Housing and homelessness are being put front and centre of ​the Māori Party's election campaign.

The party says New Zealand's housing problem goes further than just affordability, and it wants to make sure people can have warm, dry, and safe homes.

At the party's campaign launch in Auckland, co-leader Marama Fox says she'll ask for the Minister of Housing to be a Māori or Pasifika person.

Fox says she does want the role of Housing Minister, but it could be a Māori or Pasifika representative from any party.

The party is also cal​ling for an inquiry into water rights, with Fox saying New Zealand's water allocation system as a whole is broken, and Māori have been left out of it.

"We are over-irrigating our land, we are driving nitrates into the rivers and our waterways are suffering because of it," she said. "That's not the New Zealand we want, and we need to make sure we clean it up."