... should Maori be compensated?

Nope, no way. Not unless they are going to compensate all the other commercial fishing operations who fish out there.
It's going into a Marine reserve for Petes sake.....no, just no. No compensation.

CA - This is a difficult one. I liken the compensation side of things as being similar to this situation (I may be totally wrong here). You used to have a block of land at Matamata you grew Asparagus on however you decided that you had had a enough of that and just left the land fallow. After several years of the land being left fallow and not being used for anything the government decides that seeing as you are not using the land you do not need it and takes it away from you and makes it a national park, but offers you no compensation, just a compulsory acquisition. How would you feel about that.  In respect to the quota for the Kermadec area from what I can gather these fisheries are not depleted from overfishing, so the taking of the quota is not being done for fisheries management purposes but just to create a Marine Reserve (note I have no problems with the area being made a marine reserve). So there asset is just being taken away from them with no compensation. The same argument could be used for any land that is sitting there doing nothing. I see this quota as the same as a property developer who is land banking for the future.

I don't think that's quite the right analogy there Marlingator, it is more like the govt declaring a block of unused, untitled native bush to be a national park with no hunting allowed, even though no one hunted there at all anyhow.
No one was fishing the kermadecs area apart from maybe some tuna longliners, who can just as easily fish outside the reserve area anyhow, otherwise you would have heard Sanfords et al squealing as well, but they weren't, this compensation claim from Maori interests was just a hopeful grab at some free government money.
It's not a bad idea though, it shuts out a huge area from the tuna chasing seiners etc from hunting all the yellowfin before they reach us. As for the bottom fish up there, well, no one was really targeting then anyhow, as the 12nm areas around all the islands up there have been marine reserves for a decade of two now anyhow, they have just connected up the dots.
Oh, and no, the kermadecs area was not a traditional Maori fishing ground, it is hundreds of kms north of nz, Maori had no need nor ability to go up there to fish, and no commercial boats fish up there either.

CA there used to be a few commercial boats that would go up there chasing hapuka, bass etc on the reefs outside the existing 12 mile reserve and they would have had quota for that area. If it was only longlining for tuna etc which there is no quota for anyway then it would not be a problem. Also these boats from what I remember were not connected to any of the big companies so the big companies have no reason to be squealing about this.

CA there was a boat that was looking into doing long range charters up there, it was a NZ Research vessel that went up there regularly and they were looking at taking a dozen or so fishers up each time to help pay for costs. One of the guys on here (Jig Master) went up on a exploratory trip with them a year or two ago. You were right the reason for setting up the initial 12 mile marine reserve was to protect the Spotted Groper which were common in the shallows. This extension out to 200 miles has nothing to do with protecting them it is about appeasing the Greenies.

Spotty blacks are protected NZ wide anyway.

Commercial fishing companies wanting compensation. They really do want every last fish dont they.! We should all rejoice at reserves like this.
The world badly needs reserves like this covering large areas.

Surely the fish that commercial have already taken from the area should be their compensation. Nothing more is needed.

But. If there are to be expensive legal battles over compensation ,defended of course by the tax payer then there is only one solution.

Sell the Kermadecs to the Chinese. They would be glad of the fish and could also build a military airport there.

Recently read about the Dunning -Kruger effect. The Dunning -Kruger effect is basically being too stupid to know how stupid you are.
Seems to be the rational explanation in this case.

P.S. Suspect that many of our very largest Kingfish move into our waters from this region.

I saw some kermadec kahawai in January this year, and I got photos of them with normal kahawai CA. 

see John Not all commercial are bad buggers