Can parliamentary urgency and public accountability peacefully coexist?
Late-night bill passed under urgency
After a punishing budget week, the last place most MPs wanted to find themselves in the early hours of Saturday morning was still in the debating chamber. But there they were, locked in a drawn-out battle over accommodation subsidies, reports RNZ's Soumya Bhamidipati. After the Social Assistance Legislation Amendment Bill was called around 11.30pm, opposition MPs filed dozens of amendments in a failed attempt to slow the legislation, which tightens the rules on how boarders are counted when calculating the accommodation supplement.
The bill passed under urgency – an increasingly common tactic for the coalition. The government set a record in its first 100 days for the most bills passed under urgency in the MMP era, a pace that's continued with controversial measures like the pay equity law change earlier this month. That, too, bypassed the select committee process, prompting critics to accuse the government of undermining public accountability in the name of speed.
What is urgency – and why is it so easy to use?
Urgency allows parliament to fast-track legislation, sometimes skipping key stages like select committee scrutiny. While often used for budget-related bills or emergencies, there are few formal checks on its application. A minister (usually leader of the House Chris Bishop) simply moves a motion to commence urgency, and the government's MPs pass the motion with a majority vote.
While urgency is extremely useful for the government, it has plenty of downsides. 'Passing legislation more quickly risks the legal equivalent of the old 'marry in haste, repent at leisure maxim,'' writes The Spinoff's Shanti Mathias. 'The public has less chance to be informed about the law, there is reduced transparency, and legislation might simply be less good – imprecise wording or unintended effects can slip through.'
The most contentious use of urgency is passing a bill into law, but that's not its only application. The Regulatory Standards Bill is an example: because of the budget, the House was still sitting under urgency when it passed its first reading on Friday. The controversial bill, which has attracted more than 22,000 submissions, will now be put before the Finance and Expenditure Committee, where there will be a chance for public feedback.
A committee of the people steps in
In response to the pay equity legislation being pushed through without public input, former National MP Dame Marilyn Waring has convened a 'people's select committee' to gather evidence the government did not. The hastily assembled group of former MPs from across the political spectrum will hear public submissions starting on August 11, RNZ's Russell Palmer reports. Waring said the hearings would be an 'evidence-gathering mission' with a 'really sound report' at the end. 'The government says that it wants to progress pay equity claims, the opposition is saying that it will rescind this and again address the legislation. So we're doing them all a good turn.'
While the initiative lacks any formal powers, groups whose pay equity claims were halted by the new law are being invited to share their experiences. Asked to respond, minister Brooke van Velden said there'd be no changes to the law, but 'members of the public, including former MPs, are welcome to hold their own meetings'.
A broader reckoning on accountability
The controversy is feeding into a wider conversation about how parliament functions. As Politik's Richard Harman writes (paywalled), the select committee on David Seymour's four-year term bill has unexpectedly turned into a mini-referendum on parliamentary accountability. While a number of submitters have used the opportunity to call for a reinstatement of a second chamber of the House, others have taken aim at how select committees themselves operate. Among them was Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who said the current system is encouraging 'sloppy lawmaking' driven by overworked MPs and overloaded agendas.
Regardless of whether the bill passes, the process has surfaced 'widespread disillusionment with the failure of select committees to scrutinise legislation,' Harman observed – a feeling only sharpened by the coalition's aggressive use of urgency over the course of its term so far.
