THE NEW ZEALAND OFFICIAL YEAR-BOOK, 1987-88

The interplay of earth movements and erosion has created the sedimentary rocks that cover almost three-quarters of New Zealand. With erosion of the land, sand, mud, gravel and other debris was carried out to sea, where it accumulated in great thicknesses to form rocks such as sandstone, mudstone, greywacke and conglomerate. The shells and skeletons or sea creatures also accumulated and formed thick layers of limestone. Most sedimentary rocks are formed in near horizontal layers called strata. Earth movements later raised the rocks above the sea to form land, and the strata were in many places tilted and folded by pressure. Seas advanced and retreated over the New Zealand area many times and the sedimentary rocks represent almost every geological period since the Cambrian (see time scale). Their age is revealed by the fossils they contain as well as by various radioactive techniques.

As well as the sedimentary rocks of various ages, New Zealand incorporates in its complex structure metamorphic rocks (schist, gneiss and marble), and intrusive igneous rocks (granite, gabbro, diorite and serpentine). Many of these metamorphic and intrusive igneous rocks are hundreds of millions of years old. The metamorphic rocks were developed by the action of heat and pressure on the thick sediments (up to tens of thousands of metres) deposited in huge elongated sea basins (geoclines), which continued to sink as the deposits accumulated. When these sediments were slowly compressed during major mountain-building episodes the deeper sediments were subjected to great pressures and shearing stress, which caused new minerals and structures to develop, changing the sediments into metamorphic rocks. The granites and other intrusive rocks are characterised by large crystals, and have a course grained texture. They are usually considered to have intruded into the outer crust in a molten state during mountain-building; some, however, may result from intense metamorphism of sediments.

Volcanic rocks (basalt, andesite, rhyolite and ignimbrite), are the products of many volcanic eruptions that have characterised New Zealand's geological history. The most recognisable volcanoes in New Zealand now occur in the North Island, where a number are active. They include those in Tongariro National Park, White Island and Mount Tarawera. Others such as Mount Taranaki (or Egmont), and Rangitoto may be considered dormant at present although they are still regarded as significant hazards. Sporadic episodes of volcanic activity have also occurred in the South Island with Timaru, Lyttelton, Oamaru and Dunedin all having basaltic volcanoes less than 13 million years old.

The oldest rocks in New Zealand are found in Nelson, Westland and Fiordland. They were formed in the Paleozoic era about 570 million years ago, but some in Westland may be older. They include thick, geoclinal sedimentary rocks which suggests that to yield the great volume of sediments a large landmass existed nearby at that time, but little has been deduced about its shape or position.

The history of the later part of the Paleozoic era, and the Mesozoic era, is rather better understood. For a vast span of time from the Carboniferous period, probably until the early Cretaceous period, an extensive geocline occupied the New Zealand region. At first, during much of the late Paleozoic, huge quantities of submarine lava and volcanic ash were included in the materials that accumulated in the geocline. In me later Permian and Mesozoic times the sediments were mainly sand and mud, probably derived from some landmass west of present New Zealand. These rocks have been compacted into hard greywacke (a type of sandstone), and argillite (hard, dark mudstone).

In the early Cretaceous period one of the main mountain-building episodes in New Zealand's history took place. Although geoclinal sedimentation continued through the Cretaceous period in eastern New Zealand, elsewhere the geocline was compressed, and the sediments were intensely crumpled, broken and raised above the sea, probably forming a large, mountainous landmass. Some of the geoclinal sediments, now exposed over much of Otago, alpine Westland, and parts of the Marlborough Sounds, were metamorphosed into schist and gneiss by high temperatures and the tremendous deforming pressures to which the geocline was subjected. This intense folding of the strata occurred approximately 100 million years ago in the mid-Cretaceous period. Slowly the mountains were eroded and gradually a land of low relief was produced. The sea gradually advanced over the worn-down stumps of the Mesozoic mountains, beginning its transgression earlier in some areas than in others. In the early Cretaceous period it began to submerge the land in the region of present Northland and the eastern margins of the North and South Islands, and thick deposits of mudstone and sandstone accumulated in some of these areas. At the close of the Mesozoic era, and in the very early Tertiary era, the land became so reduced in size that little sediment was formed, and only comparatively thin deposits of bentonitic and sulphurous muds, and fine, white foraminiferal limestone accumulated. During this time, New Zealand's main coal deposits accumulated in swamps on the surface of the old land. These became buried by marine deposits as the sea continued its transgression in the Eocene period. By the Oligocene period most of the land was submerged, and in shallow waters free of land sediments, thick deposits of shell and foraminiferal limestone accumulated. Scattered remnants of this Oligocene limestone are used for most of New Zealand's cement and agricultural lime.

After the Oligocene submergence, earth movements became more vigorous; many ridges rose from the sea as islands, and sank or were worn down again; sea basins formed and were rapidly filled with sediments. New Zealand's late Tertiary environment has been described by Sir Charles Fleming (Tuatara, June 1962) as follows: “The pattern of folds, belts and troughs that developed was on a finer scale than in the Mesozoic … the land moved up and down as a series of narrow, short, interfingering or branching folds. … We can think of Tertiary New Zealand as an archipelago … a kind of writhing of part of the mobile Pacific margin seems to have gone on.” The thick deposits of soft grey sandstone and mudstone that now make up large areas of the North Island and some parts of the South Island, are the deposits that accumulated in the many sea basins that developed in the later Tertiary.

Late in the Cenozoic era, in the Pliocene and Pleistocene periods, another great episode of mountain-building took place. Earth movements became intense, and slowly pushed up the Southern Alps and New Zealand's other main mountain chains. It was during this period that the general size and shape of the present islands of New Zealand was determined. Much of the movement during this mountain-building period (the Kaikoura Orogeny) took the form of displacement of blocks of the Earth's crust along fractures called faults. The total movement of the blocks adjacent to major faults amounted to thousands of metres. It must have been achieved very slowly, probably by innumerable small movements, each less than a few metres. The blocks adjacent to ‘transcurrent’ faults moved both vertically and laterally along the faults. The New Zealand landscape today in some regions shows well-preserved, tilted fault blocks bounded by fault scarps (steep faces hundreds or even thousands of metres high). From Milford Sound to Cook Strait, an almost unbroken depression, formed by river valleys and low saddles on the intervening ridges marks the site of New Zealand's Alpine Fault. Contrasting rock types occur on either side of the fault. This is exemplified by the separation by 480 kilometres of a Permian ophiolite, an association of igneous rocks, which occurs in Nelson and western Otago. Fault movements continue to the present day and have accompanied several major earthquakes of the past century. Many minor but revealing landscape features, such as scarplets or offset ridges, or streams, show where the movement has been occurring over recent centuries.

Erosion has eaten into the landscape forms during this time, carving detailed patterns of peaks, ridges, valleys and gorges. The deposition of the debris has built up alluvial plains, shingle fans and other construction forms. At the coast, waves have driven back the headlands and built beaches, spits and bars. The late Pleistocene glaciers carved the fiords of Fiordland and the valleys occupied by most of the South Island lakes; there were small glaciers also on Ruaphehu, where remnants survive, on Mount Taranaki and the Tararua Range. Sea-level changes accompanied the formation and later melting of the glacial ice, affecting the erosion and deposition of the rivers and thus being responsible for the formation of many prominent river terraces.

Volcanic activity of the past few million years has played an important part in shaping the landscape. Banks Peninsula, a twin volcanic dome in Canterbury, also achieved much of its growth then. The largest volcanic outpourings of late geological times in New Zealand has been in the region between Tongariro National Park and the Bay of Plenty coast; andesite lava, scoria, and ash were erupted in the Pleistocene period and later, to build the volcanoes, Ruapehu, Tongariro, and Ngauruhoe. More than 8000 cubic kilometres of molten rhyolitic magma was erupted in the form of ignimbrite pumice and rhyolite lava, building up the Volcanic Plateau, which is one of the largest and youngest accumulations of acid volcanic rocks in the world. Mount Taranaki is an andesitic stratovolcano, with the remnants of three other volcanic cones nearby; all are of Pleistocene age. In the Waikato there are eroded Pleistocene cones of andesitic composition associated with a number of alkaline eruptive centres. The largest is Pirongia, a basaltic andesite cone some 900 metres high. Auckland city and the area just south has been the scene of many eruptions of basalt lava and scoria in Pleistocene and Holocene times, and many small scoria cones can be seen there. Late Tertiary and Quaternary basaltic eruptions in North Auckland have built lava plateaus and many young cones. From these volcanic outpourings some valuable mineral resources have been derived. The ironsands mined on the west coast of the North Island are concentrations of magnetite and ilmenite, which have been eroded out of the volcanic rocks.

The prevailing wind direction is westerly, although in individual months easterlies may predominate, and north of Taranaki the general flow is southwesterly. In the North Island winds generally decrease for a period in the summer or early autumn, but in many parts of the South Island July and August are the least windy months. The blocking effect of the mountain ranges modifies the westerly wind pattern. Wind strength decreases on the western side, but increases through Cook Strait, Foveaux Strait, and about the Manawatu Gorge. Air is also forced upwards over the ranges, which results in a warm drying (föhn) wind in the lee areas to the east of both islands. Wellington averages 173 days a year with wind gusts greater than about 60 km/h, compared with 30 for Rotorua, 31 for Timaru, and 35 for Nelson. Sea breezes are the predominant winds in summer in many coastal places, such as Canterbury, where the north-easterlies are almost as frequent as the predominant south-westerlies.

