New Zealand First’s stack of publicly announced Member’s Bills has grown yet again, with the party today proposing legislation to make “New Zealand” the official name of the country in law.
The legislation – which still needs to be picked from the ballot of Member’s Bills – comes in response to the party’s unease over the use of “Aotearoa”, including in Parliament.
“The vast majority of New Zealanders are shocked at this insidious creep of misguided and misinformed cultural history of the name ‘Aotearoa’,” leader Winston Peters said on Friday.
“Any true historian or cultural expert would know that it was never the original Māori name for New Zealand – and we should not allow it to be misused for cultural virtue signalling.”
The bill says that while New Zealand “appears in law, treaties and constitutional documents, its position as the official name of this country has never been affirmatively declared in law”.
“Inconsistency in recent years in the way public agencies and officials describe the country – including partial or informal use of other names has created uncertainty regarding the legal foundation for making those choices.”
It’s the eighth Member’s Bill the party has announced this year, but due to the rules of Parliament, NZ First is only able to have four in the ballot at any one time.
Only MPs who aren’t ministers – NZ First has four backbenchers – can have Member’s Bills and they can only have one in the ballot at a time.
This has meant the party has had to shuffle out several of the bills it has previously announced, but which remain on NZ First’s website as “Our Member’s Bills”.
For example, the “Conscience Acts Referendums Bill”, which was revealed in March to remove conscience votes in Parliament and instead require some particular legislation to go to a national public referendum, no longer appears on Parliament’s website.
It was previously held in the name of NZ First MP Jamie Arbuckle. But he now has a bill protecting New Zealanders’ right to use physical currency.
Other bills to pulled out recently include a bill to have a binding referendum when deciding whether to add fluoride to drinking water, one to remove diversity, equity and inclusion aspects from the public service, and another to improve access to palliative care.
In some instances, the bills have been overtaken by events. For example, the Government’s Public Service Amendment Bill, which this week passed its first reading, intends to remove diversity provisions.
When the party announced a Member’s Bill to clarify the definition of a woman and man in law, it removed another bill that would fine people who use a single-sex toilet not matching their own sex. Peters said the new proposal addressed the issue more comprehensively.
The party says if it could have all of its bills in the ballot at once, it would. Those not currently in the ballot, but which have been announced, remain current policy and could be returned.
The party’s MP Andy Foster has been the sponsor of many of the bills, before they have then either been picked from the ballot, transferred to another MP or removed.
For example, earlier this year, his bill to stop banks withdrawing services from clients for “woke” reasons was picked from the ballot and began going through the parliamentary process.
This meant he could add another to the ballot, which ended up being the bill to remove diversity elements from law.
Eventually, however, this was dropped and he picked up another requiring government buildings to only display the official flag of New Zealand.
But after the resignation of NZ First’s Tanya Unkovich, this bill was transferred from Foster to new MP Dr David Wilson. Foster now has the bill about the country’s name.
The four bills currently in the ballot for NZ First are:
The newest bill comes after several showdowns between Peters and Parliament’s Speaker Gerry Brownlee over the use of “Aotearoa” in Parliament. Peters has bristled when other MPs have used it in questions.
In March, Brownlee ruled “Aotearoa” was “regularly used” as a name for the country including by the country’s geographic board. He noted it appeared on the country’s passport and currency, and Parliament’s rules allowed MPs to use English, te reo Māori or sign language.
Peters subsequently told the Herald that Brownlee was “wrong” as the matter had “never gone to the people of this country”.
The NZ First leader raised the issue again last week, leading Brownlee to reiterate his previous comments.
Brownlee said: “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.”
Following that, Minister for Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden confirmed the New Zealand passport would eventually be updated to have English appear before the te reo Māori text.
In a release on Friday morning, Peters said “a bunch of unelected bureaucrats, officials, government departments and politicians trying to change our country’s name by stealth – with no permission or consent from the people”.
“The ‘New Zealand (Name of State) Bill’ confirms that ‘New Zealand’ is our country’s official name, and it is only parliament and the people, not bureaucrats, government departments, or officials, that have the authority to make decisions about the name of the country.”
NZ First’s coalition agreement with National includes a commitment about not changing the country’s name.
“Commit that in the absence of a referendum, our Government will not change the official name of New Zealand.”
Jamie Ensor is a political reporter in the NZ Herald press gallery team based at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. In 2025, he was a finalist for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.