Perhaps the latest kerfuffle over the recent publicity of the need for landowners to gain consent from local iwi to carry out work on their own properties may turn out to be a godsend.

It will at last alert the general public to the avaricious and grasping nature of many of the tangata whenua and the acceptance by local and national authorities to enable them to do this.

The acquisitiveness of this 14 per cent of the population is astounding. It also shows the slip shod drafting of many national statutes and ordinances that permit these claims to be made. Perhaps citizens will at last take action.

Many will now be unwilling to accept the assurances given by Maori of free public access to any Maori-controlled coastal areas. When will the gates go up and koha be requested?

Finally, how are there so many iwi claiming land in Tamaki Makaurau ‘The Land Contested by a Thousand Lovers' when in the 1840s no tribe dared set up residence there for fear of being attacked?

Bryan Johnson, Omokoroa.