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A formal act of peace was made by the King movement in 1882 when King Tawhiao appeared before Resident Magistrate Major William Mair at Alexandra (now Pirongia). His appearance was seen as a conciliatory gesture of reconciliation between Māori and Pākehā.

The first export shipment of frozen meat left Port Chalmers on the Dunedin on 15 February 1882, arriving in London on 24 May. The Dunedin's successful arrival meant that the whole world was now accessible for the trade of New Zealand's primary produce.

The first of several deputations was sent to England to seek redress from the Crown. Māori felt they had a special relationship with their Treaty partner, Queen Victoria, in person, but in this and each subsequent case taken to England they were referred back to the New Zealand Government on the ground that the imperial government no longer had the responsibility for such matters.

On 10 June the volcanic Mount Tarawera, south-east of Rotorua, erupted spectacularly, killing perhaps 120 people and destroying the famed Pink and White Terraces on Lake Rotomahana.

Reefton, on the South Island's West Coast, was the first town in the Southern Hemisphere to be lit by hydroelectricity – only six years after this "bottled lightning" became commercially available in the USA. The first state electricity scheme at Lake Coleridge was not opened until 1914.

A Royal Commission investigated the state of the laws controlling the administration of Māori land. It found that the situation could hardly have been more unworkable had governments over the years deliberately tried to make it so. Fragmentation of ownership and the complex and contradictory nature of the laws meant that almost nothing could be done. By now, only 50 years after the Treaty's signing, Māori had virtually no land in the South Island and less than 40 percent of the North Island. What they did still have was largely of poor quality and hard to develop, the areas that the settlers had not wanted. The Commission made many recommendations to improve the situation, but few were implemented, largely because they were inconsistent with government policy.

Frustrated at the lack of success in securing a remedy for their grievances, Māori in different parts of the country convened large meetings, which were called parliaments. Following meetings at Waitangi and Orakei, a Māori congress or parliament (called "Kotahitanga": unity) met for the first time at Waipawa in Hawkes Bay. This Kotahitanga then moved to several other locations and developed a more permanent base at Pāpāwai, Greytown. The King movement's own parliament was called Kauhanganui. Both aimed to unify Māori, but neither wholly succeeded. Māori MPs such as Wi Pere and Hone Heke Ngapua drafted bills and introduced them to Parliament in Wellington, seeking recognition of the Kotahitanga. They were not successful, but in 1900 Carroll and Ngata persuaded the Liberal government of Richard Seddon to set up a system of regional and local Māori councils. The councils had some success in dealing with matters such as health and alcohol sales and in slowing the sale of land. But from 1905 their powers began to be weakened again when the Reform government, which took office in 1911, resumed a vigorous programme of land purchase. The Kotahitanga faded rapidly after the turn of the century.

Since 1875, women had been able to vote in all municipal elections. In 1891 English immigrant Kate Sheppard, detecting an undercurrent of desire for electoral change, organised a nationwide petition that sought to give women the right to vote in nationwide elections. Much of the impetus for change came from men, who argued that women would bring a more civilised and considered approach to politics.

In the third worst shipwreck in New Zealand waters, 121 lives were lost when the Union Steam Ship Company steamer Wairarapa struck Miners Head, on the northern tip of Great Barrier Island, 90 kilometres north-east of Auckland.

On 26 March an explosion at Brunner, West Coast, killed 65 coal miners in New Zealand’s worst mining disaster.