A petition two years in the making and calling for medal recognition for New Zealanders who provide humanitarian service overseas will go to Parliament soon after being presented to Whangarei MP Shane Reti.
Dr Reti received the petition from former Red Cross worker Alan Ward.
Mr Ward started the process several years ago after serving overseas and being aware of many other New Zealand aid workers who had never received a medal of recognition.
"It is simply not the New Zealand way to not acknowledge New Zealanders who provide valuable humanitarian service in dangerous and disaster situations overseas," he said.
"The current honorific system only provides medal recognition if recipients are in a New Zealand government sponsored programme at the same time as the NZ Defence Force. However, many non-government agencies deploy staff into emergency situations overseas before, after and without NZDF involvement."
Mr Ward approached Dr Reti in 2015 and together they have collaborated on a parliamentary petition which has support from NGOs including Red Cross, World Vision, NZ Police, Fire Service and the RSA.
"All of the major non-government agencies that I approached were immediately and enthusiastically supportive of the petition," Dr Reti said.
"The Australians have had the Humanitarian Overseas Service Medal for exactly this purpose for many years and we would look to model on that."
He said the signatures on the petition were "representative" of what may be about 250,000 New Zealanders.
"For example, we have the support of RSA and they have 120,000 members, and Fire is 60,000 and so on," Dr Reti said.
He will now pass the petition to the Clerk of the House who will apply eligibility criteria and decide if it will be accepted as a parliamentary petition.
If it is, it will then be accepted by the house and passed into the select committee process which will then apply parliamentary scrutiny and open it up to wide community consultation.
"This will be the time for the people of New Zealand to make comments and contributions. At the end of that process the committee will then make a recommendation to Parliament," he said.