On 21 October 2025, the Coalition Government’s Bill amending the Marine and Coastal Area Act passed its third reading. The Bill makes the legal test for whānau, hapū, and iwi to prove they hold Customary Marine Title significantly harder to meet and applies retrospectively to July 2024.
For Ātiawa ki Whakarongotai, this will have the effect of overturning the recognition of Customary Marine Title they received earlier this year.
Ātiawa ki Whakarongotai have spent the last four years engaged in the High Court to prove their Customary Marine Title. In June 2025, this culminated in the High Court recognising that Ātiawa ki Whakarongotai holds Customary Marine Title from Kūkūtauākī (near the Kōwhai Stream) to Whareroa, just to the north of Paekākāriki. The ruling would have granted the iwi certain rights in relation to resource management and conservation processes.
“We’re back to te Tiriti o Waitangi being a simple nullity again, another clear breach of Te Tiriti in terms of its guarantee of our rangatiratanga” says Rawiri Tawhai-Bodsworth (Tumuaki/Chairperson Ātiawa ki Whakarongotai) about the raupatu (confiscation) of their Customary Marine Title. “One of our esteemed iwi tūpuna Wī Parata Te Kākākura was famously told by a court of law that our Tiriti rights did not exist. Almost 150 years later the Coalition Government is effectively telling us the same thing.”
“We are disgusted in this government and its coalition partners undertaking a purposeful Aotearoa wide coastal raupatu. I agree with other Māori leaders, that this Act is more damaging than the legislation it replaced, the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004. That was a reactive Act. This Act is a purposeful, strategic, blatant raupatu, the biggest of its kind since the days of the muru raupatu. It is a clear dog whistle to some of this coalition governments’ voting base in the most racist of ways.”
“We have gathered all the evidence to prove our customary rights. We have jumped through all the legal hoops required. Now the goal posts have been moved yet again, under the guise of protecting public access to the beach – something that Customary Marine Title does not prevent and that we do not want to prevent either.”
The iwi are not only concerned with the confiscation of their legal rights, but to the consequences for all New Zealanders.
“The cost to the taxpayer of these amendments must be made clear. Seeing our application through the High Court has cost close to $1 million of taxpayer funding, and we are only one of many applicants. The Government has said these amendments will cost the taxpayer a further $15 million in funding support.”
“But more than that, these amendments set a dangerous constitutional precedent. This government clearly has no issue weaponising its parliamentary majority to undermine the authority of the Courts in removing Māori rights and rangatiratanga. How long before it does the same for women’s, workers,’ or even human rights?”
Ātiawa ki Whakarongotai are considering their options for legal recourse while the Bill awaits royal assent.