diff --git a/glib/gdatetime.c b/glib/gdatetime.c
index 1755257be..c2180e443 100644
--- a/glib/gdatetime.c
+++ b/glib/gdatetime.c
@@ -1383,15 +1383,15 @@ parse_iso8601_timezone (const gchar *text, gsize length, gssize *tz_offset)
     return NULL;
 
   *tz_offset = i;
-  tz = g_time_zone_new (text + i);
+  tz = g_time_zone_new_identifier (text + i);
 
   /* Double-check that the GTimeZone matches our interpretation of the timezone.
    * This can fail because our interpretation is less strict than (for example)
    * parse_time() in gtimezone.c, which restricts the range of the parsed
    * integers. */
-  if (g_time_zone_get_offset (tz, 0) != offset_sign * (offset_hours * 3600 + offset_minutes * 60))
+  if (tz == NULL || g_time_zone_get_offset (tz, 0) != offset_sign * (offset_hours * 3600 + offset_minutes * 60))
     {
-      g_time_zone_unref (tz);
+      g_clear_pointer (&tz, g_time_zone_unref);
       return NULL;
     }