New Zealand’s parliament unanimously passed the Citizenship Western Samoa Restoration Amendment Bill, which provides a path to regain New Zealand citizenship for Samoans who were stripped of it by a 1982 act of parliament. New Zealand administered Samoa between 1920 and 1961 under an international mandate. In 1982, the Privy Council ruled that Western Samoans born between 1924 and 1948 were British subjects and that from 1 January 1949 they and their descendants had become New Zealand citizens. The 1982 legislation overruled this decision and denied citizenship to a wide category of Samoan people in New Zealand. Samoans born between 1924 and 1948 who were present in New Zealand in 1982 may now apply to regain New Zealand Citizenship. To regain it, those affected must now apply and prove they were present in the country in 1982. Representatives of the Samoan community praised the law, the result of decades of activist pressure, for partially righting a historical wrong, but criticized it for not benefitting descendants of those affected or completely overturning the 1982 act of parliament.

Sources: Pacific Islands Times, New Zealand Herald 

The New Zealand government introduced a bill to ‘reinterpret’ the country’s founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi, which was signed between more than 500 Maori chiefs and the British Crown in 1840. The introduction of the bill came at the behest of a junior partner of the governing coalition, the ACT New Zealand party, which argues the Treaty unfairly privileges Maori people and has drafted the bill as means of granting parliament the power to legally reinterpret the treaty. The rest of the governing coalition has agreed to support ACT in initial votes on the bill but will not support it becoming law. The bill’s introduction has been met with large nationwide protests and parliamentary sessions have been twice disrupted by opposition MPs. Legal experts, including members of the ruling National Party, say that the introduction of the bill, which likely will not pass, will nonetheless damage relations between the party and the Maori community, and expect debates and public discussion to be fraught and exacerbate existing social divisions with unpredictable consequences. 

Sources: Reuters, Radio New Zealand, Public Services International 

New Zealand lawmakers unanimously passed a law on 10 October exempting victims of domestic violence from a mandatory two-year period of separation before they can divorce. Proponents of the law described it as removing a legal requirement that victims of domestic abuse remained “tethered” to their abusers until divorce proceedings could be finalized. The new law is intended to help deal with what lawmakers consider one of New Zealand’s most deeply rooted social problems. According to police, annual domestic violence investigations increased by 49 per cent between 2017 and 2023.

Sources: Associated Press, New Zealand Herald

New Zealand’s Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care found that nearly 1 in 3 children and adults placed under state care from 1950 to 2019 were subjected to abuse or torture. The report “detailed a litany of abuses in state and faith-based care, including rape, sterilization and electric shocks” and counted about 200,000 victims in the nation of 5.3 million. The report also found that Maori and New Zealanders with disabilities had been more vulnerable to abuse. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon apologized at a press conference on 24 July and promised an official state apology would follow on 12 November. The government promised reforms and plans to make financial redress to victims, which the report estimated would cost the state NZD 217 billion (USD 132 billion).

Sources: Reuters, Newsroom

Experts and legal academics described a July 2024 overview of the ruling coalition’s planned and implemented changes to policies affecting Maori in New Zealand as “chilling”, “dangerous”, and “the worst assault on Māori I’ve seen in my 40-year career.” To date the coalition has disestablished the Maori Health Authority, reduced Maori language use in public authorities, and revoked state support for “Section 27” background reports for offenders undergoing sentencing that were commonly used by Maori defendants. The laws and bills summarized by the Guardian newspaper covered six broad policy areas – health, treaty and language, justice, social and housing and education – that either explicitly or implicitly disproportionately impacted Maori New Zealanders. Maori account for 20 per cent of New Zealand’s population but make up 50 per cent of incarcerated people. Government representatives either declined or did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment.

Sources: The Guardian (1), The Guardian (2), Radio New Zealand

New Zealand’s ruling coalition has introduced a law that will require digital platform companies like Meta and X (formerly known as Twitter) to pay media outlets for news. The Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill is closely aligned with Australia’s News Media Bargaining Law and would force digital platforms to reach compensation deals with New Zealand media outlets. The bill comes after a long-running media financing crisis in the country that has seen increased media concentration and a significant reduction in the number of working journalists in the country.

Sources: Reuters, International IDEA, Radio New Zealand