The distribution of rainfall is mainly controlled by mountain features, and the highest rainfalls occur where the mountains are exposed to the direct sweep of the westerly and northwesterly winds. The mean annual rainfall ranges from as little as 300 mm in a small area of Central Otago to over 8000 mm in the Southern Alps. The average for the whole country is high, but for the greater part lies between 600 mm and 1500 mm. The only areas with average rainfalls under 600 mm are found in the South Island to the east of the main ranges, and include most of Central and North Otago, and South Canterbury. In the North Island, the driest areas are central and southern Hawke's Bay, Wairarapa, and Manawatu, where the average rainfall is 700–1000 mm a year. Of the remainder, much valuable farm land, chiefly in northern Taranaki and Northland, has upwards of 1500 mm. Over a considerable area of both islands rainfall exceeds 2500 mm a year. For a large part of the country the rainfall is spread evenly through the year. The greatest contrast is found in the north, where winter has almost twice as much rain as summer. However, predominance of winter rainfall diminishes southwards: it is still discernible over the northern part of the South Island, but over the southern half, winter is the season with least rainfall, and a definite summer maximum is found inland due to the effect of convectional showers. Rainfall is also influenced by seasonal variations in the strength of the westerly winds. Spring rainfall is increased west of, and in, the ranges as the westerlies rise to their maximum about October, with a complementary decrease of rainfall in the lee of the ranges. Areas which are exposed to the west and south-west experience much showery weather, and rain falls on roughly half the days of the year. Over most of the North Island there are at least 130 rain days a year (days with at least 1.0 mm of rain)—except to the east of the ranges where in places there are fewer than 110 rain days. Those areas of the South Island with annual rainfall under 600 mm generally have about 80 rain days a year. In the far south the frequency of rain increases sharply, rain days exceeding 200 a year in Stewart Island and Fiordland. On the whole the seasonal rainfall does not vary greatly from year to year, its reliability in spring being particularly advantageous for agriculture. It is least reliable in late summer and autumn, when very dry conditions may develop east of the ranges, particularly in Hawke's Bay. The highest daily rainfall on record is 582 mm, which occurred at Rapid Creek (Hokitika), where- the mean annual rainfall exceeds 6000 mm. Areas with a marked lower annual rainfall can be subject to very heavy daily falls: such areas are found in northern Hawke's Say and north-eastern districts in the Auckland province. By contrast, in the Manawatu district, Otago, and Southland, daily falls reaching 80 mm are very rare.

Mean temperatures at sea level decrease steadily southwards from 15°C in the far north to 9°C in the south of the South Island. Temperatures also drop, by about 2°C per 300 metres, with altitude. January and February, with approximately the same mean temperature, are the warmest months of the year, and July is the coldest. Highest temperatures are recorded east of the main ranges, where they exceed 30°C on a few afternoons in most summers. The extremes for New Zealand are 42°C which has been recorded in three places, at Awatere Valley (Marlborough), Christchurch, and Rangiora (Canterbury); and — 19°C at Ophir (Central Otago). The annual range of mean temperature (the difference between the mean temperature of the warmest and coldest months) is small. In Northland and in western districts of both islands it is about 8°C and for the remainder of the North Island and east coast districts of the South Island it is 9 ° to 10°C. Further inland the annual range exceeds 11°C in places, reaching a maximum of 14°C in Central Otago, where there is an approach to a ‘continental’ type of climate.

The sunniest places are near Blenheim, the Nelson-Motueka area, and Whakatane, where the average duration of bright sunshine exceeds 2350 hours a year. The rest of the Bay of Plenty and Napier are only slightly less sunny. A large portion of the country has at least 2000 hours, and even Westland, despite its high rainfall, has 1800 hours. Southland and coastal Otago, where sunshine drops sharply to about 1700 hours a year, lie on the northern fringe of a broad zone of increasing cloudiness. A pleasant feature of the New Zealand climate is the high proportion of sunshine during the winter months, although there is a marked increase in cloudiness in the North Island in winter, but little seasonal change in the South island, except in Southland.

The number of severe hailstorms reported annually over the whole country averages nine, but this figure varies yearly from four to 20. Severe hailstorms occur widely throughout the country, but the areas most affected are Canterbury, the low country of central Hawke's Bay, and a small area south and west of Nelson. Most of the hailstones are small, but occasionally larger stones cause local damage to glasshouses and orchards. Thunderstorms are not numerous. Their frequency is greatest in the north and western side of the country, where thunder is heard on 15 to 20 days a year. On the east coast of the South Island the average is commonly less than five. Tornadoes show a similar pattern to thunderstorms except maximum frequency occurs in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty. An average of about 20 tornadoes and waterspouts is reported each year, but most of these are small.

Local variations in frostiness are considerable, even within quite small areas. For example, at Albert Park, Auckland, the screen minimum thermometer has registered below 0°C only once in 65 years, while further up the harbour at Whenuapai aerodrome there are on average eight screen frosts per annum. Favourable sites in coastal areas of Northland are free of frost, although further inland light frosts occur frequently in the winter months. Excluding the uninhabited mountainous areas, the coldest winter conditions are experienced in Central Otago, the Mackenzie Plains of inland Canterbury, and on the central plateau of the North Island, but even in these areas night temperatures as low as −12°C are rarely recorded. Elsewhere over the North Island the winters are very mild, and in both islands sheep and cattle remain in the open all year round.

The North Island has a small permanent snow field above 2500 metres on the central plateau, but the snow line rarely descends below 600 metres even for brief periods in winter. In the South Island snow falls on a few days a year in eastern coastal districts, where in some years it may lie for a day or two even at sea level, but in Westland it does not lie at sea level. The snow line on the Southern Alps is about 2000 metres in summer, being slightly lower on the western side where the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers descend through heavy bush to within 300 metres of sea level. In inland Canterbury and Otago, where there are considerable areas of grazing lands above 300 metres, snowfalls are heavier and more persistent, and have caused serious sheep losses during severe winters. In that area, however, it is rare for the winter snow line to remain below 1000 metres for extended periods.

Humidity is commonly between 70 and 80 percent in coastal areas and about 10 percent lower inland. The daily variation is greater than the difference between summer and winter. Very low humidity (from 30 percent down to 5 percent) occurs at times in the lee of the Southern Alps, where the föhn wind (the Canterbury nor-wester) is often very marked. Cool south-westerlies are also at times very dry when they reach eastern districts. In Northland the humid mid-summer conditions are inclined to be oppressive, although temperatures rarely reach 30°C. Dull, humid spells are generally not prolonged anywhere, but their frequency shows a marked increase in the south.

The vegetation and wildlife is made up of different bio-geographic elements. The Gondwanaland element, consists of ancient plants and animals: conifers such as kauri (Agathis australis), frogs (Leiopelma), reptiles like tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus), large ground snails (Powelliphanta), and birds such as the kiwi and the now extinct moa. A tropical element includes the nikau palm, kie kie (Freycenetia), tree fems, many northern forest trees, tropical snails (Placostylis), and earthworms. An Australian element includes many fems, orchids, small seeded tree species like manuka (Leptospermum scoparium), insects, and birds (such as the nectar-feeding tui, parakeets, and many wetland birds). A Pacific element includes trees like pohutukawa (Metrosideros excelsa), numerous fems, and migratory birds like the shining cuckoo. A subantarctic or circumpolar element includes beech (Nothofagus), which occurs also in South America and Southern Australia and was once present on Antarctica, and several characteristically southern bird groups such as penguins, albatrosses, and petrels. A South American element includes Fuchsia. A cosmopolitan mountain element entered New Zealand along the mountain and island chain from South-east Asia and includes plants such as buttercups, daisies, veronicas and gentians. A cultural element of recent human origin comes from all parts of the world (particularly Europe, North America and Australia), and consists of trees, horticultural plants, weeds, mammals, birds, and many other groups.

Northern (subtropical), central (temperate), and southern (subantarctic) marine areas can also be recognised, each with characteristic species; for instance rock oyster, blue mussel and dredge oyster, respectively. Bull kelp is a notable southern species. Some very unusual marine animals occur, including black coral and ancient brachiopods in the southern fiords, and recently discovered sea daisies—starfish relatives which live on sunken wood at a depth of 1000 metres. The complex sea floor means that shore, continental shelf, and deep water species occur close together, resulting in diverse marine life.

