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On 6 October 2023, the Waitangi Tribunal released The Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011 Inquiry Stage 2 Report in pre-publication format. The inquiry was accorded high priority, reflecting the importance of the customary rights at stake and the immediacy of the Act’s alleged impacts on Māori. The Tribunal received 92 claims for the inquiry, and a further 80 parties were granted interested party status. Hearings were held between September 2020 and November 2021 before an inquiry panel comprising Judge Miharo Armstrong (presiding), Ron Crosby, Professor Rawinia Higgins, and Tā Pou Temara.

This report concludes the two-part inquiry. The first stage considered whether the procedural and resourcing arrangements put in place by the Crown to support the Act were Treaty-compliant and prejudicially affected Māori, whereas the stage 2 report focused on the Treaty compliance of the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011 itself.

The 2011 Act replaced its controversial predecessor, the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004, and restored customary title interests extinguished under the previous Act, introduced statutory tests and awards whereby customary interests may be identified, and provided for public access. Under the Act, Māori can obtain legal rights recognising their customary interests in the form of customary marine title or protected customary rights. The Act provides two application pathways for this purpose. Māori can apply to the High Court for a recognition order or engage directly with the Crown, or do both. In each pathway, applications for customary rights had to be filed by the statutory deadline of 3 April 2017.

The stage 2 report investigated whether the Act’s foundations, the Act’s mechanisms for recognising claimants’ rights, and the rights available under the Act themselves were Treaty compliant. Overall, the Tribunal found that the rights under the Takutai Moana Act did not sufficiently support Māori in their kaitiakitanga duties and rangatiratanga rights and failed to provide a fair and reasonable balance between Māori rights and other public and private rights. Therefore, the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011 was in breach of principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. The claimants had been, and were likely to continue to be, prejudiced by aspects of the Act that breached Treaty principles.

To give effect to Treaty principles, the Tribunal recommended that the Crown make several targeted amendments to the Act based on the claims that had been heard and upheld. Among these were recommendations to improve the statutory test for customary marine title, to repeal the statutory deadline, to allow current applicants to transfer their applications from the High Court to the Māori Land Court, to increase the scope of the Act’s compensation regime, and to decouple the wāhi tapu protection right from the regime of customary marine title.