Garner says you can’t let one race own the water

Duncan Garner writes:

The members of the Waitangi Tribunal that sit in high office and report on past grievances have got vocal, but I wonder if they’re out of control and too busy saying ‘tut-tut, you Pākehā decision-makers are running roughshod over Māori at every level of New Zealand society’.
You see, the latest 600-page report pans successive governments for the way they have treated iwi over freshwater.
Water is the lifeblood for us all but, apparently, it’s so important for Māori because they use it to bathe in and they use it to collect kai. Well, guess what, us Pākehā use it for that purpose too, and most other races, actually, I think all of them. 

Water is a universal lifeblood indeed.

But read this report and you’re told Māori are sidelined in the political process of managing water.
They have no tino rangatiratanga or sovereignty over water. And, the most controversial finding, Māori have a genuine property right over water – that they should be able to gain in an economic sense, too.
No, no, no, no, no. One race in New Zealand must never own the water over another race.
It’s just wrong.

Labour and Greens will want to act on this, but I suspect NZ First will hold them back.