maori applicants for marine farming being denied the opportunity or not granted applications that were done on a commercial basis, and then the ridiculous situation of them selling their application to other farmers, marine farmers, who were granted licenses on the same application. So a lot of bad decision making perhaps some time back. Notwithstanding that the court has said – all the court has said is that Te Tiriwhenua Maori Land Act does leave open the opportunity for the Maori Land Act to declare title or indicate the title can be granted to seabed and foreshore. My view is why didn’t the government simply amend Te Tiriwhenua Maori Land Act which was only passed in 1993 and make that clear. The interesting thing is that during the passage of that bill nowhere in the Hansard's record is the foreshore and seabed ownership issue raised in a way that would make it available for freehold title to anybody and secondly didn’t appear in any of the submissions that came in on that bill either.
SIMON
You said you'd just simply amend Te Tiriwhenua Act, was that what you would do in power?
GERRY
I think that’s where we would start to look at things.
SIMON
What effect does that actually have?
GERRY
Well be clear about that, we don’t know what we're going to inherit, this bill could go in all sorts of directions in the next short while as the government struggles to get it passed. It's in my view starting to get into the realms of a confidence vote because they’ve spent so much political capital promoting it, and it's been over 12 months since Select Committee and of course they’ve had ministers up and down the country saying we're gonna fix it. What we know is though of course that behind the scenes the government is right now negotiating with four Maori groups to transfer ownership in some form or other to seabed and foreshore around their particular rohe areas as part of Treaty settlements, and the bill as it's written specifically enables that. So many of Helen Clark's claims in this regard are completely duplicit.
SIMON
You wouldn’t allow any of that?
GERRY
We don’t believe that we should be allowing areas of the coastline and the beds – the seabed which runs of course out to interestingly the 200 mile limit, go into exclusive ownership along those lines.
SIMON
Let's move away from the foreshore, as shadow minister or spokesman for Maori Affairs what are your plans to enhance Maori Affairs in this country?
GERRY
Well firstly I think there's some misunderstanding about what my role is. My role is to represent the National Party view in these matters, not particularly a Maori view, but I do have to listen very carefully to where Maori are coming from, and I don’t think that the issues that they raise are too different from those that we raise. We think that Maori can do a lot better in this country if they are unshackled from government and we believe that all New Zealanders in fact can be in that position if they are also less affected in their daily lives by government. Let me give you a small example, we recently had the passing of the fisheries allocation Maori Fisheries Allocation Bill. Now this comes at the end of some 12 to 13 years of negotiating between the Crown and Maori and Maori and Maori about how the allocation was to be divvied up. In the end what we have is a group of people who own an asset not being able to get directly a hold of that asset because other Maori have decided that it would be better to have a sort of a big structure that keeps it all together. We haven't got time to go into it…
SIMON
So what would do if you were Minister though, what would you do, how would you resolve it?
GERRY
Resolve which?
SIMON
The whole thing.
GERRY
We don’t know what the problem.
SIMON
Well tell us what National's Maori policy is, because there doesn’t seem to be one at this point, where is it articulated, where's the vision?
GERRY
Why do we have to have a policy for Maori?
SIMON
You’re the spokesman of Maori Affairs, why have a spokesman then?
GERRY
As I explained to you before my role is to represent the National Party in these issues, it's the government of New Zealand today who ….
SIMON
But the suggestion is that you will be Minister of Maori Affairs.
GERRY
Yes because there are so many laws and government department activities exclusively looking at Maori, and it's appropriate that we have someone who looks into that and says is this right. The reality is that Maori are part of this country. One of the alarming things sitting through the many many hours of submissions to the seabed and foreshore bill was the number of times when I asked Maori groups do you consider yourself to be part of the Crown, in other words citizens of New Zealand in the broadest sense, and the answer came back, no, and I think the government is unfortunately promoting that and that’s the danger.
PART 2
SIMON
Just before the break Mr Brownlee I was asking you what are your plans to enhance Maori Affairs, what's national got to attract Maori as a voting block?
