Rueben Taipari travelled over four days from Northland to Wellington to gather signatures and raise awareness of the proposed changes. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii
The passing of the Marine and Coastal Area legislation is the start of another fight, Māori activist Rueben Taipari says.
"We are going to have to waste our time, another 20 years of opposition, of protest," he told Morning Report.
The controversial legislation that toughens the test for Māori groups to win customary title was passed by Parliament on Tuesday night.
The government has pitched the law change as restoring the legislation to its original intent, while critics argue they diminish Māori rights.
The veteran Māori rights activist delivered a 20,000-signature petition to Parliament last week demanding the legislation be immediately scrapped.
Taipari travelled to Wellington from his home in Ahipara in the Far North over four days in an effort to gather more signatures and raise awareness of the changes.
In an interview on Morning Report on Wednesday, Taipari called the government "corrupt" and said Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith was "not defending justice".
Taipari said he was "very angry" and "very upset".
The law change would take away further rights that Māori maintained under the 2011 Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act, Taipari said.
"That's going to deny 95 percent of our whanau and our hapu who have every right to go to court, he's denied that right," he said,
"Now he's just pissing in the ocean, and he wants us to drink it.
"We don't have any rights under the amendment."
Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith, Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii
It was difficult to see a positive relationship with the government going forward, he told Morning Report.
"If they continue to undermined Te Tiriti o Waitangi, remove our reo, undermine our rangatahi and treat us like slaves in our own country, you tell me what you would do Corin if this happened in your country."
Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith told Morning Report Taipari was "completely wrong".
"He said that we had taken away the rights for Māori to claim customary title, we are not taking that right away."
Goldsmith said the topic of the debate was the threshold for titles not the right itself.
He said at the time of the bill's creation in 2011 the threshold was seen as a high bar but decisions from the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court had changed that.
"This is not something at all we would have wanted done, we don't want to be overturning courts, we don't want to be making people go back and make cases reheard."
Goldsmith said the rights allowed its holders to make resource consent decisions, decide access to minerals and sites that excluded people to go into certain areas.
"It is not an irrelevant thing; it is valuable rights."
He told Morning Report the government thought about the changes carefully.
"Of course, it is part of the coalition agreement with New Zealand First and that's an important part of it but look we are only doing this because it is an important thing."
The MACA law was introduced by National in 2011 in response to Labour's highly controversial Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004.
It has been contested in the courts, with a key Court of Appeal ruling making it easier for groups to win customary title in 2023.
The Supreme Court went on to overturn that decision last year, though the government considered it and said the test remained too broad.
National had agreed to tighten up the legislative test, making it harder for Māori to secure titles, in its coalition agreement with New Zealand First.
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