When the country's next Governor-General, Dame Cindy Kiro, heard the news from the prime minster she "slumped in her chair," she says.
"I really was surprised and it was unexpected. But I also felt a really warm flush. So yes, it was a great honour to be asked," she told Kathryn Ryan.
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Dame Cindy will become the first Māori woman to hold the role of Queen's representative when Dame Patsy Reddy's five-year term ends in September.
Her heritage is a unique marriage of Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Kahu and British descent.
She had no hesitation accepting the role, she says, seeing it as a "once in a lifetime opportunity".
"I have a strong vision for this country. I believe passionately in this country. I've made this country my home for my whole life, apart from a few years when I went off and did a few things.
"But I really think that this country has demonstrated, particularly in the last couple of years, its ability to pull together.
"When people believe in why something is important, they can do extraordinary things."
One of the opportunities her new role will offer is the chance to celebrate Aotearoa's diversity, she says.
"We're in a land which we've chosen to be in, and we are able to live in this extraordinary, beautiful place and to celebrate its distinctive identity.
"We have Te Tiriti o Waitangi, we have our long Māori history here. We have our history of other immigrations that have come since, including our new migrants and refugees. And I want us to be able to, as a unified country, celebrate that, be able to recognise each other, to be respectful to each other, and to be able to know that those new migrants as well as our older migrants bring something distinctive to the country."
Dame Cindy comes from working class roots. Her father was born in a small mining village in Lancashire and her mother in Kaikohe.
"I did notice that somebody reported that she'd been born in an 'eco hut' in Northland, I'd actually said 'nikau hut in Northland'.
"But I thought a nikau hut must be eco, so that's probably quite good. It's a good play on words."
Her parents met in Auckland, she says.
"These two working class people came together in the metropolitan lights and bright lights of Auckland and formed a family of which I'm one - I'm the eldest of six siblings."
It was a "close, loving and wide family" she says.
"We certainly didn't grow up with privilege. We grew up knowing that you have to work hard to have anything and not expecting to get anything without that."
From her early years education was a passion, she says.
"I was determined to stay at school. I liked school, I liked teachers, I enjoyed education and I loved knowledge, and I love reading.
"So, all of those things meant that I was able to be successful academically. And that has really been my pathway to being more successful in life. It's secured me jobs I could never have dreamed of. It secured me chances to travel the world and to meet fascinating people."
She was the first in her family to attend university.
"There's a great story. When I got my UE we all celebrated in my family, but no one knew what it was. Because no one actually knew what a university was.
"And then when I went to university, we all celebrated, I got a suitcase I remember to go away with, but nobody actually knew, I had no clue what I was going to, it was like going to another planet.
"So, I had to try and make sense of an alien world."
She is now a distinguished academic, chief executive of the Royal Society Te Apārangi, the former pro-Vice Chancellor Māori at the University of Auckland, and before that has held senior leadership roles at two other universities.
"I came to understand academia in a way that I could never have imagined if I projected myself back in time to that naive young woman who showed up at the university without a clue what to do. No one to guide me, no one who I knew there.
"And I look back to being an old hand and knowing everybody and seeing so many more faces like mine coming through. It's a big, big shift. And it's occurred over the period of my lifetime, which I think is fantastic."
The welfare of children has been a driving force in her career, she says. She has served as Children's Commissioner and on the Welfare Expert Advisory Group.
Both were multidisciplinary roles, she says.
"I absolutely, thoroughly enjoyed it [Children's Commissioner]. And the big thing about that was the opportunity to speak freely, the opportunity to meet with anyone: judiciary, executive, across party political lines, community organisations, academics, professionals, that was a privilege and something that I've always thoroughly enjoyed.
"The Welfare Expert Advisory Group was again a very multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary affair, we had 10 government agencies providing support to us, we took a very broad approach."
She is proud of the report the Welfare Expert Advisory Group made, she says.
"I wanted something that we could look back on and feel a sense of pride and what we said about restoring dignity to people's lives is something that we felt enormous pride in."
It was her grandparents that imbued in her a sense of te ao Māori, she says.
"I was adopted in my early years by my grandparents Hukatere and Te Rangihaeata and they were real community souls.
"They were very involved in the community, in Māori wardens and setting up gardens for the local community.
"They were part of the Māori urban diaspora moving in the 50s and 60s into cities from rural communities where they couldn't really sustain themselves anymore looking for new lives."
Her grandparents, who raised five moko, were fluent speakers, she says.
"But they were the generation that had been punished for speaking te reo. So, they spoke to us, the children, the mokos, in not perfect English and they spoke to each other in te reo and so I would hear te reo, I would see it in practice."
She saw cultural values such as hospitality demonstrated by her grandparents.
"When anybody came we would offer them any food we had, especially the best food would be given to the visitors and the guests.
"Even if you went without, you have to offer hospitality because those are the values that we exhibit. So even though we didn't have much we shared it."
Her grandmother has influenced her view of the Treaty of Waitangi, she says.
"When I was at university, and thought myself a radical briefly, we were protesting about the breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi. I had been doing some courses on the Treaty and so forth.
"And I proudly rang my grandmother up, my grandmother had grown up part of her life on Waitangi Marae."
She didn't get the reaction she expected.
"I phoned her proudly thinking she'd say, 'Oh, I'm so proud you're standing up for our rights'. And she let rip, she said 'How dare you, that Treaty is a sign of honour between us. It's an agreement of honour between two peoples, you are to respect that and to honour it.
"And that was the end of my Treaty activism, I can tell you, my grandmother taught me a lesson, which is that in her eyes, this is a solemn oath that we have made to each other, and we will respect it."
She lives with that "internal dialogue" her whole life, she says.
"And I hope to be able to express it in a constructive and unified way."
Her new role is one which should offer stability, she says.
“What the country, what New Zealand people need to know is they want to feel confident that in that moment of crisis, their head of state will do the right thing.
“And the right thing will be guided by good advice and careful consideration. I talked yesterday about the difference between knowledge and wisdom and I would hope that I would make the wise choice that's in the best interests of the country.”
