Edward Robert Tregear ISO, Ordre des Palmes académiques (1 May 1846 – 28 October 1931) was a New Zealand public servant and scholar.

He was born in Southampton, England, on 1 May 1846, the son of Captain William Henry Tregear,[1] a descendant of an old Cornish family.

His investments in gold mining and saw milling ventures proved disastrous, and he lost what little money he had, setting a pattern for the rest of his life in financial matters.

Working closely with Reeves as Minister, Tregear was responsible for the huge amount of progressive labour legislation passed in the 1890s.

In a 1912 by-election, he was elected to the Wellington City Council (re-elected 1913) and became president of the militant Social Democratic Party.

However, in 1914, afflicted with failing eyesight and gravely troubled and disheartened by the failure of the waterfront strike, Tregear suddenly resigned all his offices.

He was a prolific writer in a range of creative writing genres including poetry,[5] satire and children's fairy stories, besides scholarly papers of anthropology and sociology.

Tregear's documentation of Moriori Census on the Chatham Islands as of 1889 is essential even today for the preservation of this unique culture: [Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 4 December 1889.]

"Thinking that, as the Moriori are rapidly dying out, scientists at the end of the next half-century might be interested in knowing what was the exact state of the native population in 1889, I made a census-inquiry, with the following result:— Chatham Islands, 23 September 1889.

Women: Hipera te Teira, Paranihi Taitua, Ereni Timoti (or E Puti) (half-caste, Maori and Moriori).