Famous Firsts

The government recognised the Māori (Tino Rangatiratanga) flag as the preferred national Māori flag.

While Kiwis had high expectations of their rowing squad at the Beijing Olympics, few expected identical twins Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell to successfully defend the double sculls title they had won in Athens in 2004.

Twenty-nine-year-old Moana Mackey entered the House of Representatives as a Labour Party list MP. She joined her mother, Janet Mackey, who had been a Labour MP since 1993. They were the first mother and daughter to serve together in New Zealand’s Parliament.

Georgina Beyer won the Wairarapa electorate for Labour in 1999 by a margin of 3033 votes.

Beatrice Faumuina became the first New Zealander to win an event at a World Athletics Championships when she threw the discus 66.82 m at Athens in 1997.

Dr Penny Jamieson’s rise through church ranks was rapid. The first women were ordained to the Anglican priesthood in New Zealand in 1977. Jamieson was ordained and appointed to a Wellington parish in 1985.

The landmark Te Maori exhibition was a milestone in the Māori cultural renaissance. Featuring traditional Māori artwork, it toured the United States between 1984 and 1986 before returning to New Zealand for a nationwide tour in 1987.

Ann Hercus became New Zealand’s first Minister of Women’s Affairs following the election of the fourth Labour government. 

In 1984, Susan Devoy became the first New Zealander to win the women’s title at the prestigious British Open squash tournament, the ‘Wimbledon of Squash’.

Lorraine Downes became a household name overnight and spent the next 12 months travelling the world accompanied by a chaperone, carrying out the duties of Miss Universe

As well as a record six individual world titles between 1968 and 1979, including three in a row from 1968 to 1970, Mauger also won the long track world championship three times between 1971 and 1976.

Tinsley became the first woman to be appointed as Professor of Astronomy at Yale University in the United States

Chasing 137 for victory in the first test at the Basin Reserve in Wellington, England was bowled out for 64, with Richard Hadlee taking 6 for 26.

The Labour government created the Tribunal to hear Māori claims of breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi. It has evolved ever since, adapting to the demands of claimants, government and public.

John Walker became history’s first sub-3:50 miler, running 3:49.4 at Gothenburg, Sweden.

American Lynne Cox swam from the North Island to the South in 12 hours 7 minutes. The fourth person to do so, she battled heavy seas and strong winds.

Whetu Tirikātene-Sullivan became the first female Māori Cabinet minister when she was sworn in as Minister of Tourism in Norman Kirk’s third Labour government

In 2008 the well-known sports writer Joseph Romanos chose the victory of the 1972 rowing eight as the best team performance by New Zealanders at an Olympic Games.

New Zealand’s women cricketers achieved their first test victory at the 17th attempt. They had lost seven and drawn nine of their previous tests, all against either England or Australia.

Long-haired Christchurch mountaineers John Glasgow and Peter Gough became the first people known to have scaled the 2000-m Caroline Face of Aoraki/Mt Cook. They declared it a ‘triumph for the hippies’.

New Zealand schoolchildren received free milk between 1937 and 1967. The first Labour government introduced the scheme – a world first – to improve the health of young New Zealanders (and make use of surplus milk).

Pirate station Radio Hauraki broadcast its first scheduled transmission from beyond New Zealand’s 3-mile territorial limit.

Sir Guy Powles was New Zealand's first Ombudsman. In a loose translation from Swedish, the word means ‘grievance person’. The office was created to investigate complaints about government departments and other national public sector organisations.

Pioneering heart surgeon Brian Barratt-Boyes performed the surgery using a heart-lung bypass machine. The procedure, at Green Lane Hospital in Auckland, was carried out on an 11-year-old girl with a hole in her heart.

Sir Edmund Hillary’s New Zealand team became the first to reach the South Pole overland since Robert Falcon Scott in 1912, and the first to do so in motor vehicles.

New Zealand was already 3–0 down in the series going into the fourth and final test at Eden Park in Auckland. Their West Indies opponents included household names such as Gary Sobers and Everton Weekes, who had broken batting records for a New Zealand season.

When mabel Howard was appointed minister of health and minister in charge of child welfare, she became the first woman to serve as a Cabinet minister in New Zealand.

Jean Batten left for New Zealand from Kent, England, at 4.20 a.m. on 5 October 1936. Despite the early hour, a large media contingent gathered to see her off; Batten was already famous for her successful solo flights from England to Australia in May 1934, and to South America in November 1935.

Twenty-two-year-old pilot E.F. ('Teddy') Harvie and his female passenger, 18-year-old Trevor Hunter, set a record for the longest flight within New Zealand in a single day. They completed the 1880-km journey in 16 hours 10 minutes.

The Labour Party’s Elizabeth McCombs became New Zealand’s first female Member of Parliament, winning a by-election in the Lyttelton seat caused by the death of her husband, James McCombs.

From the family sheep station in Shag Valley, East Otago, amateur radio operator Frank Bell sent a groundbreaking Morse code transmission that was received and replied to by London-based amateur operator Cecil Goyder.

Following a US study tour by Frank Milner, the rector of Waitaki Boys’ High School in Ōamaru, the Education Department began applying the Terman Group Test of Mental Ability to all first-year post-primary school students

In a world first, 30 women began training as dental nurses for the state-funded School Dental Service.