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Scoop
30 minutes ago
- Scoop
Representation Versus Reality; Reaching A Low Point
Have you noticed how, in New Zealand news items and weather reports, Nelson and Marlborough are called the "top" of the South Island rather than the 'north' of that island. We also get phrases such as the "lower North Island" and the "upper North Island". And New Zealand's narrators regularly refer to New Zealand as being at the "bottom of the world". These phrases reference the (conventionally portrayed) map of the world, not the world itself. Rotate the map 180°. Nelson-Marlborough will still be the north of the South Island. But they will now be at the bottom of the top island! (And noting that the Roof of the World is the Tibetan Himalayas, not the North Pole. The South Island is at a higher latitude than the North Island; eg 44°S rather than 38°S. And Upper Egypt is south of – lower than? – Lower Egypt.) Another really annoying aspect of a similar problem – in this case, the problem of colloquial jargon – is the propensity of financial journalists to refer to 'up' as 'north', as in "the stockmarket is heading north". An even more egregious example I heard on RNZ on 29 May (Reserve Bank cuts OCR 25 basis points) was the Acting Reserve Bank Governor (Christian Hawkesby) referring to the 'North Star' as the 'target' of arcane monetary policy. Especially problematic was when he said "if you knew your North Star was much further south". A bit 'woo woo' new age, if you get my meaning. Is the Reserve Bank trying to navigate the stormy seas where myth and reality meet, as in the search for Moby Dick? (Irish navigators 4,000 years ago could always return from a trip to Spain by following the North Star. Being in the 'lower world', Maui and Kupe faced more complex problems.) Does the Reserve Bank make policy decisions based on Tarot Cards? Indeed, astrology did guide policy formation for most of human history. The lesser problem is that 'bottom' has a pejorative meaning; a meaning that has been transferred to the word 'south' (which means 'poor' in the label 'Global South'). The more substantive problem is the diminishing ability of 'modern man' (or at least homo sapiens in the Global North) to think abstractly. A diminishing abstract capacity allows us to conflate the reality of the planet Earth with its representation in the form of a map. And once too many of us see the representation as the same thing as the reality, the ongoing repetition of that framed construct self-reinforces; we give in to the narrative for the sake of mental peace and quiet. The imputed 'reality' of the conventional map becomes hard-wired; the map becomes reality, hardware rather than software. Other examples of incongruent representation follow. Knowledge Rich 'Knowledge rich' is a label that doesn't match the package; refer Govt's curriculum changes come under fire RNZ 22 July 2025. The phrase 'knowledge rich' appears to be an example of vacuous bureaucratic weasel words, to use a bit of idiomatic anti-jargon; a label useless except for obfuscation purposes. We would expect that the term 'knowledge rich' would mean something like 'emphasising the acquisition of knowledge'; ie the more understanding of reality the better. When asked to define 'knowledge rich', the senior bureaucrat interviewee said in that RNZ interview: "really well-structured, clear content, the things that we want young people to know [my emphasis] and the things [skills?] that we want them to know how to do; we want them to learn … in nice sequential and … coherent learning pathway… structured ways … and that teachers need clarity on what needs to be taught and what students should be learning at any particular point on the pathway". That's actually reasonably clear for a bureaucrat put on the spot, but it's not in any way the meaning of 'knowledge rich'. This definition is about structure and constrained knowledge acquisition; it's about young people learning what the state wants them to learn, only what the state wants them to learn, and in the ways the state wants them to learn. The label contradicts the reality, possibly with political intent. A Humanitarian City The Israeli government has rightly been described as 'Machiavellian' (refer Machiavelli) when it represents its planned concentration zone in Rafah (Southern Gaza) as a 'Humanitarian City'. (Refer 'Humanitarian city' would be concentration camp for Palestinians, says former Israeli PM, The Guardian, 13 July 2025; and Israel turning Gaza into 'graveyard of children and starving': UNRWA chief, Al Jazeera News, 11 July 2025. And the new Israeli-American terror unit operating in Gaza is masquerading as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation; refer What is the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, and why has it been criticised? Al Jazeera explainer, 20 May 2025. It is clear that the Israeli government is exploiting the increased naivete of the western news audience; a state of entrenched naivety that – as noted above – has become hard-wired in too many of our brains, thanks to the ongoing use of language which presents representation as reality. We should also note that, in Germany in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler was able