The mayor of Wellington has proposed replacing what he says is the increasingly meaningless celebration of Her Majesty's birthday with the Maori new year celebration Matariki.
"For many New Zealanders, Queen's Birthday is just a day off," Wellington Mayor Justin Lester said.
"This is about celebrating something that is uniquely New Zealand."
It's a call familiar to many who have spent a winter in New Zealand over the past decade, usually coinciding with shortening days and increasingly bleak weather.
While Matariki celebrates Maori cosmology and tradition - the rising of the Pleiades star cluster in the sky, heralding the beginning of a year - there's another argument for the change that might be more familiar to Australians.
From the long weekend - the first Monday of June (a week before most Australian states) - Kiwis are sent into the depths of winter without public holidays until October.
Swapping to Matariki and moving the day to late June or July would be an "elegant" way to narrow the hole, Mr Lester argued.
Of course, he acknowledged a national debate was needed, along with political will for the government to change the country's laws.
The government minister in charge, Iain Lees-Galloway, told AAP the move wasn't off the cards.
"I'm open to the idea, and would need to see strong public interest before considering it further," he said.
Monarchy New Zealand chair Sean Palmer said the group was also supportive of celebrating Matariki, but on the condition of moving, rather than dropping, the Queen's Birthday.
"There's no reason we would have to choose one over the other," he said.
"(The Queen) is held in incredibly high regard in New Zealand and around the world. I think we need to be making more of our relationship with the Queen, not trying to hide occasions."
Some iwi - tribes - have long backed the call for change.
Among them is Ngati Kahungunu Iwi's chair, Ngahiwi Tomoana, who has been consistently raising the issue for at least a decade.
"(Matariki) is a truly southern-hemisphere event celebrated across most Australasian countries through to South America and unites us in culture and conversations that could also lead to commercial relationships over time," he said.
While Matariki celebrations were once popular, they largely stopped in the 1940s before a revival in interest in the 2000s.
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