NZ lawmakers told to stop complaining about Māori name use in Parliament

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — The speaker of New Zealand ’s Parliament told lawmakers he would not consider further complaints about the use of the country’s Māori name, Aotearoa, in Parliament, after one lawmaker made a bid to have it banned.

“Aotearoa is regularly used as a name of New Zealand,” Speaker Gerry Brownlee said in a ruling on Tuesday at Parliament in Wellington. “It appears on our passports and it appears on our currency.”

The conflict over a word increasingly prominent in New Zealand life arose last month when one lawmaker objected to another’s use of the term. It reflects the way enthusiasm for the Indigenous language among New Zealanders of all ethnicities has at times prompted a backlash — including about what the country should be called. It was also the latest salvo in the so-called “culture war”-style friction between two political parties.

Ricardo Menéndez March, from the left-leaning Green Party, used the name Aotearoa during a question to a government minister. The composite word means “land of the long white cloud” in te reo Māori, the Māori language.

Winston Peters — who is deputy prime minister, foreign minister and leader of the populist party New Zealand First — objected in a point of order.

“Why is someone who applied to come to this country in 2006 allowed to ask a question of this parliament that changes this country’s name without the referendum and sanction of the New Zealand people?” Peters asked Brownlee. Menéndez March, who was born in Mexico, is a New Zealand citizen, which is a requirement for all lawmakers.

Peters asked Brownlee to bar use of the term Aotearoa in Parliament. On Tuesday, Brownlee said lawmakers were already permitted to address Parliament in any of New Zealand’s three official languages — English, te reo Māori and New Zealand Sign Language.

“That really is the end of the matter,” he said. Brownlee had earlier asked Menéndez March to consider using the phrase “Aotearoa New Zealand” to refer to the country, “to assist anyone who might not understand the term,” but said he would not require it.

“If other members do not like certain words, they don’t have to use them,” Brownlee said. “But it’s not a matter of order and I don’t expect to have further points of order raised about it.”

Peters told reporters that Brownlee was “wrong” and that he would not answer questions in which New Zealand was referred to as Aotearoa. Menéndez March did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other lawmakers refer to New Zealand by its Māori name. But it’s not the first time Peters and his party have fixed on Menéndez March.

In January, the Green Party complained to the Prime Minister and Brownlee after Peters’ deputy, Shane Jones, heckled during a Parliamentary debate with a remark about Mexicans — while Peters told two other Green lawmakers who immigrated to New Zealand that they should “show some gratitude” to the country.

Menéndez March denounced the comments as “outwardly racist and xenophobic.”

A flamboyant politician who is New Zealand’s longest-serving current lawmaker, Peters favors populist policies and has been decried before for remarks about Asian immigration to New Zealand. Peters, who is Māori, opposes initiatives intended to advance Māori people and language.

One former lawmaker, Peter Dunne, wrote in an opinion column in February that the squabble was more about New Zealand First shoring up its populist brand with supporters than it was about the language itself.

The Māori language is growing in popularity, after decades of advocacy by Māori leaders reversed its fortunes. Māori — who make up close to 20% of New Zealanders — were discouraged from speaking the language after British colonization, and by the turn of the 21st century it was expected to die out completely.

Individual words, such as Aotearoa, are now part of daily New Zealand conversation for many — including non-Māori. Some endorse an official moniker change for the country, which was named by a Dutch cartographer.

Opponents say that, before colonization, Māori did not have a collective term for the whole of New Zealand. Aotearoa was the name used for the country’s North Island.

The official name of the country can only be changed by law.