Lawmakers in New Zealand have been told to stop complaining about the use of New Zealand’s Māori name, Aotearoa, in the country’s parliament.
This followed a complaint from the country’s deputy prime minister, Winston Peters, who asked the parliamentary speaker, Gerry Brownlee, to ban the use of the word in the New Zealand parliament.
Peters, who is part-Maori himself, objected to the use of “Aotearoa” by a Green MP, Ricardo Menendez March. March was born in Mexico and came to New Zealand in 2006.
Peters was quoted as saying: “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?”
Brownlee said that Aotearoa was a name that appeared on New Zealand passports and currency. He said: “If other members do not like certain words, they don’t have to use them. But it’s not a matter of order, and I don’t expect to have further points of order raised about it.”
In recent years Aotearoa has been increasingly used by people as another name for New Zealand. In 2022 the Māori Party launched a petition to officially change the name of the country to Aotearoa.
[Image: Archives New Zealand from New Zealand – Reconstruction of the Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, Marcus King, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51249748]