Two days of hearing for the Paraninihi ki Waitotara Incorporation (PKW) claim regarding changes to the dairy industry were held on 12-13 November 2001. The Tribunal's report was released before Christmas 2001.
The claim had four separate aspects to it. The Tribunal did not uphold the the first three points of claim. The Tribunal did not agree that the creation of Fonterra would necessarily cause the relative value of PKW's unimproved land to decrease; did not agree that the rental income from PKW's land necessarily would be of less value; and did not agree that the relative cost of exercising the right of first refusal to buy out perpetual leases would necessarily increase.
However the Tribunal did uphold the fourth point of claim - that the cost of entering the dairy industry has increased - and recommended that the Government should guarantee a loan to enable PKW to purchase shares to supply Fonterra, so that PKW would be able to enter the dairy industry in an equitable manner.
The Tribunal found this was particularly necessary because the Crown had ignored repeated recommendations from various inquiries and commissions since the confiscation of Taranaki land to provide remedies for the problems created by confiscation, and by the subsequent establishment of perpetual leases of returned lands. The Tribunal considered that the failure to provide such remedies created an even more compelling need for the Crown to do so urgently.
'we regard the wilful and repeated turning of the Crown's face from its Treaty obligations and breaches as a further breach in itself' (p 34)
The Tribunal considered that the Crown should have at the very least acted immediately on the recommendations of the Tribunal's 1991 Ngāi Tahu Report regarding perpetual leasing and the Māori Reserved Land Act 1955.
'having ignored the [1975] Sheehan report, the Crown should, at the very least, have given the matter urgent attention and provided a fulsome remedy when the implications of the finding of the Ngāi Tahu Report were apparent, and had the strong words in the 1987 judgment of the Court of Appeal been taken to heart.'(p 39)
The Waitangi Tribunal |
