“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.”

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.

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.

  • @[email protected]
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    -2413 days ago

    If he’s the same Maori politician I’ve seen speaking on such subjects before, he doesn’t want Maoris to be treated with special privileges. He wants all people to be treated equally.

    Seems fair enough to me.

    • @[email protected]
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      1613 days ago

      The problem with what winston is fighting against is that Maori signed a treaty with the crown and Winston wants to remove all that they were promised.

      Its not about equal rights its about signing a founding document then backstabbing.