Uniqueness is a feature of the natural life of New Zealand. Foremost is the absence, apart from two species of bat, of land mammals, which had not evolved at the time New Zealand became separate. Many flightless birds and insects have evolved. The most remarkable birds were some 12 species of moa, forest and shrub browsers, that took the place of large herbivores in other parts of the world. Moa became extinct during Maori times, but other flightless birds remain, including kiwi, kakapo (a nocturnal parrot—the largest in the world), and weka (a scavenging rail). Flightless insects are numerous, including many large beetles and cricket-like weta. The absence of mammals also meant that birds became important as seed-dispersing agents, so that most forest plants bear small berries, including the giant conifers (podocarps), the smaller canopy trees, and even some forest-floor herbs. Some alpine plants produce berries, dispersed by the New Zealand pipit and the kea (mountain parrot). As a consequence of the great physical and climatic upheavals which New Zealand has undergone the forest has been influenced by extinction. Coconut palms once occurred in New Zealand, and fossil remains of kauri, now limited to the northern North Island, have been found south to Canterbury. Some tropical plant groups are represented by a single species, surviving only on protected islands, or in the far north. Some, like Tecomanthe are known from only a single plant. Similarly, the range of bird species is very limited in comparison with other temperate land masses of similar size. The unique family of wattle birds contains only four species, one of these, the huia, is now extinct and considerable natural extinction seems likely. On the other hand, there has been great diversification among smaller life-forms, such as tiny forest-floor snails, spiders, aquatic caddis flies, lichens, mosses and liverworts. Of note is the diversity of alpine plants such as daisies (Celmisia, Senecio), veronica (Hebe), native carrot (Aciphylla) and buttercups. Many of these plants produce rosettes of large leaves, which seem to adapt the plants to cold, windy, subantarctic conditions in the relatively recently-formed high mountains. A second group of plants adapted to cold, windy conditions are cushion plants, some of which form remarkable mounds called ‘vegetable sheep’.

In the forest and along its margins divaricating shrubs occur with tangled and criss-crossed branches bearing tiny leaves. Sometimes these shrubs are the juvenile forms of tree species, but more often are the adult itself. Nowhere else in the world is this peculiar growth form so abundant. It may be an adaptation to browsing by the now extinct moa, or it may help plants to adapt to cold or dry conditions.

Although many New Zealand plants and animals occupy very specialised habitats, frequent droughts, high winds, floods, and erosion mean that many species need to be highly adaptable. Many insects, such as native bees, gather food from a wide variety of sources, and some forest species, like beech, regenerate best after the parent forest has been destroyed. However, the overwhelming character of the wildlife is its dependence on forest, and its vulnerability to introduced predators such as rats. The forests and natural grasslands have been severely modified by introduced browsers such as possums, deer and goats. Some introduced plants, like marram grass, have taken over the places where native species would normally grow.

A vast proportion of the native animals and plant species are endemic and found only in New Zealand. Virtually all insects, spiders, snails and all earthworms are restricted to New Zealand, as are most birds and plants, most freshwater fish (27 species), and all reptiles (38 species).

Many figures in table 1.8 are approximate and may change after future scientific investigation.

Apart from mountains above bush-line, swamps, coastal dunes, and some dry inland basins, 80 percent of New Zealand was orginally forest-covered. The forests were reduced by a third by Maori clearance before European settlement, and a further third by European clearance over the last 150 years, so that now only 23 percent of New Zealand remains in forest. Much occurs in mountainous areas, and most is now protected.

There is a wide range of natural forest types. Around the coast is a fragmented narrow band of salt tolerant plants including mangroves, nikau palm and mostly tropical Pacific species, such as karaka and pohutukawa. Coastal forests are particularly important habitats for marine birds (for example various petrels and penguins), and offshore islands form refuges for tuatara, flightless insects and snails. The characteristic New Zealand forest type is warm temperate evergreen rain forest. In the far north this is dominated by kauri (Agathis australis) and various hardwoods though little forest remains. Swamp forest dominated by the podocarp kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides) was once extensive, and remains prominent in the western South Island. Elsewhere the podocarps (rimu, totara, matai, and miro) are associated with a diverse range of broad-leaved evergreen hardwoods, ferns, vines and epiphytes, forming dense and complex multi-storeyed communities. The range of species gradually diminishes with both increasing altitude and increasing latitude. Evergreen beech forest is characteristic of the South Island above 300 metres altitude. These montane forests have fewer species than lowland forests, and extensive areas may be dominated by a single tree species. The bush-line, usually of beech, is located generally between 1350 and 1500 metres.

A wide range of secondary forest types have developed since human arrival, notably kanuka forests east of the main divide, manuka and kanuka forests in northern New Zealand, and a range of broad-leaved hardwood and tree-fern forest types on abandoned farmland.

Cool moist climates produce an abundance of ferns in New Zealand forests, not only giant tree ferns, but also filmy ferns which clothe tree trunks, and ground ferns.

Natural shrublands are rare and usually occur where soil or water factors restrict forest development, such as the margins of coastal estuaries and other wetlands, and rocky bluffs. Immediately above the bushline, a narrow band of diverse shrubland often occurs, dominated by the heath Dracophyllum, shrub daisies, hebes, and alpine podocarps. The most extensive shrublands occur in the once-forested dryland of eastern New Zealand, where small-leaved sometimes spiny shrubs occur, notably matagouri (Discaria), tauhinu (Cassinia), and divaricating coprosmas. These shrublands are stages in the re-establishment of forest. Fernland, particularly bracken fern (Pteridium esculentum), once a staple Maori food, is very widespread throughout deforested New Zealand hill country. Like shrubland it serves as a nurse-bed for forest.

A rise in sea-level inundated coastal valleys formed during the ice-age. This created extensive estuaries, rich in worms, molluscs and eelgrass, which are important habitats for marine birds such as oyster-catchers. In the north the estuaries support dense groves of low mangroves, while elsewhere there are extensive rush, jointed-rush and sedge wetlands which are spawning grounds for whitebait or inanga (Galaxias species). The numerous rivers of New Zealand created extensive freshwater wetlands dominated by harakeke or flax (Phormium), raupo (Typha) and sedges. These have mostly been drained but are extensive in western South Island. Numerous small swamps and lakes have been formed to the lee of sand dunes deposited along western coasts by prevailing westerly winds. Lakes, swamps and bogs made by glaciers are features of the South Island high country.

Active erosion of the land has created extensive coastal sand deposits, which have mainly been stabilised by marram grass, pines and lupins, and few remain in their natural state. One threatened dune species is pingao, a sedge used for traditional Maori weaving.

When Europeans arrived in the nineteenth century much of the eastern South Island was covered by short tussock grassland or silver tussock and fescue, which had become established after Maori fires removed forests. Before the Maori the only naturally occurring lowland tussock was in the dry interior of Central Otago. Pastoral farming and introduced grasses have now largely destroyed short tussock grassland. However, at higher altitudes, especially above the bush-line, extensive areas of tall snow tussock (Chionochloa) occur.

Large-leaved herbs, mat plants, and cushion plants occur throughout the tall tussocks, and in places dominate and form herb fields of great beauty in flower. Scree supports a range of specialised, often fleshy, drought-resistant plants. Alpine bluffs support a scattered cover of shrubs, herbs and cushion plants, adapted to extreme climate and sometimes possessing very strange form, such as the coral shrub (Helichrysum) and the vegetable sheep (Raoulia).

The New Zealand landscape is now dominated by introduced animals and plants. Over 1500 exotic plants grow wild, some (like rye-grass, browntop, gorse and sweet briar), over large areas. Although introduced plants have seldom colonised extensive areas of native vegetation, wild animals (deer, pigs, goats, possums, stoats and rats) are widespread, and some introduced birds, such as blackbirds, occur everywhere. Urban vegetation is largely exotic and domestic stock dominate agricultural areas throughout the lowlands.

Introduced plants and animals have greatly increased the diversity of species in New Zealand. However, their increase has been associated with a decrease in the area dominated by native species. Today a large number of native species are very rare and seldom seen. Some of these are ancient and stamp uniqueness on New Zealand as a living museum. Urgent measures are needed to ensure the healthy survival of this unique heritage of international importance.

The ancestors of Aotearoa's earliest inhabitants are thought to have reached the Western Pacific some 4000 years ago, and gradually made their way along the Melanesian chain of islands. Long ocean journeys became possible for them with the introduction of the sail and the invention of the outrigger, which stabilised canoes in rough seas. They reached Fiji and Tonga by about 1000 B.C., and in this area many of the distinctive features of Polynesian social organisation and language developed. About 2000 years ago there was a further eastward movement to the Society, Marquesas, and Cook Islands, at the heart of the Polynesian triangle. Probably from this region, the most isolated parts of Polynesia were settled—New Zealand, Hawaii, and Easter Island. There has been much controversy as to the nature of, and reasons for, undertaking such long ocean voyages. Some would have been accidental, the result of canoes being blown off shore. At other times, refugees from defeated tribes or over-populated areas may well have set off into the unknown, confident that they were likely to make a safe landfall somewhere. Knowledge of stars, currents, bird migrations, and the signs of distant land was such that the possibility of controlled journeys over even thousands of kilometres cannot be discounted. The canoe or canoes which brought the first successful colonists to Aotearoa must have carried men and women, dogs, rats, vegetables for cultivation, and a variety of tools and ornaments for practical use and as models for those to be made subsequently. Such a well-equipped expedition is unlikely to have been completely accidental.

