Tribal misbehaviour and government favouritism is the outcome of a process that started nearly 30 years ago with a treaty claim by few part-time fishers in the Far North that was expanded by a Waitangi Tribunal ruling, a High Court injunction, and resulted in dividing up the nation's ocean fishery along racial lines. The assertion that the 1992 $170-million commercial fisheries settlement would “get young Maori into the fisheries business” was one of several sanctimonious justifications to obscure the naked opportunism and political weakness surrounding that settlement.
That settlement started off as a claim by Far North tribes for a share of quota introduced by the Fisheries Act 1983 which was an attempt to maintain fisheries at a sustainable level. The claim was on behalf of those who supplemented their income with part-time fishing.