to gain a groundswell of popular support through his representation of Jews as cunning and Machiavellian disrupters; it does not serve Israel well for their present-day leaders to give any semblance of support to Hitler's portrayal. Holocaust Through a relentless multi-decade campaign, it has become hard-wired into too many western brains that there was little more to World War Two than The Holocaust; ie that WW2 was essentially a battle between 'Hitler' and 'The Jews', and that it was resolved by white knights in the form of Churchill and Roosevelt and Truman coming to the rescue – albeit too late – by dealing to Hitler and giving (as compensation) Palestine to The Jews. In the process, most other narratives in that war are by now largely forgotten. World War Two was of course far more complex. Further, the label Holocaust is an inaccurate portrayal of those catastrophic events. One strength of the English language is its capacity to borrow from other languages. The correct label for this greatest of catastrophes should be that from the victims' own language; their label, the Shoah. The word holocaust, correctly used, has connotations of fire and brimstone (especially raining from the sky); the best-known biblical example being the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah 'documented' in Genesis. We may note that part of the divine and the diabolical intents of both the biblical holocaust and of the Shoah was to eradicate homosexuals. World War Two has a number of ready-made examples of true holocausts; many perpetrated by the Allies, starting with Operation Gomorrah which incinerated Hamburg in 1943, and ending with the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. The Holocaust obscures the holocausts, and much else. Inadequate representation indeed misrepresents the Shoah as a biblical spectacle, whereas it was really a coldly cynical mix of operations conducted in the then shadows. Was the Shoah a bigger catastrophe than Gomorrah? Probably yes. Genocide and Terrorism Earlier in the 2020s, people such as Paula Penfold and Liz Truss tried to represent the Chinese government's persecution of the East Turkestan (aka Xinjiang) Uyghurs as "genocide". They were 'weaponising' the g-word, part of a wider cross-partisan opportunity to demonise China during the Covid19 pandemic. In the light of recent events in the Levant, an obvious and unmistakeable genocide which too many people refrain from calling a 'genocide', those anti-China representations look rather silly. It is perfectly possible that people using the same identity label can be both victims of genocide and perpetrators of genocide; most likely at different places in different times. Most petty of all, this 'is it a genocide?' has become an elitist word-game. Anyone who thinks that if what is happening in Palestine does not meet some English-language definition of 'genocide' is morally bound to come up with an alternative word or phrase – presumably a somethingelse-icide – that more accurately conveys their assessment. Myself, I think that these events may be even more than a genocide; such as philosopher historian AC Grayling's term culturicide (from Among the Dead Cities) which expresses what – for example, the Morgenthau Plan – looked to impose on post-war Germany (seeking to reduce Germany, with a pre-war population of 80 million to an impoverished 'pastoral' nation of 30 million). Cultural erasure is more than genocide. Genocide is an unfortunate reality, a human propensity which has occurred in the past, is occurring in the present, and will occur periodically (unless finished by the 'final genocide', or biocide) in the future. Trying to weasel our way around it through an absence of language is a trait which has hard-wired itself, through denial and distractive fig-leaves, into elite cultures of complicity and impunity. Another such word is 'terrorism'. Winston Churchill and his bomber commander Arthur Harris had no doubt about the meaning of that word. So did the victims of their fiery terror, in Hamburg and many other cities. Now the representation of 'terror' through this word is restricted to a selected subset of resistance organisations. Winston Churchill understood that meaning of 'terrorism', too. His friend – Walter Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne – was assassinated in Cairo by fascist Lehi terrorists. (Re Lehi, see Stern: The Man, the Gang and the State, Al Jazeera 13 Aug 2024.) Appeasement This word may be used improperly, as a damaging misrepresentation of a political opponent, or avoided when it is most needed. (Grayling, in Among the Dead Cities, concludes that the Churchill/Harris holocausts on German cities, were in large part an ineffective appeasement of Josef Stalin.) Here's a correct recent use of the a-word: "With such uncontrolled power and aggressive posture, it seems Israel is seeking submission [in Syria and the rest of the 'Middle East' region]. The Trump administration's approach of solving crises by appeasing Israel will entrench this doctrine and push the region into further instability." (Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman in lieu of Al Jazeera ban by Israel, Al Jazeera News, about 8:05am NZ time, 20 July 2025. She 'hit the nail on the head'.) Could someone who has been represented as an 'appeaser' ever be a justifiable winner of a Nobel Peace Prize? I think the answer is a 'qualified yes'; just as good fishers sometimes have to appease their quarry before reeling them in. But, I think, neither an appeaser of Netanyahu nor Stalin could qualify for that prize. In reality, appeasement has to be done sometimes. New Zealand dairy owners have been routinely asked to appease violent robbers. And, in the movies, when someone points a gun at someone and says "hands up", the victim almost always appeases the gunner, regardless of their moral position. 