Earlier this week a New Zealand government minister said the Maoris may be entitled to compensation as a result of the government’s plans to remove their rights to assert private ownership of the foreshore and seabed.The country’s deputy prime minister Michael Cullen appeared to open the door to a compensation claim last week.
He told the New Zealand Herald that the government would engage in talks with groups whose ‘collection of customary rights was such that they would have amounted in total to something like a freehold title’ if not for the legislation to be introduced.However, he contended it was a ‘subsidiary’ issue as the Court of Appeal had said it was very unlikely a collection of rights could add up to something equivalent to a freehold title.