Polynesian people, known today as Maori, have lived in New Zealand since about the eighth century A.D. They came in one or more groups from the same general area of eastern Polynesia, known as Hawaiki. There are traditions of numerous voyages from Hawaiki, and of a number of famous canoes, whose occupants were the founders of tribal groupings which remain distinctive today. Some of these stories probably refer to migrations within New Zealand; a few to voyages elsewhere in Polynesia. After the initial period of settlement there were probably few or no continuing contacts with the outside world. Maori culture developed characteristics which reflected both its Polynesian roots and its new physical environment.

There is no convincing evidence to support ingenious theories that New Zealand was the landfall for one or several long-forgotten European voyagers before the 1640s. It seems clear that the first arrivals from overseas for several centuries were the members of a Dutch East India Company expedition commanded by Abel Tasman. He was sent in quest of the riches of the Great South Land, which was supposed to balance the land mass of Eurasia in the Northern Hemisphere. On 13 December 1642 he sighted ‘a large, high-lying land’ which he named Staten Landt. It was the west coast of the South Island of the soon-to-be-renamed ‘Nieeuw Zeeland’. Tasman anchored a few days later, and lost four men, killed when local Maori interpreted an exchange of trumpet fanfares as the prelude to battle. Sailing away up the west coast of the North Island, he did not again attempt to land, and so found none of the ‘treasures or matters of great profit’ which were the object of his voyage. Aotearoa was now represented by a jagged line on European maps, but Tasman's experience did not encourage explorers or fortune-seekers to follow in his wake.

Europeans did not return until 1769. This time those seeking the mythical southern continent were British, the expedition's ostensible purposes were scientific, and its leader was the great explorer James Cook. On his first visit he circumnavigated New Zealand; his published journal and the reports of the scientists and artists on board made it known to the outside world. He returned in 1773–74 and 1777. There were misunderstandings and violence: a Maori was killed at Cook's first landfall, and in 1773 ten of his men were killed and eaten at Arapawa Island. But he persevered, finding most encounters characterised by mutual curiosity and eagerness to barter. His respect for the Maori as ‘noble savages’ excited European imaginations, and foreshadowed attitudes which were to be important later.

Other explorers soon followed, the Frenchman Jean de Surville only two months after Cook first arrived. Ill-treating the local inhabitants, he set the scene for the blunders which three years later led to the deaths of his countryman Marion du Fresne and some two dozen crew. Julien Crozet, du Fresne's second-in-command, massacred about 250 Maori in retaliation. Further expeditions under the Englishman Vancouver, the Frenchman D'Entrecasteaux, and the Italian Malaspina (leading a Spanish fleet) ensured that New Zealand was not again forgotten in Europe.

It is difficult to assess what effect the presence of Europeans—around the coasts and venturing into the interior in the last few years before 1840—had on the indigenous inhabitants. It has been asserted that the Maori population declined by nearly 50 percent between 1770 and 1840; and, alternatively, that it was about the same in both years. Both sides put the 1840 figure at between 100 000 and 125 000. Differences of this scale over such a basic issue suggest how difficult it is to make firm statements about Maori society in the period. Areas such as the Bay of Islands and the Hokianga, where contact with Europeans was greatest, underwent changes in a few decades which had taken centuries to transform Europe. Maori society was resilient and able to adapt to the revolution in technology and ideas with which it was confronted. The European impact varied greatly. In the Bay of Islands there was an intermittent pakeha (non-Maori) presence from the 1790s, and permanent settlers from 1814; these numbered several hundred by 1839. In contrast, areas such as the Urewera mountains had not been visited by Europeans when British sovereignty was declared. Other regions had varying exposure to direct and indirect contact.

European diseases seem to have reached epidemic proportions first in the 1790s. The Maori initially had no immunity to them, and they were made more vulnerable by their communal lifestyle. Dysentery, diphtheria and influenza took many lives in the following decades. But some of the most lethal diseases, including yellow fever, typhus, and cholera, were not introduced, and by 1840 immunities to the more common types of sickness were beginning to develop. Some health problems resulting from pakeha presence were very localised—alcoholism and prostitution were confined to the few zones of intense contact. Other effects were widespread. European-introduced animals were both a source of food and rivals for scarce resources, while new plants such as potatoes and com eventually became staples of Maori diet. The ability to purchase desired European goods depended on income-generating activities which often necessitated debilitating labour, such as raising commercial crops, felling and transporting timber, and stripping flax. Sometimes whanau or hapu moved to unhealthy lowland areas to be close to now-valued resources. New fashions in clothing, such as the wearing of European suits or blankets, regardless of their unsuitability in hot or wet weather, also increased susceptibility to sickness.

The nature of Maori warfare was altered by the introduction of muskets in the early 1800s. These were first used in small numbers as close-combat weapons of the traditional kind. By 1818 the Ngapuhi confederation—thanks to geography the pioneers of much social change in the period—discovered that the firing of many weapons at a distance created enough terror to enable the rout of an enemy to be completed by traditional means. From 1820, when their great chief Hongi Hika returned from a missionary-inspired visit to England with 300 muskets, Ngapuhi and their allies rampaged across the North Island on a series of expeditions which took many lives, settled old scores, and raised the mana of the victors to unprecedented heights. As muskets became widely available, other tribes took advantage of temporary leads in local arms races to attack their neighbours. By 1840 the balance of power was such that inter-tribal warfare had virtually ceased. One effect of these campaigns was the migration of perhaps thirty thousand people and, as a consequence, intractable disagreements about land rights in some areas.

Maori people were eager to adopt European goods and ideas: muskets, agricultural techniques, literacy, and Christianity were all enthusiastically embraced, and some (such as firearms) rapidly became necessities. Some Maori even travelled the world as crew members on European ships. But pakeha innovations were used in Maori ways for Maori purposes. If they did not serve these purposes they were likely to be abandoned. The increased rate of conversions to Christianity just before 1840, for example, can be understood in terms of changes in Maori society, as well as seen as a consequence of more effective missionary activity. Social dislocation which resulted from intertribal fighting fed a need for spiritual explanation. But the new religion was also fashionable, and the mana which was granted to the literate brought many eager students to mission schools. Missionary teaching was a means to the end of gaining European knowledge. For Maori the most important function of a pakeha was to provide trade goods. Europeans lived in New Zealand on Maori terms, and in 1839 there were still only a few more than a thousand scattered over the whole country.

The vagueness of their instructions allowed early Governors of New South Wales to view New Zealand as a political as well as an economic ‘dependency’, and also to encourage plans for settlement. In 1804 Governor King ordered investigations into charges that brutalities had been inflicted on Maori by a ship's captain. This was the first of many attempts to regulate the behaviour of British subjects in New Zealand. In 1814 the Maori people were declared to be ‘under the protection of His Majesty’, and the missionary Thomas Kendall was appointed as a justice of the peace to maintain order in co-operation with local chiefs. He had no effective force at his disposal. Prisoners had to be sent to Sydney for trial. In 1817 Britain declared New Zealand to be outside its legal jurisdiction, although British subjects could be charged for serious crimes committed there. Schemes for colonisation continued, and in 1826 settlers selected by the first New Zealand Company arrived. While many went straight on to Sydney, some established themselves at the Hokianga. As trade and settlement increased, New Zealand moved further into the British sphere of influence. In 1832 James Busby was appointed British Resident at the Bay of Islands. He was a ‘watch-dog without teeth’, having very few legal powers (he was not even a justice of the peace) and no reliable means for coercing British subjects. His authority rested on occasional visits by British warships. In 1837 one of three Europeans who had plundered the home of a Kororareka storekeeper was hanged in Sydney. British subjects fomenting disorder in New Zealand were clearly now subject, at least potentially, to legal retribution.

In May 1837 a combination of the remnants of the earlier New Zealand Company and others interested in profiting from Edward Gibbon Wakefield's ideas of transplanting the pre-industrial English class structure to the colonies formed what was soon to be named the New Zealand Company. An attempt at the ‘systematic colonisation’ of New Zealand Was now imminent. Wakefield's vision was of the migration of integrated communities comprising all social strata from gentry to respectable working folk, while excluding the nobility and the very poor. The key to success was to set a ‘sufficient’ price for land. If land was too cheap it would be bought by both speculators and labourers, with ‘undesirable’ consequences; but the price was to be low enough to enable working class people to settle on the land after some years of thrift and honest toil, their purchases financing a fresh influx of labourers and ensuring continued economic growth. The eventual form of settlement owed little to this theory, but Wakefield's energy and the strength of his backers ensured that large-scale colonisation would take place. The company sent an expedition in 1839 to find a site for a colony. It acted in haste because the decision to annex New Zealand had already been made, and it wished to buy land before its dealings could be regulated by officials. Even before word reached England that any land had been bought, ships full of emigrants had departed, the first (the Tory) arriving at Port Nicholson (Wellington) on 22 January 1840.