GERRY
Oh I think if you look at the desires of Maori leaders in this country to improve the general lot of the people in their particular iwi groupings, the way to do that of course is to have greater economic strength, that’s what they want and that’s what we want, and I think having policies that allow them to unlock the potential of their assets and to develop those assets as strongly as they possibly can is not only good for Maori but also very good for the rest of New Zealand as well.
SIMON
Polling would suggest though they don’t see it that way.
GERRY
Well that’s okay, they don’t have to see it that way at the present time but I can tell you that a lot of Maori leaders who are genuinely, not these people who are constantly in the news etc etc, who quietly go about their business have a very clear desire to strengthen their people's position in New Zealand and by that I mean their lifestyle their statistical basis by improving their economic lot.
SIMON
Without their support though it smacks of a patronising attitude that we know best for you.
GERRY
Oh no not at all that’s their choice and if anyone has a patronising attitude towards them it's the current government, I'll go back to that fisheries before, give them some assets but then immediately take them off them and tell them you can't look after them yourself, unacceptable.
SIMON
You'd think that would swing a few people your way but polling again suggests that you don’t have something for them, we don’t see a fully articulated Maori policy at the moment.
GERRY
You don’t see in terms of this is what we will do for Maori because the reality is that Maori are going to have to see themselves much more as part of the future of this country and belonging to it than some people want to suggest at the moment.
SIMON
You’re telling them they have to see themselves the way you want them to see them.
GERRY
No I'm saying that they have a choice about how they position their future in this country. I actually believe that from a cultural sense as New Zealand starts to discover itself in a way that exhibits a heck of a lot more pride about living in this country than we do at the moment then aspects of Maori culture for all of us will be important and therefore for people who are Maori to have a strong connection to their own culture.
SIMON
Well let's have a look at National and Maori, what role for Georgina Te Heu Heu going forward giving that you don’t really have Maori constituency?
GERRY Well Georgina Te Heu Heu is an enormously valuable person in politics for a number of reasons.
SIMON
Would you expect her to be Minister of Maori Affairs for instance?
GERRY
I can't pre-empt what Dr Brash might decide to do when he's Prime Minister, but Georgina Te Heu Heu is a person who is very very widely respected throughout New Zealand by peoples of all communities and to suggest that she doesn’t have influence in that area is wrong. If she was put in a position where she had to say well I'm not particularly impressed with the direction of the Orewa speech, that is she has strong tribal links as you know to not only Tuwharetoa but many others and I think at a point where it was looking like there could be some serious battle going on she made the appropriate decision which you know everyone in our caucus from Dr Brash down fully accepted. We have a great deal of respect for Georgina as a colleague.
SIMON
You mentioned the Orewa speech that gave you a turbo boost in the polling, what was supposed to happen afterwards though, there seems to be a void.
GERRY
Well I don’t think there is a void, I think what Orewa was about was articulating essentially what many many New Zealanders have been feeling for a very long time. If you asked me to characterise race relations in this country at the moment I don’t think there is as much tension as some would want to suggest. What I think is that there is a large amount of worry – considerable amount of worry among people about where all this is heading and where we fit into it, and much of that is about someone at some point proclaiming what it is to be a New Zealander.
SIMON
People do want answers to those sorts of questions so why have policy announcements been put on hold till next year?
GERRY
Well look our policy announcements quite honestly have not been put on hold till next year, we've had Dr Brash speaking at the Sensible Sentencing Conference articulating our law and order policy. I'd have to say it wasn’t particularly well picked up but that’s beyond our control, that’s an extremely strong policy which I think will be well regarded as more New Zealanders come to understand it. We have taken policy positions on employment law, we've taken policy positions on matters relating to many educational, or parts of the education portfolio and those things will slowly be brought into I suppose document form as we got into election year.
SIMON
Gerry Brownlee, Deputy Leader of the Opposition, thank you very much for appearing on Agenda today.
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