Nanaia Mahuta will be foreign minister and the first woman to do the job

Nanaia Mahuta will become New Zealand's foreign affairs minister, the first woman to take the job.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern promoted Mahuta, an MP for Hauraki-Waikato who has spent more than two decades in Parliament, to the job on Monday when announcing the new Labour Government’s Cabinet.

Mahuta currently holds ministerial positions in local government, Māori development, and an associate portfolio in trade. She will retain the local government job and will keep an associate role in Māori development.

Mahuta was an unexpected choice for the position, which became vacant after NZ First leader and current Foreign Minister Winston Peters lost the 2020 election. Many within the Parliamentary precinct expected senior ministers Andrew Little or David Parker to take the role.

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Ardern said Mahuta would be the first woman to take the foreign affairs role, and had demonstrated her ability to build relationships when working in the associate trade position.

“She is someone who builds fantastic relationships very, very quickly, and that is one of the key jobs in a foreign affairs role,” Ardern said.

“You only need to look at the difficult work that she has had to conduct over, for instance, her local government portfolio and that to me demonstrates those diplomacy skills that we need to represent New Zealand on the world stage.”

Ardern said as prime minister she worked closely with the foreign minister and she had an “excellent working relationship” with Mahuta.

Mahuta said Labour’s Māori MPs – five had become ministers in the reshuffle – were “very proud to have such a diverse group of new ministers and ministers continuing in new roles because of merit”.

She said she was “absolutely privileged” to take the foreign affairs role, having expressed her interest in the role to Ardern.

“What we know more than ever before in the Covid context is that, as a small country, we need to develop our relationships and remain committed to a multilateral rules-based trade system that works for New Zealand. And in a recovery context, we need to ensure that all the benefits are deepened to many more in our society, and a progressive trade agenda achieves that.”

Mahuta said she was yet to get her “feet under the table” and read her first briefing paper, after which she would form views on one of the larger foreign policy issues: the relationship with China.

“I’m inheriting the portfolio from a predecessor who had views, and I’ll form my views once I read the [initial briefing] and receive some advice,” she said.

“But what I can say is that New Zealand is a small country, we value the many relationships that we have across the globe, and will continue to work for the advantage of our country, our citizens, and certainly, from a trading point of view, we want to have a real impact and developing value and opportunity for our businesses.”

She said Peters had made a “huge contribution” not only to the foreign affairs job, but Parliament in his long career.

“What he’s shown us is that, if you can develop strong diplomatic relationships, notwithstanding the politics within their own country, New Zealand as a small country can forge a way forward where we continue to have those types of discussions.”

In the 2005 Labour Government, Mahuta was minister of customs, youth development, local government, and associate environment.

Former prime minister Helen Clark was acting foreign affairs minister in 2008, after Peters stepped down from his first stint in the job amid an electoral donation scandal.