Face of the Day

Bishop said the RMA replacement bills would have Treaty provisions that honoured existing Treaty settlements, but it was unclear the extent to which the new laws would handle Treaty issues that fell outside of what had already been agreed in historic settlements between the Crown and Māori.

“I want to be really clear, there will not be a clause that says the act must ‘give effect to’ or ‘take account of’ the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. That is a different issue to having a recognition in the Act that Treaty settlements and Māori rights and interests are important. The bills will have those sorts of clauses in them. The devil is in the detail in this stuff,”

“That is a different issue from the legitimate expectations of Māori that their role in the resource management system is recognised and protected. The devil is in the detail here. We are interested as a government in descriptive clauses that make it clear for everyone including iwi, Māori, and hapu, what their role is in the system, what their legitimate expectations are, what their role in the system is.

“The problem with generic Treaty clauses is they are open ended and amorphous and they create uncertainty and legal risk for everybody, so getting the descriptive clasue [sic] right is really important.”

Bishop said the government departed from the recommendations of the EAG because “we have a different view as a government”.

“We have a coalition agreement between National and NZ First to review those clauses, to make them more descriptive,” he said.

NZ Herald