'Appeasement' is a representation that's both underused and overused; a representation designed to construct a deception. If we cannot distinguish between representation and reality, label and labelled, then we stand to become victims to all kinds of mischievous narratives. Cost of Living The Government and the Opposition both frame the alleged "cost of living crisis" as a problem of inflation rather than deflation. Indeed, the linguistic minefield around economic policy is so problematic that a whole separate article is required to examine it. The key issue for us here is that the 'cost-of-living' framing – ie representation – in government circles is that the economy must be in an inflationary phase and therefore a deflationary policy is required. However, when the New Zealand public complain about the 'cost-of-living' they are saying that prices are too high compared to their incomes; it's an 'affordability crisis', not an inflationary crisis. And clearly the deflationary retrenchment policies – meaning policies to slow the economy down, to instigate a recession – pursued by the government are a critical part of the problem. The government's solution is to represent its actual class-war anti-growth policies as 'pro-growth' policies. And the Labour Opposition completely falls for the way the government frames New Zealand's structural recession as a 'cost-of-living' crisis. At present, New Zealand has near-record-high (north!?) 'terms of trade', only slightly below the record highs of 2022. New Zealand's terms of trade are now 50% higher than they were in 2000, and nearly 100% higher than the dramatic lows of the mid-1970s and early 1980s. As when Brian Easton wrote In Stormy Seas: The Post-War New Zealand Economy in 1997, the terms of trade represented the stormy waves, some bigger than others; and the favourable crests of those waves were when New Zealand expected (and generally got) economic good times. The troughs during the Muldoon years – not Robert Muldoon's fault; he never had the power to shift the tides of a stormy world – were very difficult times for Aotearoa New Zealand. In these terms the twenty-first century has been the 'best of times' for New Zealand, and the 2020s the 'very best of times'. Yet they are also the 'worst of times', to reference Charles Dickens. (Many of our most potent truths come from literature.) New Zealand, like other countries, has experienced economic cycles and economic shocks. Through my lifetime one consistent cycle has been the short 'trade-cycle', on average about 32 months. We are near the crest of that cycle now. The last quarterly growth peak, September 2022, led to an annual growth peak of 4% in the year-to June 2023. Based on the usual timing of the trade cycle, June 2025 will be the next quarterly peak. It will not be pretty, if that will be the best GDP data that we get on this government's watch. Any positivity when the next GDP figures are released in September, in colloquial jargon, may be characterised as a 'dead-cat bounce'. The government is undertaking structural retrenchment under the cover of a 'cost-of-living crisis' that means very different things to different people. Insinuating that New Zealand has a crisis of inflation – taken as a synonym for 'overspending' – when it has a very real crisis of structural recession and growing unemployment, is a particularly cynical misrepresentation of reality. Conclusion We too easily fall for these misrepresentations of reality; for representations that, in our minds, become a reality like treacle; sets of overlayed representations which play tricks on our minds. That makes us, and our political Opposition parties, quite unable to form coherent critiques of the too many misrepresented and problematic things that are happening to us. In New Zealand, although we are allegedly at the 'bottom of the world', in the Far Southeast (fortunately not in the incorrectly named 'Middle East'!). We also pride ourselves as being in the West and in the Global North. What is genuinely true is that Aotearoa New Zealand is geographically very far from most of the rest of humanity. We could use that birds-eye bottom-of-the-world detached perspective to see past the labels, the frames, the self-serving narratives. We don't have to play 'silly buggers' when the rest of the world is so-doing; we can cut through the 'bullshit', to use some more colloquial jargon. We can be the North Star of the South. PS. With escalating geopolitical wars, and plenty of undertested nuclear weapons in the hands of numerous political sociopaths, being at 'the bottom of the world' may not be such a great place to be. All of us of a certain age remember British, American, and