Dual Pathway Consultation

Consultation was undertaken in 2022 on options to fix a problem with the dual pathway under te Takutai Moana Act 2011 (the Act)

The dual pathway problem

Applications have been made under the Act to the Crown, the High Court, or both to recognise customary marine title on behalf of iwi, hapū, and whānau groups. The High Court can only make decisions on applications that were made to the High Court, and the Crown can only make decisions on applications that were made to the Crown.

When all applications in an area are being decided by the same decision-maker this doesn’t create any problems. But if some applications over an area are being decided in the High Court, and others by the Crown, then there is a problem because the Act doesn’t say how this should work – this is the dual pathway problem. If we don’t fix this, there is a real risk that some groups may not be able to have customary marine title recognised because of it.  

Options to fix the dual pathway problem

The consultation document [PDF, 654 KB] sets out three options for fixing the dual pathway problem.  We are asking for your feedback on these options:

Option 1 would let decision makers make decisions on all applications in the same area (even if one or more of those applications was made to the other decision maker only).

Option 2 would let one or more groups be added to a customary marine title if the other decision maker decides that those groups also satisfy the legal tests in the same area as that title.

Option 3 is a combination of both option 1 and 2.

Feedback received

We will provide updates on the progress of our work on the dual pathway problem in our pānui, which can be found here.