A bill has been introduced to make English an official language of New Zealand.

Despite being the country's most-spoken language, it is not an official language by law.

The bill provoked ridicule in Parliament from the opposition, but was staunchly defended by Winston Peters.

AUT Associate Professor of Linguistics Sharon Harvey says that language laws exist to protect languages that aren't as widely used, and English doesn't fall in to this category. 

"If we look at like jurisdictions like Australia, federal level of the US and the UK, those jurisdictions don't have English as an official language and don't see any need to."

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