British sovereignty over New Zealand was established in international law by New South Wales Governor Gipps' proclamation on 14 January 1840 that his frontiers included New Zealand, and that Captain William Hobson was appointed his Lieutenant-Governor there. Hobson arrived at the Bay of Islands with a small entourage of officials on 24 January, and at Waitangi on 6 February 1840 he obtained from local Maori chiefs the first signatures to the ‘Treaty of Waitangi’. The significance of this document has been debated ever since. In its English-language original all rights and powers of sovereignty were ceded to Queen Victoria, while in return the possession of land, forests and fisheries was secured to the chiefs, with the Crown alone having the right to purchase land. The Queen extended her protection and all the rights and privileges of British subjects to the Maori people. The Maori-language version, hastily translated by the missionary Henry Williams, was couched in considerably vaguer terms, partly because of the difficulty of conveying European legal concepts. Maori signatories assented to the Queen taking over the rights of ‘kawanatanga’ (governorship). As their only example of the exercise of such authority was the ineffective James Busby, it is unlikely they understood the possible implications of their agreement. Over the next few months signatures to several differing versions of the treaty were collected around the country. Important tribes such as Ngati Maniapoto and Waikato did not regard it as a matter deserving serious consideration, and failed to sign; Ngapuhi were resented for their role as first signatories. To further complicate matters, on 21 May 1840, while signatures were still being sought, Hobson proclaimed British sovereignty over the North Island by virtue of the treaty, and over the South and Stewart Islands on the basis of Cook's discoveries. In 1841 New Zealand became a colony in its own right, and the capital followed a shift in the balance of European settlement from its first site at Russell in the Bay of Islands to the new town of Auckland on the Tamaki isthmus, which was both strategically located and surrounded by ideal land for farming.

In the 1840s the Maori were still preoccupied with their own concerns. Inter-hapu and inter-tribal competition was of paramount importance, and society remained fragmented. The very use of the word ‘Maori’, which implied the existence of a common race and culture, was mainly confined to pakeha until the 1850s. European innovations provided new ways to pursue traditional social and economic rivalries. Christianity offered literacy, a skill prized as a new basis for competition. Introduced foodstuffs such as potatoes and pigs, which could be raised in abundance with comparatively little effort, transformed the conspicuous production and ceremonial display of food—the yardstick shifted from quality to quantity. Maori participated vigorously in the colonial economy, exporting potatoes, wheat, and pigs throughout Australasia, and to the Californian goldfields. Maori farmers produced the bulk of New Zealand's exports to the Australian diggings. They acquired horses, sheep, schooners, and flour mills, as symbols of wealth as well as means to its creation. However, Maori agricultural production declined after an 1856 slump in the market in Victoria. European farmers had the apparent advantage of individualised land tenure and, with access to credit, they could make better use of technological innovations.

The first census of the Maori population in 1857–58 put the total at about 56 000, less than the pakeha population and only half of Dieffenbach's 1843 estimate. Both figures are doubtful, but the trend was clear. To the toll of diseases such as influenza, whooping cough, dysentery, and measles was added the effects of tuberculosis, bronchitis, and other respiratory tract infections, and low fertility caused by the previous generation's ill-health. High mortality rates contributed to the survival of belief in tapu and makutu (magic). The rituals of Christianity were widely adhered to, but for many Maori they offered only partial explanations of an unsettled world.

As more European colonists arrived, questions of land ownership became more pressing. The traditional Maori practice was to reinforce claims to land by regularly using its resources. From this perspective, settlers who paid for land, built houses, and planted crops were generally accepted, but people who piled goods on the shore and disappeared were not taken seriously. From 1840 Maori people quickly became aware of the significance to the pakeha of the land deed itself, and the permanent nature of the alienation which followed its transfer. Yet they offered much land for sale over the next two decades. Many Maori were anxious to have settler communities in their midst as a guarantee of long-term progress. Land sales gave a unique opportunity to vindicate claims to customary title over rivals. The ceremony of payment was usually a vital part of the transaction, while the price paid was less important. Tensions between claimants often made sales acrimonious. Few chiefs obstructed sales on principle, just as few were committed to a policy of selling land. The goal was rather the advantage of one's own hapu.

Extensive land purchases by the Crown during Grey's first governorship were masterminded by his able lieutenant Donald McLean. Most of the South Island was bought for only £15,000, and 13 million hectares throughout New Zealand had been obtained by 1853 at a total cost of £50,000. McLean had made huge purchases in the Manawatu, Wairarapa, and Hawke's Bay, while the boundaries of settlement advanced more slowly in the Auckland area. Maori tribes remained in control of a broad belt of territory stretching across the North Island from Taranaki to the Bay of Plenty and the East Coast. Grey's successor, Thomas Gore Browne, was unable to buy much land in this region, even when McLean resorted to making secret deals and other underhand tactics in response to increasing settler pressure. Maori attempts to prevent land sales culminated in a pan tribal movement, the Kingitanga, which in 1858 installed the venerable Waikato chief Te Wherowhero as King Potatau I. Its promoters hoped to end the chronic disputes by placing all Maori land under the King's mana and making its ownership subject to the decisions of his magistrates. But Maori society had no precedents for allegiance to a central judicial or administrative authority. Tribes of the Tainui confederation generally supported the King, but many others did not. The Kingitanga meant more to the chiefs, as a means of bolstering their mana—threatened by European-inspired individualism—than it did to their followers.

Grey hoped to gradually transform the Maori into brown-skinned pakeha, who would ultimately be absorbed by inter-marriage into a predominantly European population. Grey's policy would require radical changes in Maori lifestyle, which he encouraged in a variety of ways. He financed English-language education of Maori children, aided Maori agriculture and commerce with gifts of ploughs, mills, seeds, and schooners, and employed Maori and pakeha on ostensibly equal terms in the police forces that he controlled. In his second term Grey established a scheme for local administration under which Maori runanga (assemblies) would gradually introduce European concepts of law. The purpose of these ‘new institutions’ illustrates Grey's overall aim: the ‘amalgamation of the races’ was to occur on pakeha terms. Britain had asserted since 1840 that its law applied throughout Aotearoa, but in 1860 much of the North Island was still effectively beyond government control. The war which now broke out had much to do with the contest for land, but it was also a struggle for authority over the people that the land sustained, and for mana.

Fighting began in Taranaki in March 1860, when British troops attempted to remove Te Atiawa tribespeople from land at Waitara which the Crown had allegedly bought, but which most of its claimants had refused to sell. Te Atiawa were soon reinforced by the Taranaki and Ngati Ruanui tribes, and later by Kingite forces from the Waikato region. In June, 350 Imperial troops were heavily defeated when they assaulted a pa at Puketakauere which contained both dummy and concealed defensive positions. For a year the civilian population remained virtually under siege in New Plymouth, while the British vainly sought to engage the Maori in a decisive battle. Eventually the British embarked, under cover of a series of redoubts, on a laborious advance, which had achieved no tangible success by the time a truce was agreed in March 1861. Fewer than 1000 Maori warriors had not lost any territory to some 3500 opponents, and were also able to keep the considerable resources plundered from abandoned European properties.

With Grey's return in 1861 the focus shifted to the Waikato. Imperial troops were steadily augmented, a military road was constructed from Auckland to the Waikato River, and the heartland of Kingite power was invaded in July 1863. British forces eventually numbered 14 000 effective troops (more than were available for the defence of England) and were led by a highly competent staff under General Sir Duncan Cameron, but they had great difficulty pushing back Maori opponents who never numbered more than 2000 at one time. Given the inability of the Maori economy to sustain an army continuously in the field, and the many obstacles to effective inter-tribal military cooperation, the Kingite resistance was remarkably successful, but by mid-1864 the Waikato Basin had been occupied up to the Puniu River. The search for a decisive victory now led Cameron to Tauranga, where he was stunningly defeated in a frontal attack on a superbly-designed fortress at Gate Pa, but was able to partially avenge this reverse at Te Ranga a few weeks later.

The territory occupied in the ‘Waikato War’, about 400 000 hectares, was confiscated by the colonial government, but fighting was far from over. Imperial troops campaigned on the west coast in 1865–66, while colonial units and allied kupapa (pro-government Maori) fought in the east. Both opposed adherents of the new religion of Pai Marire, which combined elements of traditional Maori beliefs, Christianity, and the innovations of its Taranaki prophet, Te Ua Haumene. In 1868, with Imperial forces now withdrawn from active service and ‘native’ policy firmly in the hands of the settler government, a grave crisis abruptly confronted pakeha New Zealand. Belated attempts to implement years-old land confiscations provoked a campaign by the Ngati Ruanui chief Titokowaru, who with a few hundred warriors repeatedly defeated much larger colonial forces until dissension among his followers brought his advance to an end. Simultaneously, the Rongowhakata prophet Te Kooti Rikirangi conducted a brilliant guerrilla campaign in the Poverty Bay area, after escaping with some 160 prisoners of war from exile in the Chatham Islands. He proved far less adept than Titokowaru at pa construction and defence, and armed support for his cause dwindled until he was forced to seek sanctuary in Kingite territory early in 1872. The zone of effective Maori autonomy had now shrunk, but it still encompassed the ‘King Country’ in the central North Island, South Taranaki, and the Urewera district. Pakeha sovereignty was now an established fact, but it was by no means absolute.

