In the fifteen years from 1989 to 2003 considerable development has occurred in the area of international languages teaching in New Zealand’s schools. 1989 marked the beginning of serious moves to encourage the New Zealand government to develop a comprehensive national languages policy that would consider all aspects of language provision in an officially ‘bilingual’, and, in reality, multilingual and multicultural nation. 2003 witnessed a strategic step forward with a government supported recommendation that would make language learning an entitlement for all public school pupils of eleven to fourteen years of age. This paper examines this fifteen-year period, focusing on international languages of trade and tourism. It seeks to get in on the inside of understanding the policy process with a view to distinguishing what has been said from what has been done. The paper shows that a situation that was uncoordinated and ad hoc prior to 1989 is, despite slow progress, taking more coherent shape.