The real coastline issue: Stop confiscating Māori property rights

Opinion: Private property rights are the foundation of our enterprise economy.
Indeed, private property rights are the foundation for any free society. To safeguard enterprise and prosperity, our Government must be staunch in protecting the property rights of all persons, all families, all community groups and all businesses.
On August 7, the New Zealand Herald published on its front page an advertisement placed by Hobson’s Choice. The advertisement made an appeal to “restore the foreshore and seabed to public ownership”.
Te Hunga Rōia Māori (the Māori Law Society) and 350 lawyers have explained five ways in which the advertisement is misleading and divisive.
A further point needs to be made. The proposal is bad economics.
The proposal targets what are called ‘customary marine titles’, which exist at different places along the foreshore. As Hobson’s Pledge explains on its website, customary titles are a property right much like ownership. Their appeal urges the Government to take these rights from private ownership into public ownership.
This is where economics becomes relevant.
Although property rights in customary marine titles are currently being updated, they have existed for a long time; hence the name ‘customary’. The holders are particular families or hāpu who have lived and worked along particular parts of the foreshore for hundreds of years.
Indeed, Queen Victoria recognised the property rights of these families (among others) at the signing of te Tiriti o Waitangi in 1840. The English text records that the rights were confirmed – not created – by the treaty. It also guarantees undisturbed possession for so long as the holders wish and desire, written as ‘tino rangatiratanga’ in the Māori text.
The call to restore customary marine titles to public ownership is an attack on tino rangatiratanga. It would confiscate private property rights that have been held by New Zealand families for generations. There is a name for the system of government that takes private property rights into public ownership. It is called communism.
In any other context, an appeal by a group of citizens to promote communism in some aspect of our government would be dismissed out of hand, and rightly so. New Zealanders understand that dispossessing families of private property rights would be a fundamental injustice, as well as bad economics.
Yet we have in front of us a proposal from a group of citizens urging the Government to use its strong legislative powers to convert private property rights into public ownership. How can this be?
The shocking truth is that such a call is not unusual in the context of our country’s history after 1840. Again and again, groups of citizens have urged governments to dispossess certain families of their lands and estates, their forests and fisheries, and other properties they collectively or individually possess. Again and again, governments have done so.
Again and again, the families who suffered dispossession were Māori whānau.
Dishonoured land contracts with Ngāi Tahu, invasion and raupatu in Taranaki and Waikato, confiscations under the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863, operations of the Native Land Court, the sacking of Parihaka in 1881, more confiscations under the Public Works Act 1928, the burning of the Ngāti Whātua village at Ōkahu Bay in 1952, and the Bastion Point eviction in 1978; these are terrible episodes in our country’s history.
They illustrate what economists call the dark side of social capital. Social capital is normally a good thing. It refers to bonds of trust and connection that help people work together for mutual benefit. The dark side becomes visible when members of a dominant social group use these same bonds among themselves to disadvantage minority groups.
Social norms in our democracy mean the Government would never think to dispossess Pākehā families of their private property rights (outside a few, tightly limited, examples). The dark side of social capital occurs when those same norms make it socially acceptable to urge the Government to dispossess Māori families of a whole class of property rights they have held for centuries.
In recent years, successive New Zealand parliaments have sought to break away from the terrible episodes of the past. Visionary leaders on both sides of the House have worked together to draft laws and create new institutions (such as the Waitangi Tribunal) to protect Māori property rights and to offer a measure of redress for injustices by the Crown.
All parties in Parliament are founded on values calling them to remain staunch on this issue. Aotearoa New Zealand will prosper only if all communities are confident in the security of their property rights. Promoting this inclusive vision is sound economics.
Therefore, let our current generation reject any suggestion that Māori property rights will ever again be confiscated. Let our current leaders in Parliament demonstrate by their actions that the Crown respects the private property rights of all citizens.
Universal respect for property rights is essential for a flourishing and unified country.
Paul Dalziel is Professor of Economics at Lincoln University and a founding trustee of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Aotearoa. He is lead author of Wellbeing Economics: The capabilities approach to prosperity.