New Zealand’s parliament unanimously approved a law to grant legal personhood to the mountain Taranaki Maunga as part of the Treaty of Waitangi settlement process. In practice, this means the mountain and surrounding national park, Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki, will have the same rights and responsibilities of a legal person, and the lands themselves will be jointly managed by Crown representatives and the eight Maori iwi who historically inhabited the area. The decision comes after nine years of petitioning and negotiations between Taranaki iwi and the New Zealand government. The mountain is the third natural feature to be granted legal personhood in the country, and the status is intended to act as restitution for disposed Maori communities, preserve traditional use of the land, and conserve the native ecosystem.

Sources: Radio New Zealand, Jurist

The Fast-Track Approvals Bill passed its third and final reading in Parliament on 17 December. The bill provides for a ‘fast-track’ for the approval of development projects deemed by a civil servant committee to be of regional or national importance and names 149 projects for initial consideration. The bill was criticized by environmental groups and the parliamentary opposition for excluding environmental considerations and relevant state agencies from the streamlined process, for prohibiting public, expert, or civil society comment, and for failing to consider conflicts of interest both in selecting committee members and in the list of initial projects. After months of debate and sizable protests in June, the bill was passed quickly in December with limited information about the included projects available to either the public or to parliament; documents explaining the 149 included projects were not available to MPs until 72 hours before the third and final vote. The bill will formally become law when signed by New Zealand’s Governor-General.

Sources: Radio New Zealand, New Zealand Herald, The Guardian

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