French nuclear testing in Oceania. Some, a bit older, remember nuclear testing in Japan. ------------- Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Keith Rankin Political Economist, Scoop Columnist Keith Rankin taught economics at Unitec in Mt Albert since 1999. An economic historian by training, his research has included an analysis of labour supply in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and has included estimates of New Zealand's GNP going back to the 1850s. Keith believes that many of the economic issues that beguile us cannot be understood by relying on the orthodox interpretations of our social science disciplines. Keith favours a critical approach that emphasises new perspectives rather than simply opposing those practices and policies that we don't like. Keith retired in 2020 and lives with his family in Glen Eden, Auckland.
Scoop
30 minutes ago
- Scoop
Space, Spies, Stalking, And Extra Sittings
, Editor: The House The House took urgency on Tuesday evening which extended Tuesday's sitting until lunchtime Wednesday, then it returned on Thursday morning - that time as an extended sitting. As a result, most select committees are not meeting this week. Some have had to cancel their plans or squeeze some work in at lunchtime. With a few exceptions - and excepting bills that committees are given special permission to consider outside normal rules - Select Committees and the House cannot sit at the same time. Spare a thought for submitters and those who schedule them, who have had their plans upended again by urgency. The opposition did ask the Leader of the House last Thursday whether there would be urgency this week but was told to "wait and see". Last minute reveals of urgency are not unusual. Extended sittings (like Thursday morning) are signposted a week or two in advance, but usually little warning is given for urgency. Bills under urgency Tuesday's urgency was aimed at two bills - one relating to space and the other about international crime cooperation. The Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Amendment Bill isn't so much about space as it is about the ground bases for satellites or other extra-terrestrial objects. The Minister for Space, Judith Collins was the bill's sponsor. "This bill introduces a new authorisation regime for ground-based space infrastructure. Until now, these activities have not been subject to a dedicated regulatory framework." The reason for the bill, revealed in the second reading debate, upped the interest. "During the past five years, there have been several deceptive efforts by foreign actors to establish and/or use ground-based space infrastructure in New Zealand to harm our national security. They have deliberately disguised their affiliations to foreign militaries and misrepresented their intentions. To date, these risks have been managed through non-regulatory measures, including relying on the goodwill of ground-based infrastructure operators. These measures are no longer enough." That sounds like the pitch for a thriller just begging to be written. This was a bill that the parties largely agreed on. They even agreed that urgency was reasonable, but opposition speakers complained about the push-push pace of urgency after the Committee Stage, as governing-party MPs worked to abbreviate what Labour's Rachel Brooking called "very civil, thoughtful debates." The pace really started to drag once the Budapest Convention and Related Matters Legislation Amendment Bill was the focus. Its sponsor, Minister of Justice, Paul Goldsmith said the bill "aligns New Zealand's laws with the requirements of the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime, also known as the Budapest Convention. The Budapest Convention is the first binding international treaty on cyber-crime, and it aligns members' national laws relating to computer-related offences, improves investigative techniques, and streamlines evidence sharing." Labour supported the bill but played hardball in the Committee Stage, concerned about the possibility of the convention leading to New Zealand accidentally helping countries that don't share our values control their citizens. Duncan Webb put it like this. "We need to be vigilant that we are not being unwittingly used to further either political ends or to allow a foreign state to pursue a proceeding against something that might be a crime in a foreign nation, but it certainly isn't a crime in New Zealand and shouldn't be something for which criminal sanction follows." The opposition made the Committee Stage of the Budapest bill last through most of the rest of Wednesday. The government's original plan was to pass it through all remaining stages, but late on Wednesday evening, they abandoned it after the Committee Stage and moved on to their other priorities. The Budapest Convention Bill was left with just a third reading to complete. Those were not the only interesting bills under discussion this week. Three other bills are of particular interest, relating to Health, Secondary Legislation, and Stalking. Other key bills - Health Tuesday saw the first reading of the Healthy Futures (Pae Ora) Amendment Bill which will now be considered by the Health Select Committee. Among its measures, that bill enacts health targets, and also alters