Crown Law warned of ‘significant legal risks’ from foreshore and seabed changes

Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith received legal advice that his preferred approach to rolling back Māori access to customary marine title would “trigger a strong response from the courts” and “raised significant wider strategic legal risks for the Crown”.
The comments were referred to in the Regulatory Impact Statement on the changes, paraphrasing legal advice from Crown Law. While the government’s legal advice is usually redacted from documents, Newsroom was mistakenly provided an unredacted hard copy of the impact statement from the House Office.