Mike Butler: Forestry trust assets shrink

Crown Forestry Rental Trust funds are diminishing as more forestry land is given to claimant groups is the unsurprising 2016 message of the trust to its appointors -- the New Zealand Maori Council, the Federation of Maori Authorities and the Minister of Finance, Bill English.

The trust was set up under the Crown Forest Assets Act 1989 as a self-funding organisation that is midway between the Crown and Maori to hold Crown forestry land that may be subject to treaty claims and collect rentals paid to the Crown for forests grown on Crown land.

Mike Butler: Maori breaching treaty principles

The New Zealand Maori Council has gone to the Waitangi Tribunal to get a report to say that a current review into the Maori Community Development Act 1962, announced last month by Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples, "is inconsistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi". Maori Council lawyer Donna Hall said the process was all Crown tikanga, adding "there's no council presence in there anywhere".(1)

Mike Butler: Tangled Maori spectrum web

Look at the tangled web behind the government’s rejection of a claim by Maori for a share of the 700MHz spectrum, and the $30-million information and communications technology fund, offered to Maori only.(1) Why should ICT Minister Amy Adams offer a $30-million ''ICT development fund'' to Maori and not to everyone? The answer is that there is a well-developed Maori lobby for spectrum ownership, and an equally well-developed government counter-group made up of, let us say, policy entrepreneurs.

Mike Butler: Deeds, half-truths, water rights

Waters, rivers, lakes, and streams were included in the sale and purchase of the Upper Waikato on September 15, 1864, as well as trees, minerals, and all appertaining to the land or beneath the surface, according to the deed that is freely available on a Victoria University of Wellington website. Ownership of water is the latest “gimme” demanded by the New Zealand Maori Council and was at the root of the Maori legal challenge to the government's partial asset sale that was heard at the High Court in Wellington this week.

Justice Ronald Young reserved his decision, on Wednesday, on the challenge by the New Zealand Maori Council and Waikato River tribes at the end of a three-day hearing in the High Court in Wellington, saying he would have a ruling by Christmas. The Maori Council and river tribes argued partial privatisation of energy companies Mighty River Power, Meridian, Genesis Energy and Solid Energy would compromise Maori water interests and could affect Treaty of Waitangi claims.

Mike Butler: Half-truths and shallow thinking

The recently concocted New Zealand Maori Council water rights claim has turned up the heat on the Maori issues debate. Two comments lifted from the blogosphere show the half-truths and shallow thinking that has allowed the “free money for Maori” industry to grow into the monster that it is.

You don’t want Maori looking after their own affairs with money they have invested around the country, employing thousands of Kiwis? So if Maori aren’t allowed to look after their own, then who will? That then falls on the state. What do you fear from Maori or anyone having their own systems? Will they cause you to turn Maori, will they take your firstborn, will they stop you watching your favourite rugby team? No no they won’t so what the bloody hell do you have against people looking after their own affairs. And no that’s not called separatism, it’s called neo-liberalism or even libertarianism, something apparently praised by many on this site.

This commentator blurs the distinction between the rights and responsibilities that everyone has to spend, save, or invest, their own hard-earned money, with the rights and responsibilities of tribal trusts handling free money from the government that came via treaty settlements and the special, separate deals via race-based affirmative action, and devolved social services.

Prof Martin Devlin: Business and the Partial Asset Sales

Business commentators are now starting to reflect upon the business consequences of the government’s decision to delay the first of the partial assets sales until the second quarter of 2013. Rod Oram, writing in the Star-Times of 9^th September comments on the related issues of a glut of electricity generation, a downturn in domestic and industrial power consumption, the possibility of problems with electricity usage at the Tiwai Point smelter, and the downturn in coal imports by China as issues which will have an impact of the value of Mighty River Power (MRP) shares at float. From any prudent investor’s point of view each and all of these issues represent risks which need to be taken into account when deciding whether or not to invest.

But, he could also have included some assessment of the impact of the MRP delay and the options presented to the government by the Waitangi Tribunal, which, if taken seriously, constitute an additional raft of investment risks which possibly exceed those which Oram considers.

Mike Butler: The big water rights hold-up

A hold-up is a hold-up regardless of whether the perpetrator wears a hoodie and carries a knife, or whether there are a number of perpetrators sitting in a meeting hall dressed as lawyers. In the interim report into water and geothermal resources, released on Friday, the Waitangi Tribunal is holding up the government by waving the big stick of treaty settlement precedent to extract not only shares, but a significant interest in the power companies that the government plans to sell.

The New Zealand Maori Council, in conjunction with 10 co-claimant clans and tribes, filed the National Water and Geothermal Resources claim in February of this year, in response to a Government proposal to sell up to 49 per cent of shares in the power-generators Mighty River Power, Meridian Energy, and Genesis Energy. One hundred and one individuals and entities registered an interest.