or removes Māori consultation and obligations from the health administration. The Minister of Health, Simeon Brown described his bill succinctly. "This bill is about cutting through bureaucracy, restoring accountability, and most importantly, putting patients first." Opposition MPs had numerous gripes including this one from Dr. Tracey McLellan, regarding bringing Health New Zealand under the public service obligation for staff neutrality. "That is a chilling thing to do. Frontline health workers who have a professional obligation, an ethical and a legal obligation to call out things that they see in their professional practice. It is not political, it is professional, and they should not, in any way, shape, or form, have this hanging over them, this concept of-the misuse of-public service neutrality." Other key bills - Regulation Also on Tuesday, the Legislation Amendment Bill had a first reading and now heads to the Justice Committee for public feedback. The Legislation Amendment Bill has been in development for a few years, and among its aims are making secondary legislation (e.g. regulations) more easily accessible and more likely to be pruned once obsolete. Secondary legislation includes all of the various kinds of laws that don't come directly from a piece of legislation but from power that legislation delegates to ministers, ministries, agencies, councils etc. There is much more secondary legislation than primary legislation but it isn't as easy to search or access. Primary legislation is all stored on a legislation website managed by the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO); currently secondary legislation is not. In debate, Labour's Camilla Belich observed that, "the main big change will be the single point of access that it will allow to secondary legislation. The point of the work that we do is to try and make sure that when either primary legislation or secondary legislation has an impact on people's lives, they have access to that. It shouldn't be something which is hidden away and it shouldn't be something which is difficult to find." Don't confuse the Legislation Amendment Bill with ACT's Regulatory Standards Bill which is also going through parliament and which appears to be trying to do something rather different. The Regulatory Standards Bill has influenced the shape of the Legislation Amendment Bill though, which Opposition MPs were unhappy with in debate, despite supporting the wider effort. Other key bills - Stalking The Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill had its second reading late on Wednesday. It creates a new offence specific to stalking and harassment and the myriad forms that these can take. It includes indirect harassment like undermining reputation, opportunities or relationships. The bill itself is a fascinating read as an example of how much cleverness is required to effectively draft law for crime that is, by definition, quite nebulous. Policy staff at Justice and legal drafters at PCO may have taken to heart the idiom 'to catch a criminal, you have to think like one'. National minister Erica Stanford outlined changes made to the bill as a result of public feedback to the Select Committee. "To be convicted of the new offence, the prosecution will need to prove the person engaged in a pattern of behaviour towards their victim. The committee recommended a broader definition for the pattern of behaviour. The offence will now require two specified acts within two years, rather than three specified acts within one year. This broadens the pattern of behaviour by capturing fewer acts across a longer time frame. I agree that this change will better address strategies such as anniversary-based stalking..." "A further recommendation made by the committee was to add doxing to the list of "specified act". Doxing is the publication of personal information such as addresses or contact details, including whether a stalker claims to be their victim. It encourages third parties to contact, threaten, and intimidate the victim…" "The committee also added two further important amendments to the bill. Firstly, to allow the courts to order the destruction of intimate visual to allow a court to make restraining [orders], firearm prohibition [orders], and Harmful Digital Communications Act orders, where a defendant is discharged without convictions." One more for the road - Espionage There are other bills of note on the Order Paper that the government would have hoped to progress, but progress this week has been slow. Opposition MPs have taken their time working through bills in the committee of the whole House, whether they support them or not. This will likely annoy the government, but thoroughly testing bills is the job of all MPs in the House. That sluggish pace meant the second reading of the Parliament Bill also slipped down the Order Paper (along with the third reading of the Budapest Convention Bill). One bill the House may reach is worth noting. The Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill would be a second espionage-related bill for the week. This one hopes to plug gaps in the law around things like treason, espionage and even incitement to mutiny. *RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk. Enjoy our articles or podcast at RNZ.
