tramping and politics overlap

if public land used for tramping is handed over to private parties that are allowed to exclude people or charge more for tramping on it then you have a case of politics being relevant to tramping the govt stripping funds from departments that administer and maintain public parks where we tramp then politics is relevant to tramping. if politicians say you can't tramp in national parks anymore then politics is relevant, the politicians have the power to control our activity and we need to pay attention to what they are doing to maintain our activity and not have it undermined by those politicians if politicians want to mine on land we tramp on and build more roads through that land or monorails or tunnels then it affects our experience of the wilderness and at those times politics and tramping become intertwined. to ignore politics completely is potentially neglecting your future potential to tramp

Yes and no. What we need to remember is that we are an interest group and as such even if only for the prevailing sanity of the group is concentrate on the issue and not the wider politics that caused it. The exception to that would be when some person with more money than sense offers to buy Fiordland National park for a price that means no New Zealander would have to work or pay tax for the next 50 years.

As trampers and ones that enjoy the outdoors, I think we should always be aware of the political climate. As an interest group we need to ensure our right to enjoy the outdoors and not allow any further reduction of our ability to do so. Politicians are only ever interested in something if some interest group is hassling them and they are concerned about losing votes. Jump up and down on them enough and they will recognise and accept the matter as fact and act in their own self interest. That being to keep their position.

It's quite often a case of there's more to a picture than meets the eye. So many people comment on what they see when they don't even know what they are looking at. Like staring at a Picasso and going it's an ugly pile of weird cubes. If your not an expert on Picasso leave it to the experts. Though I agree about us as trampers needing to be aware of the politics and news about the tramping land we hold so dear. We need to also be aware that this is just a forum with a bunch of decent people who love the outdoors and we should respect the fact that we should tread carefully with some of the views or ideas we have in regards to offense. What's the point of posting something that will have minimal or no impact on an outcome when we know it is liable to offend . I feel if you are to post a potentially divisive thread you should definitely know your stuff. I feel there was a big breach of this in the iwi beach purchase thread. More to the picture. Ie not that iwi want the land but why would the crown sell the land to private individuals knowing the potential for a treaty claim down the line. Or how the crown got the land off iwi in the first place. Or why the govt didn't inform the media during its widely publicised attention. More so why add pointless statement irrelevant to the thread like theres no such thing as an indigenous or native New Zealander. It's insensitive and more importantly totally irrelevant to the thread or tramping. It's an emotive thoughtless statement . I whakapapa to that part of the country. I have land on the queen Charlotte track in the Marlborough sounds. I so wish more pakeha New Zealanders walked a few miles in a maori shoes. Then I wouldn't have to try so hard to educate people about things that are bloody obvious to us. I am not a Muslim in London. I'm tangata whenua in my ancestral homeland. It's bloody hard to take.

i'm calling ethnic politics off topic for this thread, start your own thread if you want to discuss that aspect.

Question What is politics and what is ownership? Ownership is law and implied rights to something. Politics is the making of those laws and rights. The case above gets aired so many times as being something special but is it? As far as it directly affects us Maori land is no different to any other private land. I know thats not strictly correct but as for as the general public is concerned the differences do not affect us. The following example is fictitious and only to prove a point. Lets assume a new name Dontiwish. Now the Dontiwish family came to NZ in 1865 and have lived here ever since and prospered. They bought a large piece of land adjacent to what is now Nelson Lakes National Park in the 1890s from the then owners. Who those owners were is not important. Now with tourism taking off the family has decided to build a luxury lodge and new road across there land to the lodge. They need resource consent which is fair enough but on applying they find that the spot they are building the lodge is actually in the National Park. The deed they have says otherwise and is quite clear this is there land. Not only that it apears that several thousand acres of there land is now part of the park including tramping tracks and huts. They talk to surveyors who verify this land belongs to them even though it is designated National Park. In a normal situation the Govt would probably just buy the section of land and no one would know about it but in this case the Dontiwish lodge is set to make a lot of money so the family says we want our land back. What happens next? What part of it is Law? What part is Ownership? What part is politics?

I may be entirely wrong, but seem to recall someone commenting within this site that we don't actually own the land. Instead we own a title to it for use as we wish. That to me sounds pretty much one and the same. But apparently it is not. In @geeves hypothesis the Dontiwish troop have a deed to the use of land. The fact that the government has decreed incorrectly that a large portion of it is now National Park whilst legal is in fact impinging on the rights of Dontiwish to enjoy their land and use it as they wish. I think the law of not actually having ownership, if that is correct, would dictate some serious negotiation was required to satisfy both parties. The negotiation becomes the politics. Ownership doesn't actually come into the question.

Yes, politics and tramping sure overlap. Neoliberalism has become entrenched over the last 30 years and boy, are we trampers paying the price. Just been updating my post on Blairich and access to Ferny Gair Conservation Area which was originally land-locked by farmers apart from access up Black Birch Stream from the Awatere valley. The original intent of the Tenure Review process was to split these properties 50/50 along the lines of freehold and conservation. Blairich has retained 92% of their land and even though the tenure review occurred 10 years ago, DoC have still not been able to put up signs notifying agreed easements as things still have to be negotiated with the landowners surrounding the conservation area.

In my example you are correct. Regular private land is held in a perpetual lease from the Crown with no rent payable. The main reason to do it this way is to allow things like the public works act to be able to forcefully buy land if needed for other purposes and to allow fees to be levied against the land for services to that land ie street lighting rubbish etc. The biggest difference with Maori land is that it is not owned by the Crown and leased back. It is owned outright and the public works act cannot be applied and fees for services are by local agreement. To change my example above to Maori land would result in a trip to the Waitangi tribunal to sort out Probably cheaper but also likely to take a lot longer. The reality still is the land is still "owned" and the owner still has the right to allow or deny access as they chose. Things get difficult when public land that was under long term comercial leases ie pastral leases is then gifted/sold to the occupier. The process to achieve this is politics and it is the politics that should of sorted all the issues before it went ahead. Very hard to fix after the fact

@geeves interesting point. If Maori have outright ownership of the land one would assume that if they decided to break a bit off and sell it then it stands to reason that the purchaser would obtain outright ownership also. Could put a premium price on beach front property I would think. Or do we end up with a reversion to unlimited leased tenure if Maori land is sold to anyone other than Maori. Wherein I think the point becomes political and perhaps somewhat controversial. That throws out my proposition that ownership doesn't come into the question.