The Petroleum Report is the outcome of an urgent hearing held in Wellington over four days from 16 to 19 October 2000. In the report the Tribunal addresses claims by Nga Hapu o Nga Ruahine of Taranaki and Ngati Kahungunu of Hawke’s Bay and Wairarapa in relation to their interests in the petroleum resource.
This report has been written under urgency created by the Government’s intention to sell the Crown’s interests in the Kupe licence. Because of this situation, the Tribunal will be reporting in two stages. Part two of the report, which will be available soon, will deal with the regulatory framework and management regime since 1937.
At the hearing, it was common ground between the claimants and the Crown that, before 1937, land ownership carried with it legal rights to the petroleum in the land. However, the claimants argued that in the nineteenth century, and up to 1937, the Crown was implicated in many breaches of the Treaty whereby they lost most of their land and the petroleum that went with it. Then, in the Petroleum Act 1937, the Crown nationalised the petroleum resource, without paying compensation to landowners, and without making provision for the ongoing payment of royalties to them. This, the claimants said, was a further breach of the Treaty.
The question before the Tribunal was whether, if Maori no longer have any subsisting legal ownership in the petroleum resource, an interest of any other kind remains. The inquiry led the Tribunal to conclude that the expropriation of the pre-existing Maori rights to petroleum arose from a context riddled with breaches of the Treaty. The situation in Taranaki, for example, where most of the land was confiscated, is well known. The Tribunal reached the view that, where legal rights to an important and valuable resource are lost or extinguished as a direct result of a Treaty breach, an interest of another kind is generated. The Tribunal calls this a ‘Treaty interest’.
When a Treaty interest arises, there will be a right to a remedy, and a corresponding obligation on the Crown to negotiate redress for the wrongful loss of the legal right. Importantly, the Treaty interest creates entitlement to a remedy for that loss additional to any other entitlement to redress.
In relation to the loss of the petroleum resource under circumstances that breach the Treaty, we consider that separate redress is due to Maori. By ‘separate’, the Tribunal means additional to that made for historical land loss grievances, and relating to the loss of rights in the petroleum resource.
The Tribunal considers that the claimants in these claims have a subsisting Treaty interest in the petroleum resource and that they are accordingly entitled to redress beyond that to which their historical land loss grievances entitle them.
Finally, the Tribunal examines the reasoning underlying the Crown’s view that petroleum assets ought to be excluded from settlements. The Tribunal concludes that this exclusion is in breach of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, and that the Crown’s remaining petroleum assets ought to be on the table in any settlement negotiations with affected claimants. The Tribunal’s conclusion in this regard has general application but applies with particular force in the case of Taranaki.
The Tribunal concludes by recommending:
* that the Crown and affected Maori groups negotiate for the settlement of petroleum grievances; and
* that the Crown withhold from sale the Kupe petroleum mining licence until a rational policy has been developed to safeguard Maori interests, or until the petroleum claims are settled.
Heoi ano enei whakaaro o matou mo te kaupapa i whakatakotoria ki mua i to matou aroaro. E tautoko ana i tera rerenga korero kua whakawharikitia ki roto ki nga mahi a te Karauna mo nga kereme. Ko matou kei muri, ko te Karauna me te iwi Maori kei mua - ‘Ka tika a muri, ka tika a mua’. |