1News
32 minutes ago
- 1News
NZ passport redesign to have English words above te reo Māori
New Zealand's passport is being redesigned to place the English words above the te reo Māori text — with the new look being rolled out atl the end of 2027. Since 2021, newly issued passports have had the words "Uruwhenua Aotearoa" printed in silver directly above "New Zealand Passport". Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden today confirmed the positions of the text would be swapped in future to reflect the coalition's commitment to using English first "as it is the language most widely spoken by the New Zealand public". She said the redesign – which would be unveiled later this year – was being done as part of a scheduled security upgrade, ensuring no additional cost to passport-holders. Passports with the new design would start being issued only after the existing stock of booklets had been used up. ADVERTISEMENT A spokesperson for Internal Affairs told RNZ the department was working towards an "end-of-2027 release date" for the updated passport. The ACT Party celebrated van Velden's move on social media, saying the change would "restore English before te reo Māori – without costing taxpayers". The Department of Internal Affairs, in 2021, promoted the passport's existing "unique design" as one to "be proud of" and highlighted the more prominent use of te reo Māori both on the cover and throughout the book. The change came as part of a deliberate push by the coalition to give English primacy over te reo Māori in official communications. New Zealand First's coalition agreement with National stipulated that public service departments had their primary name in English and be required to communicate "primarily in English" except for entities specifically related to Māori. It also included an as-yet-unfulfilled commitment to make English an official language of New Zealand. On Wednesday, NZ First leader and Foreign Minister Winston Peters objected to the Green Party's use of the term "Aotearoa New Zealand" during Parliament's Question Time. ADVERTISEMENT "No such country exists," Peters said. "The name of this country in all the documents, and the membership of the United Nations, is New Zealand. "We are not going to have somebody unilaterally – without consultation, without consulting the New Zealand people – change this country's name." Speaker Gerry Brownlee insisted Peters respond to the question in a "reasonable fashion" and pointed to his ruling earlier this year that it was not inappropriate for MPs to refer to "Aotearoa New Zealand". "The New Zealand Geographic Board also recognises and uses the term 'Aotearoa New Zealand'," Brownlee told MPs. "It would be utterly ridiculous for this House to ban such use if the Geographic Board itself is using that." Returning to the issue yesterday, Peters requested Brownlee reconsider on the basis that the Geographic Board had no jurisdiction to alter the country's name. But Brownlee was unmoved. ADVERTISEMENT He noted that the word "Aotearoa" was regularly used as a name of the country, including on New Zealand passports, which he said Peters would be familiar with — given his role as Minister of Foreign Affairs. "He would have – over some five years or more – presented the New Zealand passport at various passport stations around the world and never questioned the fact that our passport has the word Aotearoa on the front of it," Brownlee said. "I'd further say that through all of those years ... there has been not a syllable, not a sound, not a mutter, not a murmur, no condemnation whatsoever from a government he was part of. "That is the end of the matter."
