Little: Water must not be traded as a commodity

Labour Party leader Andrew Little. File photo / Brett Phibbs

Labour party leader Andrew Little says water should not be traded as a commodity in New Zealand.

Mr Little, who spoke at Te Tii Marae at Waitangi today, told media after his official address mixed feedback from iwi and the Government over water ownership rights was a reflection of wider conflicting views on the issue.

"Certainly, local people and local iwi - they want water and they want access to water because they need it," Mr Little said.

"Whether or not it's about making a profit from it, some have that view clearly but others don't.

"I think...this is the big challenge we face as a country. There's a long way to go yet and this is an issue that all New Zealanders need to be debating.

"It demonstrates that there is a division of view about this as there will be right across New Zealand," Mr Little said.

He did not believe water was a resource which should be traded commercially.

"We don't make it, it comes naturally, people need it, it's life giving. It's essential and I'm just not sure it's something we should now go down on creating this big commercial market for."

Mr Little also used his address at Te Tii to outline how he hoped treaty negotiations would progress.

"What I said was that when we come to the 200th anniversary, the measure of whether we make progress is whether or not we are talking about Te tangata whenua, regarded as Maori or people of the land, or whether we're talking about tangata tiriti, the people of the treaty, which is all peoples bound under the treaty," he said.