Otaki’s independent candidate Phil Taueki is
lambasting Conservative Leader Colin Craig for his party’s ill-informed
propaganda about Maori issues.
Mr Taueki is challenging Mr Craig to explain
how he would feel if the police set up a round-the-clock scene guard to prevent
him entering his own building or decided it didn’t matter if people trespassed
on his property.
Mr Taueki is currently banned from leaving his
bail address due to the electronic bracelet he wears. He says his
overly-restrictive bail conditions and eight weeks spent in prison on remand
reveal the extreme measures used to silence an outspoken activist who wants
nothing more than the same rights as every other New Zealand citizen.
Despite being a direct descendent of a Treaty
signatory, he says his recent Supreme Court judgement shows that for Maori,
title means nothing more than a name on a piece of paper.
He has been arrested so many times he has lost
count, but since 2011 he has kept a tally of all fifteen consecutive charges
that have been dismissed, withdrawn or quashed on appeal.
During January this year, he was arrested for
parking his truck on his own land in a futile attempt to stop Horizons and NIWA
launching unwashed boats on the privately-owned Lake Horowhenua. The
obstruction charge was quietly dropped after referral to the IPCA.
Mr Taueki says John Key’s Government
steadfastly refuses to reinstate full property rights to the Mua-Upoko owners
of the Lake Horowhenua bed and land around it.
Without the approval of the owners, Parliament
passed legislation in 1905 giving the public the ‘right’ to use this lake free
of charge and placing control of it in the hands of a Domain Board.
Within a year, politicians were already asking
when this law would be repealed.
Mr Taueki says that Mua-Upoko has held a
certificate of title to this property since 1899, and to make matters worse, an
Appellate Court had classified this customary land to be ‘inalienable’.
He suspects that this ‘inalienable’ status is
the reason Parliament placed control of the property in the hands of a
Government-appointed Domain Board. He
says the existence of the Domain Board excludes owners from any negotiations or compensation whenever a club
wants to erect buildings on Maori Freehold Land or hold public events on land
that the Crown neither owns nor leases.
Under the control of a Domain Board, this once
pristine lake has become so toxic that a mouthful of water can be lethal enough
to kill a child.
Mr Taueki says it is an insult to the owners to
see the Government dish out money to subsidise the very people who were
responsible for the state of the lake in the first place. Once again, the
concerns of the owners have been ignored to such an extent that they have been
forced to take the Horowhenua District Council to the High Court to divert
Levin’s stormwater from the lake.
He wants to know how any other property owner
would feel knowing that the only way they can stop their local council polluting
their property is to dredge up the funds to take them to court, while this same
council gets a hand-out from Central Government.
Mr Taueki says that it is time Mr Craig
descended from his lofty tower to discover that colonial arrogance and racial prejudice still prevails in this
country.
Mr Taueki was in court last week defending
charges that the police laid after he had
tried to stop rowers trespassing on land that is culturally sensitive.
While he was held in custody overnight, his unlocked car was trashed beyond
repair and his camera with evidential photographs went missing.
As a self-litigant, Mr Taueki summonsed Police
Area Commander Patrick Handcock as a witness for the defence, because the
police refuse to prosecute rowers who have admitted assaulting Mr Taueki on
this same site. Mr Handcock had written to Mr Taueki stating that “whether a
trespass occurred or not is immaterial”.
Mr Taueki had told the court that this site is
waahi tapu, as it is the place his ancestors ferried their dead. Directly
off-shore is the artificial island where members of his tribe were stockaded,
waiting to be killed and fed as fresh meat for Ngati Toa, led by Te Rauparaha
in his quest to exterminate Mua-Upoko.
As for the Treaty, Mr Taueki says it remains a
binding contract whether Mr Craig wants to accept it or not.
Mr Taueki says that one of the reasons he has
chosen to once again contest the Otaki seat, is that he wants to once again
come up against the Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy.
Mua-Upoko has a claim over 76 acres of land
unlawfully gifted by Major Kemp to a private railway company chaired by Mr
Guy’s great grandfather. Trains were already running on tracks laid at a time
when the law prohibited the disposal of any land within this Horowhenua Block.
“It might be only a small sliver of land, but
its strategic value as a portion of the main truck line is immeasurable.”
He has a
Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry to back up his claim of disgraceful and
fraudulent dealings in the past, and has told the Waitangi Tribunal in no
uncertain terms that history is repeating itself because the politicians are
once again dealing with people who are masquerading as Mua-Upoko, rather than
the legitimate claimants.
He says there is good reason this Government is
desperate to keep him out of circulation during this crucial period of Treaty
settlement negotiations, but that will not deter him in the slightest.
“I am inspired by a comment made by Nelson Mandela that he had no doubt
posterity would pronounce him innocent. It is unfortunate that somebody has to
be prepared to go to jail before people realise there is a longstanding
injustice that needs to be addressed.”
Authorised
by Anne Hunt, 17 Nash Parade, Foxton Beach.
Anne Hunt is a past journalist and author and past District Councillor.