The huge Grey/McLean land purchases were the basis for an expansion of European economic activity. The Canterbury settlement, whose social composition came closest to Wakefield's ideal, was for a few years the colony's best approximation to a concentrated agricultural community. Soon, however, it became the most important base for a rapidly expanding pastoral economy. From the late 1840s, sheep grazing spread across the open country along the east coasts of both islands. Australian ‘squatters’ sold surplus merinos to New Zealand colonists with capital, and from the early 1850s many crossed the Tasman themselves to take up cheap long-term grazing leases. Grey reduced the price of rural land in 1853, ostensibly to help small farmers. The main effect, however, was to allow runholders to consolidate their holdings. By the mid-1860s many had secure tenure. During this ‘golden age’ of pastoralism, overseas prices for wool rose steadily, and sheep numbers increased from 750 000 in 1855 to 10 million in 1870. Wool was king, and the pastoralist came in some ways to resemble Wakefield's rural gentleman, pre-eminent economically, socially, and politically in his domain. But the scale of pastoral farming was very different from the intensive agriculture Wakefield had envisaged. Much of the work (e.g., shearing) was seasonal and undertaken by itinerant labourers; station homesteads were often quite primitive, and usually far from neighbours. Transience and loneliness thus accompanied economic growth.

The quest for wealth from a second staple product—gold—brought more hardship and isolation in the 1860s, even as the population rose rapidly. Beginning in 1861, a series of gold rushes transformed Otago virtually overnight. The province's population increased fivefold (to 60 000) between 1861 and 1863. Then the main focus of activity shifted to the west coast of the South Island, where by 1867 there were 29 000 inhabitants in an area almost unoccupied three years earlier. Mining declined rather quickly in Otago, more slowly in Westland. From the 1880s expensive dredging techniques revived the industry in both regions. The ‘diggers’ had profited less than merchants, bankers, and farmers. Farmers also benefited from the influx of British troops during the Waikato war. Briefly, their provisioning was one of the colony's main sources of income. Equally briefly, small mixed farms became profitable.

In the 1860s, while the European population of the North Island rose to 97 000, the South Island's European population increased to 159 000. Unequal growth brought political change in 1865, when the capital was moved south to Wellington, and the South Island gained 13 additional parliamentary seats. Otago was transformed from an obscure Presbyterian outpost into the foremost commercial and industrial province, with a quarter of the colony's pakeha population producing one-third of its exports. Secondary industries, largest in Otago and Auckland, manufactured a wide range of products for local markets. By 1871 about 10 000 people were employed in manufacturing. The larger towns now contained groups of artisans and labourers with some capacity for combined action. In Dunedin the unemployed demanded relief works as boom turned to slump in the late 1860s.

The Otago-based businessman and politician Julius Vogel became Colonial Treasurer in 1869, and dominated political life until his departure for London in 1876 as Agent-General (a post which combined diplomacy and business promotion). When he took office the income-generating British troops had almost all left. The colony had just survived the severe military crisis of 1868–69. Dependence on world commodity prices had proved to be a mixed blessing, since receipts for wool and gold exports had slumped. The average wool price had fallen to 11 pence per pound in 1870 from 16 pence in 1860. Faced with the prospect of a serious depression, Vogel persuaded his cabinet colleagues to approve a programme of public borrowing to finance growth. Twenty million pounds were borrowed in a decade, mostly from Britain. The role of the state grew; there were four times as many civil servants in 1877 (some 7200) than a decade earlier. A large publicly-owned infrastructure of transport, communication, and other services was established. There were 234 kilometres of public railways in 1873, and 1840 kilometres in 1880. One-third of public expenditure in the decade to 1881 went on roads and bridges, which had more practical effect than railways in improving communications in most areas. 6500 kilometres of telegraph lines were built in the 1870s (their construction had begun for military reasons in the previous decade). Expensive harbour projects were undertaken around the country, and there was a boom in residential, business, and public building. Government spending in 1872 was said to be 13 times that of Canada on a per capita basis.

The 1870s was a decade of large-scale emigration from Europe. Most migrants went to America, a significant fraction to Australasia. The arrival in New Zealand in nine years of 115 000 government-assisted immigrants contributed to the near-doubling of the non-Maori population to 490 000 in 1880. Organised communities of Scandinavian, English, and Irish came out under special settlement schemes. The first group were prominent in the clearing of the ‘Great Bush’ which covered much of the southern half of the North Island. This unremitting toil, like that of the railway and road builders, laid the foundations for much future development. The immediate result of Vogel's policies, however, was a substantial enlargement of New Zealand society without any corresponding strengthening of the economy. The colony had become more, rather than less dependent on Britain as a source of both capital and income. By 1881 more than 90 percent of export revenue came from the United Kingdom, whereas Australia had taken over half New Zealand's exports in the 1860s. Wool had regained the status of largest overseas earner from gold.

The development of a centralised colonial economy linked by modern communications had political implications. While the implementation of ‘Vogelism’ was much influenced by regional pressures, it transformed the balance of power between centre and provinces. Provincial governments, designed in part as agents of colonisation, were now proving superfluous in this role. In 1871 the central government took over sole responsibility for immigration and railway construction. Opposition to some of Vogel's policies by provincialists in the House led ultimately to the end of the provincial system in 1876, over the protests of wealthy Canterbury and Otago. A network of county councils now joined existing borough councils, road boards, and harbour boards as the units of local government. Regional education, hospital, and land boards soon followed.

A credit squeeze in 1878–79 ushered in some 15 years of economic stagnation, during which export and import prices, and wages all fell roughly in proportion. Burdened with the overseas debts incurred in the 1870s, New Zealand remained dependent on the ability of a depressed British working class to buy its primary products. The most promising development was the beginning of frozen meat exports with the voyage of the Dunedin to the United Kingdom in 1882. This trade grew slowly at first. While there were 21 freezing works in 1892, they were not working to capacity. By then, however, meat exports exceeded £1 million annually in value second only to wool. Experimentation produced new breeds of sheep, which provided good quality mutton as well as wool, and were suited to the country's dryish pastures. In 1882 New Zealand's first dairy factory opened at Edendale in Southland. Exports of dairy produce also grew slowly, with banks reluctant to finance small farmers' production of ‘perishable’ butter and cheese. Mechanisation in processing was paralleled by technological innovations in farming itself. Horse-drawn reapers and binders began to replace men. Traction engines and mechanical threshing mills appeared in the 1880s, as a boom in wheat production saw exports peak at more than £1 million in 1883. Local manufacturers ingeniously adapted agricultural equipment to local needs. The introduction of shearing machines in the late 1880s further reduced the demand for rural labour.

Other products enjoyed fluctuating fortunes. Most important in Auckland ‘province’ (provincial identity long outlived the institutions themselves), timber processing became the country's largest manufacturing enterprise between 1875 and 1885. A substantial export trade in kauri timber was vulnerable to erratic prices, as was the ‘poor man's industry’ of extracting kauri-gum (resin) deposits. Coal was exported from Westland from the mid-1880s. Urban manufacturing continued to grow until about 1886, after which the availability of cheap imports brought a decade of decline. By 1886 the number of industrial workers, including those making handicrafts, had reached 39 000. Most industries were small concerns serving local needs. In 1891 one-third of factory employees produced clothing and textiles, while a fifth was involved in building materials, and another fifth in food, drink, and tobacco processing. Local manufacturers received some protection in 1888, when the Atkinson ministry imposed a 20 percent tariff on imported goods which competed with locally-made products. Not for the last time, a conservative government proved willing to use the power of the state for economic ends. The low-cost, low-wage conditions under which New Zealand industry operated were highlighted by the report of the 1890 Sweating Commission, which revealed considerable exploitation of women and children. The failure of the 1890 Maritime Strike by seamen, watersiders, miners, and railwaymen emphasised the relative weakness of urban labour in a mainly rural, export-dependent economy.

The wars of the 1860s had brought both unprecedented Maori unity, and new divisions. Alliance with the pakeha had offered some tribes the opportunity to pay off old scores. While some kupapa fought defensive actions on their own soil, others ranged across the North Island in a manner reminiscent of the large supra-tribal war parties of earlier in the century. Co-operation and resistance continued to be twin motifs of Maori response to the pakeha for several decades after overt warfare ended. On balance, it seems that in this period collaboration was the less successful means of preserving tribal autonomy.

Kupapa and ‘rebels’ both suffered from the land confiscations of the 1860s. Fertility and strategic location were more important considerations for the settler government than the owners' part in rebellion. The operations of the Native Land Court, established under the Native Lands Act 1865, which permitted the leasing or purchase of land from Maori named in the court's certificates of title, efficiently parted the Maori from much of their remaining land. From 1873, the court operated under a system that was even more clearly weighted in favour of Maori wishing to sell land. In the 1880s land in the King Country itself—where King movement supporters had continued to live in effective independence—began to come before the court, and this paved the way for its purchase. Construction of the Auckland-Wellington railway through Ngati Maniapoto territory symbolised the end of an autonomous Maori zone. By 1892 less than one-sixth of the country remained in Maori ownership, and a quarter of that was leased to Europeans. Most Maori-owned land was rugged and bush-clad. Maori now were only 7 percent of the population. By 1896 epidemics had reduced their numbers to 42 000. Living in poor conditions—many in insanitary, makeshift camps—they grew scarcely enough for their own needs and relied increasingly on seasonal work on European farms and public works.

