150 years - First in the world
We’ve been advocates for all New Zealanders since our inception 150 years ago.
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We’ve been advocates for all New Zealanders since our inception 150 years ago.
When Public Trust was established in 1873, we were the first public trustee service in the world. Advocacy and a progressive approach to solving social issues has been in our DNA ever since.
In the late nineteenth century New Zealand society was hazardous and haphazard; settlers lived dangerously and moved frequently around the country and beyond. People appointed as trustees had a habit of disappearing, while widows and orphans would frequently fall prey to dishonest individuals who had been appointed in the role of trustee to protect them in the absence of a husband or father. The idea for the government to protect the assets of vulnerable people was a progressive solution to the problems of colonial society.
On a walk from Parliament along Lambton Quay in 1870, Christchurch MP Edward Stevens and the Colonial Treasurer Julius Vogel discussed the sad case of the theft of trust funds from a widow and her family. Stevens suggested the idea of a government-owned public trustee service providing certainty and integrity to vulnerable New Zealanders’ estates. The idea met with Vogel’s own nation-building vision for mass assisted immigration and extensive state enterprise.
For the next two years Vogel, who was to become New Zealand’s premier in 1873, repeatedly pushed bills through Parliament, aimed at establishing such a service. He was finally successful, and the Public Trust Office Act 1872 created a government-owned and managed public trustee service – the first in the world when it opened on 1 January 1873.
The idea took off and was replicated in the UK and throughout the Commonwealth. The ‘Vogel era’ was a transformational period in New Zealand’s history but Public Trust would become Vogel’s most enduring legacy.
Public Trust’s duty to advocate for New Zealanders extended beyond protecting estates – we were among the first government departments to hire women in the 1890s, to provide Māori and Pacific scholarships in the 1990s, and to fight for the recognition of mental illness in the 2000s.
Today, 150 years on and now an autonomous and self-funding Crown-owned entity, we live our proud legacy every day of being advocates for all New Zealanders.