Captain Euan Dickson completed the first air crossing of Cook Strait, flying a 110-hp Le Rhone Avro from Christchurch to Upper Hutt with the first air mail between the South and North Islands.

Violet Waldron was New Zealand’s first female Olympian, and part of New Zealand’s first Olympic team of four. She competed in freestyle swimming in the 1920 Antwerp Summer Olympics.

In what may have been a world first for a capital crime, the conviction of Dennis Gunn was based almost entirely on fingerprint evidence.

Freda du Faur was the first female to complete the ascent of Aoraki/Mt Cook.

The 'Parliament Special' travelled over a makeshift track in the central section of the still-unfinished main trunk line. It carried MPs north to greet the American navy's 'Great White Fleet'.

For the first time in New Zealand’s electoral history, registered voters who were away from their electorate on polling day were able to cast a ‘special’ absentee vote at any polling booth in the country.

The first fully representative New Zealand rugby team to tour the northern hemisphere was known as the ‘Originals’. They won 34 of their 35 matches and popularised both the haka and the ‘All Blacks’ nickname.

Ellen Dougherty was one of the world’s first state-registered nurses. Grace Neill, Assistant Inspector in the Department of Asylums and Hospitals, advocated state registration of trained nurses, which was introduced by the Nurses’ Registration Act 1901.

The first motion pictures known to have been taken in New Zealand were made by photographer W.H. Bartlett for the entrepreneur Alfred Whitehouse, who in 1895 had imported the colony’s first ‘kinetoscope’.

A world first, the act gave a small means-tested pension to elderly men and women with few assets who were ‘of good moral character’ and were leading a ‘sober and reputable life’. It was one of the major achievements of Richard Seddon’s Liberal government.

Following the passage of the Female Law Practitioners Act 1896, Ethel Benjamin became the first woman to be admitted as a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of New Zealand.

At 1.30 on the afternoon of Christmas Day 1894, three young men became the first to stand atop Aoraki/Mt Cook, the highest mountain in the colony.

Just over three weeks after New Zealand women became the first in the world to vote in a national parliamentary election, voting was held in the four Māori electorates.

By becoming mayor of Onehunga, Auckland, Elizabeth Yates struck another blow for women’s rights in local-body polls held the day after the first general election in which women could vote.

New Zealand women went to the polls for the first time, just 10 weeks after the governor signed the Electoral Act 1893, making this country the first in in which women had the right to vote in parliamentary elections.

New Zealand’s electoral law had been changed so that no one could vote in more than one general electoral district. This ended the long-standing practice of ‘plural voting’ by those who owned property in more than one electorate.

The first Labour Day celebrated the struggle for an eight-hour working day. Parades in the main centres were attended by several thousand trade union members and supporters.

Young surveyor William Quill needed only basic climbing equipment, including a billhook and an alpenstock, to scale the side of the ‘great Sutherland waterfall’, which cascades down for 580 m near Milford Sound.

The privately organised rugby team was the first to wear the silver fern and an all-black uniform.

In February 1887 newspapers reported Ngāti Tūwharetoa’s proposal to ‘gift’ the British Crown the mountaintops of Tongariro, Ngāuruhoe and Ruapehu to form the basis of a national park.

Helen Connon was the first woman in the British Empire to gain her Master of Arts degree. Her academic career started with edcuation in Dunedin, New Zealand.

The first public girls’ secondary school in the southern hemisphere was Otago Girls’ High School, which opened eight years after the local public boys’ high school.

The first game of football in New Zealand played under Rugby rules may have been a match between Whanganui Town and Countr at suburban Aramoho on Saturday 19 June 1869

On 2 November 1868, New Zealand discarded its numerous local times and became the first country to regulate its time in relation to Greenwich mean time (GMT).

The Maori Representation Act 1867 established four Māori seats in the House of Representatives, initially for a period of five years. The act gave the vote to all Māori males aged 21 and over.

After 6½ years of construction, it took just 6½ minutes for the first trainload of passengers to speed through the 2.6- km tunnel linking the Canterbury plains to the port of Lyttelton.

Dunedin's Royal Princess Theatre was the venue for a performance of Donizetti's Daughter of the regiment by the visiting English Opera Troupe, supplemented by local performers.

Pencarrow Head lighthouse, at the entrance to Wellington Harbour, was lit for the first time amid great celebration.

The simple building measured about 10m x 6m and included an area for Māori students to sleep and a cordoned-off platform for teachers and Pākehā students

At Hohi (Oihi) Beach in the Bay of Islands, Samuel Marsden preached in English to a largely Māori gathering, launching New Zealand’s first Christian mission.

Moehanga of Ngāpuhi became the first recorded Māori visitor to England when the whaler Ferret berthed in London. Moehanga (Te Mahanga) had boarded the Ferret  when it visited the Bay of Islands late in 1805.

In an attempt to concoct a preventative against scurvy, Captain James Cook brewed a batch of beer on Resolution Island in Dusky Sound, using rimu branches and leaves.

Abel Tasman’s Dutch East India Company expedition had the first known European contact with Māori. It did not go well.