A new campaign against proposed foreshore and seabed legislation has been slammed as inaccurate and divisive.
A group called the Coastal Coalition has launched an advertising campaign against the new proposal.
Coalition spokesman Hugh Barr said the Government was keeping New Zealanders in the dark about "the extreme legislative changes they are planning".
Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson says the coalition has got its facts wrong and Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei said the coalition was conducting "disgraceful scaremongering".
The coalition is reinventing the divisive iwi-Kiwi billboards used controversially during the 2005 election when then National leader Don Brash stirred up tensions over the foreshore and seabed.
The previous Labour government passed the Foreshore and Seabed Act in 2004 which vested ownership of the areas with the Crown and stopped Maori from testing in court whether it had some form of title to coastal areas.
This greatly angered Maori and National has now agreed to repeal the law and replace it.
Under the new legislation the foreshore and seabed will be removed from Crown ownership and will become a public place - essentially the same as a public domain - with public access guaranteed and with no one having the right to sell any of it.
Iwi will be able to seek customary rights and customary title through negotiation with the Government or through the High Court, but will still have to prove exclusive use and occupation since 1840.
The first billboard, designed by John Ansell who was behind the 2005 series, will be put up in Wellington tomorrow morning.
One billboard image emailed out features Prime Minister John Key wearing a Maori cloak and waving a sovereignty flag with the line "visit your beach before I give it to iwi". Another has the heading beaches, on one side under Iwi is listed ownership, development, mining and veto rights while on the side, labelled Kiwi, it says "visiting rights?"
"The original Iwi-Kiwi billboards wrongly accused the previous Labour government of selling out the beaches to iwi," Dr Barr said.
"This time it is John Key and the National Party that really are giving away our beaches. And the public needs to know this clearly."
The coalition thinks the Government is privatising the foreshore and seabed and giving it to iwi.
Mr Finlayson said the billboard made claims that were "simply untrue".
"This Government's bottom line has always been to guarantee free public access in the foreshore and seabed area for all New Zealanders, which the Ministerial Review Panel described as a birthright."
Mr Finlayson said the Government's proposal would introduce a non-ownership regime to the foreshore and seabed and it would ensure that it can never be sold.
"The replacement law will allow for Maori to have access to justice through the Courts, which the 2004 Act took away, to seek customary title. Where customary title is recognised, public access and public rights are still guaranteed.
"Where customary title can be proved, it will sit alongside the 'public space' rights of public access, fishing, navigation, and existing use rights. Customary title does not exclude these guaranteed public rights; it includes them."
Mrs Turei described the campaign as an attempt "to re-run the divisive and dishonest campaign from 2005...
"Scaremongering like this is disgraceful. It inflames and creates division between communities as well as utterly distorting the truth."
