The Minister for Internal Affairs has confirmed the New Zealand passport is in the process of being changed to have English appear above the te reo Māori text.
The current passport, which came into effect in 2021, has Uruwhenua Aotearoa etched in a silver text, above the term New Zealand Passport.
When asked about the passport, Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden said “we are making updates to that”.
“One thing I have been really conscious of, with the English-first policy with the passports, is that we do have quite a large batch of passports that are still unused.
“While the security upgrades are under way, and the design of the new passport will have English first, we need to get through the backlog of those older passports first.”
The Act Party posted to social media about the changes, saying it will restore English before te reo, without costing taxpayers:
Thanks to @BrookevanVelden, the next security update to the NZ passport will restore English before te reo Māori – without costing taxpayers. pic.twitter.com/jaraPuCFPh
— ACT New Zealand (@actparty) July 24, 2025
Speaker Gerry Brownlee reiterated a ruling on the use of the term Aotearoa in Parliament yesterday, in which he said it was regularly used as a name of New Zealand, and appears on our passports and currency.
The question of the use of the term Aotearoa comes after debate sparked by New Zealand First leader Winston Peters.
Speaking before yesterday’s Question Time, Brownlee mentioned Peters’ work on passports as Foreign Affairs Minister.
“In his time serving New Zealand, in the capacity as Minister of Foreign Affairs, he would’ve, over some five years or more, presented the New Zealand passport at various passport stations around the world and never had questioned the fact that our passport has the word Aotearoa on the front of it. It was always a New Zealand passport despite the use of that word.
“That is the end of the matter.”
Earlier this week, Peters was asked about the Government’s work to protect the marine environment of “Aotearoa New Zealand”, following a recent United Nations conference on oceans.
Peters responded that he had attended the UN summit, but “no such country turned up, nor is such a country a member of the United Nations”.
He was asked about the remarks after Parliament’s Question Time concluded, to which he responded that people have no right “unilaterally, like some sort of arrogant bureaucrat, to change the country’s name without consulting the New Zealand people”.
Peters then asked what the term Aotearoa was doing on Government documents, as “it’s not the name of New Zealand”.
In 2021, during the release of the now-current passport, the Department of Internal Affairs said, “The silver fern and Coat of Arms remain, but te reo Māori now appears first on the cover and throughout the book.”
The passport also came with security features, making it one of the most technologically advanced passports in the world.
Service delivery and operations deputy chief executive, Maria Robertson, said at the time it had a unique design that “we can all be proud of”.
The move to put te reo Māori first was also applauded by the Māori Language Commission on social media, with a “Ka rawe!”
Azaria Howell is a multimedia reporter working from Parliament’s press gallery. She joined NZME in 2022 and became a Newstalk ZB political reporter in late 2024, with a keen interest in public service agency reform and government spending.