Primate of New Zealand is a title held by a bishop who leads the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. Since 2006, the Senior Bishop of each tikanga serves automatically as one of three co-equal Primates-and-Archbishops. Previously, one of these three would be Presiding Bishop and the other two Co-Presiding Bishops; and before that there was only one Primate.
George Augustus Selwyn was the first bishop of New Zealand.
Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia
The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, formerly the Church of the Province of New Zealand, is a province of the Anglican Communion serving New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and the Cook Islands. Since 1992 the church has consisted of three tikanga or cultural streams: Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia. The church's constitution says that, among other things, it is required to "maintain the right of every person to choose any particular cultural expression of the faith". As a result, the church's General Synod has agreed upon the development of the three-person primacy based on this three tikanga system; it has three primates, each representing a tikanga, who share authority.
This 1820 painting shows Ngāpuhi chiefs Waikato (left) and Hongi Hika, and Anglican missionary Thomas Kendall
Henry Williams in about 1865
Bishop Selwyn in 1867
The original St Paul's building, photographed in the 1880s