Yet Maori society remained resilient and adaptable. This was a time of intense political activity, of large tribal and supra-tribal meetings held in splendid new meeting-houses, and of negotiations with pakeha politicians. ‘Loyal’ Maori had been rewarded with four seats in the House of Representatives in 1867.

Maori MPs became increasingly skilled advocates of Maori rights. Ngati Kahungunu kupapa leaders organised a Repudiation movement to challenge the Hawke's Bay land sales of the 1860s. Kepa te Rangihiwinui, who had been one of the pakeha's main military allies, led an anti-land-sales group in Wanganui in the 1880s. In Te Waipounamu, the prophet Te Maiharoa led a heke (migration) of Ngai Tahu, which peacefully reoccupied tribal land in the Waitaki valley for two years, until evicted by armed police in 1879. In Taranaki, land proclaimed confiscated was left in Maori hands for more than a decade before pakeha settlers sought to occupy it. Here Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi, based at Parihaka, led a movement of passive resistance which attracted wide support, and was only subdued in 1881 by a massive show of military force. The two leaders and many of their followers were temporarily exiled to the South Island. Maori spiritual values remained strong. King Tawhiao's Tariao (‘morning star’) faith recognised guardian spirits and ancestors, and drew on the teachings of Te Ua. Te Kooti proved ultimately more significant as founder of the comprehensive and sophisticated Ringatu faith than as a warrior. The mission-trained Te Whiti claimed God's special protection for the Maori and preached predestination.

While Maori people now participated in the pakeha economy, they generally did so in family groups rather than as isolated individuals. The Maori remained separated from pakeha life by language and culture, as well as by geography. While there was no rigid segregation, they were still a distinct ethnic and social group. In the context of nineteenth century European expansion world wide, this was no small achievement.

Although 1890 came to be seen as a watershed year in New Zealand history, its significance was less apparent at the time. A general election resulted in a fragile majority for the loosely-organised team supporting Liberal leader John Ballance, who differed from Premier Harry Atkinson chiefly in proposing a graduated land tax which would encourage large landowners to reduce the size of their holdings, allowing more small farmers on to the land. In Dunedin and Christchurch, increased awareness of political issues among wage-earners after the defeat of the Maritime Council had electoral consequences, with the return of candidates sympathetic to labour. In rural electorates, by contrast, abstention from voting remained the most typical form of political activity. The abolition of plural voting had reduced the direct political power of those who owned property in several constituencies, but there was still a ‘country quota’ which gave rural voters 28 percent more strength than was justified by their share of the total population.

Ballance became assured of a viable majority in the House only after Atkinson alienated a number of members by stacking the Legislative Council with new appointees, in a bid to establish an unassailable majority there. The conservative ‘Continuous Ministry’ at last left office, ‘leaving a legacy of constitutional controversy, which did much to unify the Liberal alliance. Ballance now sought to make his own appointments to the upper house. After two years’ argument the British Colonial Secretary instructed New Zealand's Governor to acquiesce. This ended the Governor's substantive role in politics. An Act set a seven-year term (as against tenure for life) for future legislative councillors and reduced the upper house to the effective status of a debating chamber. These events, together with the extension of the franchise to women in 1893—a result of the unwillingness of the new Liberal leader Richard John Seddon to alienate a powerful feminist-temperance alliance—gave New Zealand politics a markedly more democratic appearance.

Liberal legislation at first focused on land issues. The Land and Income Assessment Act 1891 imposed a modest, and modestly-graduated, tax on unimproved land values. This tax was a minimal imposition on prospering pastoralists, who sold up (when they did so) because rising land prices made it worthwhile. In 1892 Minister of Lands, John McKenzie offered Crown lessees an optional 999-year lease without revaluation—this way freehold tenure in all but name. By 1907 more than 5000 Crown tenants had taken up some 1 million hectares under this tenure. These measures fostered Liberal support in the countryside, and in the 1893 election the party doubled its rural representation. Overall it now held 51 of the 74 European seats. The Advances to Settlers Act 1894 offered state loans to (non-Maori) settlers at reasonable interest rates. Its chief beneficiaries were not new ‘bush farmers’, but established farmers who could borrow to make improvements.

The success of these policies was much enhanced by a steady rise in international prices after 1894. This income allowed the government to borrow for public works construction, land purchase, and loans to farmers, and enabled farmers to service their mortgages from increased earnings. By the end of the 1890s the full impact of refrigeration was bringing significant economic changes. In 1901 there were nearly 5000 dairy farmers, and by 1911—when they totalled one-third of all farmers—there were three times as many. The trend towards intensive farming was firmly established, as small-scale production became commercially viable. Before 1890 it took many sheep or a substantial herd of cattle to make a living; by 1900 a few hundred sheep or a handful of dairy cattle would suffice. Subsistence farming, widespread in the nineteenth century, now declined. Farming became a business, and increasingly a family business, as mechanisation brought a decline in the number of rural labourers. There were now three farm-produced export staples rather than one, although earnings from wool continued to be greater than those from meat or dairy products.

Townspeople profited from an expanding rural economy. Urban workers also benefited from legislation sponsored by the Liberals' first Minister of Labour, William Pember Reeves. The Factories Act 1894 provided for regular inspection of factories, closely regulated the conditions of employment of women and children, and restricted the working week in most industries to not more than 48 hours. The Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1894 set up a mechanism for peacefully settling industrial disputes, and in the process elevated unions to equal status with employers in the bargaining process. Disputes not resolved by negotiation were to be settled by a central Arbitration Court, whose decisions were binding. Registration of unions was voluntary, and direct collective bargaining remained an option. But the collapse of unionism after 1890 made the new system appear attractive, and most unions sought the recognition offered. Union membership soared from some 8000 in 1896 to 57 000 in 1910. Reeves was not present to witness this growth in the labour movement. In 1896, unable to win support from his colleagues for a new round of radical legislation, he became Agent-General in London. His departure left urban wage-earners without an effective voice in the government, which was now dominated by the populist improvisation of Seddon, McKenzie, and a latter-day Vogel, Colonial Treasurer Joseph Ward.

By 1900 the Liberal Party had a mass organisation as well as strong leadership. The Liberal-Labour Federation unified regional associations through a national council and annual conferences. For the first time ordinary people could become members of a political party. But, while the Liberals remained dominant in Parliament after Ward became Prime Minister on Seddon's death in 1906, social and economic forces gradually split the alliance between urban wage-earners and small-to-middling farmers which sustained them in power. As they became more established, small dairy and mixed farmers grew more critical of the government which had in many cases given them their start on the land. Demand for the freehold became a rallying cry. Free trade, unrestricted access to Maori land, and freedom from government regulation, and from the spectre of socialist trade unionism, were other demands. The New Zealand Farmers' Union, launched in 1899, spread especially rapidly in newly-opened North Island districts. Its leadership soon comprised established as well as struggling farmers, and increasingly it supported the new Reform Party, led by William Ferguson Massey, which also gained the backing of protection-dependent urban businessmen after dropping free trade as party policy.

Meanwhile, urban workers grew disenchanted with the government as their share of the country's growing prosperity diminished after 1900. Real wages fell as the Arbitration Court delivered more miserly and belated award increases. In addition, up to 10 percent of the work-force continued to be intermittently or seasonally unemployed. Although this was much less than the one-third comparably affected in Edwardian England, rising national income was clearly being distributed unequally. Both the arbitration system and the political alliance which had produced it were called into question. Unionists and socialists formed a Socialist Party, a Federation of Miners, and (in 1909) a Federation of Labour, which urged member unions to refuse arbitration and take direct action to achieve radical goals. Many leading militants had come from Australia, where an Irish-dominated working-class culture developed nationalist, anti-British characteristics. In the decades around 1900 there was much movement of labour between New Zealand and Australia as economic conditions fluctuated. Many sheep-shearing gangs followed a regular seasonal route through both countries. A few socialists came from the United States, where revolutionary organisations like the industrial Workers of the World preached the overthrow of capitalism through the unification of workers into ‘one big union’ with the strength to confront the state.

Losing support at both ends of the political spectrum, the Liberals failed to gain a clear majority in the 1911 election, and in 1912 enough MPs crossed the floor of the House to bring down the government. Massey now led a Reform Party government which in effect offered a more efficient administration of the Liberals' heritage. He moved first to defeat the challenge from the left. A 1912 dispute at the Waihi goldmine, about whether workers should accept arbitration under the 1894 Act, eventually ended in police-backed violence. In 1913 a ‘lock-out’ on the Wellington waterfront led to a general strike by watersiders, seamen, and coalminers. This was defeated after thousands of middle-class and farmer ‘special constables’, supporting the regular police and sustained by logistical support from the military, fought with unionists on the streets of Auckland and Wellington. Clearly unable to overthrow the government by direct action, the militants turned to more conventional politics. A total of six ‘Social Democrat’ and Labour MPs were elected in 1914, and in 1916 a Labour Party was formed. If any one cause united Labour supporters behind their new party, it was opposition to military conscription, which was introduced in 1916, as New Zealand troops began to suffer the torments of the Western Front. The ‘Great War’ also marked the development of a sense of national identity in many New Zealanders. Since 1870, when dissatisfaction with Imperial troop withdrawals and declining prices on London markets had led to talk of secession and alliance with the United States, pakeha New Zealanders had taken for granted a position of loyal subordination within the British Empire. Remoteness from its centre was offset by the guarantee of security provided by the Royal Navy, and the facts of economic dependence. Throughout the period from 1875 until the Second World War, roughly 80 percent of New Zealand's exports were sold to the United Kingdom, and at least half its imports came from that country. Failure to join the Australian federation (created in 1901) was in large part an acknowledgment that New Zealand's most vital interests lay elsewhere. The ‘colony’ was officially renamed a ‘dominion’ in 1907, but this was seen as recognition of autonomy rather than full nationhood.

Wartime support for Britain modified attitudes of dependence. The 6500 volunteers who went to the South African War (1899–1902) saw themselves as superior mentally and physically to their British regular-force counterparts. The experience of the First World War—103 000 New Zealanders served abroad, and some 18 000 died, out of a total population of little more than a million—reinforced claims of outstanding military excellence. These were enhanced by the heroic assault on Chunuk Bair in August 1915, during the Gallipoli campaign; achievements at Passchendaele in October 1917; and the role of the New Zealand Division in helping stop the great German advance in the spring of 1918. Although Massey claimed (unconvincingly) that in signing the Treaty of Versailles he did not act as the agent of a sovereign state, many New Zealanders now felt they had earned statehood. The country was now a minor colonial power in its own right, having annexed the Cook Islands in 1901 and bloodlessly conquered German Samoa in August 1914. Prowess at the ‘national sport’ of rugby football had also become a source of (mostly male) patriotic pride after an all-but-undefeated tour of the British Isles by a representative team in 1905–6.

War had widened domestic divisions. While farmers profited from the commandeer system, under which the British government guaranteed purchase of New Zealand's main exports, the cost of living rose in towns and cities, and by 1919 real wages were lower than at any time since the turn of the century. The Protestant Political Association, which claimed to have 200 000 members in 1919, vigorously opposed ‘Rum’, ‘Romanism’ (i.e., Roman Catholicism) and ‘Rebellion’ (i.e., the Labour Party). Massey won his first decisive electoral victory in 1919. Reform now had 46 seats to the Liberals' 20 and Labour's eight. But the government had won only 36 percent of the vote, and Labour's share had reached 24 percent. Throughout the 1920s the existence of a three-party system was to lead to much greater fluctuations in seats won than in voting patterns.

Political instability reflected economic uncertainty. Soldiers had returned to promises of a ‘land fit for heroes to live in’—the state would put them on farms, or at least provide loans for this purpose. But government resettlement policies further fuelled a rise in land values, initially sparked by wartime guarantees of markets. Between 1915 and 1925 some 40 percent of occupied land changed ownership, much of it for a great deal more than it was worth. Rural prosperity ended abruptly in 1921–22, when export prices fell sharply. In response, the government legislated. The Meat Export Control Act 1922 established a board to handle beef and mutton exports, and a 1923 Act regulated dairy exporting. Massey's successor as Reform Party leader and Prime Minister, J. Gordon Coates, was responsible for the Rural Advances Act 1926, which created a new section of the State Advances Department to grant rural first-mortgage loans, and also for the Rural Intermediate Credit Act 1927. Coates's government implemented a substantial public works programme, building hydroelectric power stations, railways, and roads. It also introduced a child allowance in 1926. Once again, a purportedly conservative administration was expanding the state's economic role.

Urban wage-earners, whose incomes were cut during the 1921–22 slump, looked to Labour to protect their interests. Labour now had to modify its radicalism to expand its appeal. It could not hope to govern without rural votes, which were denied Labour so long as they were seen as advocates of land nationalisation. Meanwhile, dissatisfaction with Coate's leadership grew among businessmen who resented his promotion of state activity, and farmers who had looked to him to break the bitter cycle of falling returns, fixed mortgage repayments, and increasing costs. The temporary beneficiaries of this disillusionment were the Liberals, who (renamed United and again led by the now ageing and ailing Ward) won more seats than either of their rivals in the 1928 election by opting for the old policy of borrowing for development. But, as export prices plummeted, depression deepened and borrowing proved impracticable. In 1930 United formed a coalition with Reform, which comfortably won the 1931 election. This government moved to assist farmers through a 25 percent devaluation of the currency, a series of mortgage adjustment Acts, and lowered freight and interest rates. These measures did little to reduce growing support for radical monetary reform, which was advocated by the Douglas Credit movement and influenced Labour policy.

Giving priority to defending farmers' incomes worsened conditions in the cities. Most wages and salaries were cut by 10 percent in both 1931 and 1932. Such savage deflation in an already contracting economy led to an eighth of the work-force being unemployed by 1933. Government determination that the jobless should earn the meagre relief provided under the 1930 Unemployment Act (which levied a special tax on all males aged over 20) resulted in labour-intensive make-work projects and the establishment of spartan camps for single men in isolated areas. Sporadic outbreaks of violent protest in the main cities in 1932 were blamed by Prime Minister George Forbes on a ‘lawless minority’ and Communist agitation. His response was the Public Safety Conservation Act, which empowered the government to proclaim a national emergency and assume Draconian powers when public order was thought to be endangered. ‘Disloyal’ public servants, including those who protested against wage cuts, could now be dismissed. Resentment of the government became widespread.

Even after 1890, Maori resistance to pakeha dominance was occasionally physical. In 1895 Urewera Maori obstructed a survey until overawed by a military party. In 1898, 120 men of the regular army confronted followers of the Hokianga tohunga Hone Toia. Serious bloodshed in this ‘Dog Tax War’ was only averted by the timely intervention of the MP Hone Heke Rankin. In 1916 ‘the last shooting in the Anglo-Maori wars’ occurred when armed police fought a gun battle with followers of the Tuhoe leader Rua Kenana (founder of the Wairua Tapu religion), killing two of them. Increasingly, resistance took new forms. Petitioners sought the aid of the Crown in persuading the New Zealand Government to honour the terms of the Treaty of Waitangi, which now gained a status among Maori which many had not granted it in 1840. The King movement set up its own parliament (Kauhanganui) under a constitution promulgated in 1894. More significant—even though pakeha legislators refused to acknowledge it—was the rival Kotahitanga parliament, promoted chiefly by kupapa leaders, which met annually from 1892 to 1902.

Expansion of the ‘native schools’ system in the 1870s (there were 57 by 1879) laid the basis for an influx of gifted students into church boarding-schools such as Te Aute and St Stephen's Colleges in succeeding decades. A group of former Te Aute students took the Irish-Maori MP James Carroll as their mentor (he held a general electorate from 1893 to 1919, having earlier represented Eastern Maori). They called themselves the Young Maori Party and advocated the wholesale adoption of pakeha culture. ‘There is no alternative but to become a pakeha’, said Maui Pomare, who had become the first Maori Health Officer in 1900. Pomare and his assistant Te Rangihiroa (Peter Buck), who was Director of Maori Hygiene from 1920, worked for improvements in sanitation and living conditions. The Maori population rose from 45 500 in 1901 to 57 000 in 1921, due to a decline in the frequency of epidemics, the gradual acquisition of immunity to them, and an increase of numbers in the child-bearing age group. Life expectancy rose from around 25 years in 1890 to 35 in 1905. But Maori health was still comparatively poor. The death rate in the influenza pandemic of 1919 was four-and-a-half times that for Europeans.

Although Carroll was Minister of Native Affairs, the Liberals transferred 1.2 million hectares of Maori land to pakeha ownership. Reform alienated a further 1.4 million hectares. ‘Maori landowners, rather than the squattocracy, were vanquished by the state's promotion of closer settlement.’ Improvements in Maori farming came through communal initiatives. In the 1890s the Ngati Porou tribe, who retained much land on the East Coast of the North Island, embarked on large-scale pastoralism. By the mid-1920s they owned a million sheep, as well as a dairy factory, a finance company, and a co-operative store. Apirana Ngata (himself a Ngati Porou) as Native Minister sponsored a 1929 Act which channelled state credit to Maori farmers through the Department of Native Affairs. By 1937, the 750 000 acres being developed under this scheme were supporting about 18 000 people, most of whom lived in communities on or near the land they were working. Ngata, although a member of the Young Maori Party, believed in fostering a communal rural lifestyle which continued Maori traditions.

While Maori in Parliament became skilful practitioners of taha pakeha (the European aspects of living), local leaders continued to have the most effective influence over Maori community life. None gained more stature than Te Puea Herangi, a member of the Waikato kahui ariki (paramount family), who came to prominence in the Kingitanga by leading a campaign against the conscription of Waikato Maori during the First World War. In 1921 she established a model pa at Ngaruawahia, and from the 1920s she was a national figure for Maori. With her support, Ngata's land development schemes allowed Waikato communities to preserve their traditional way of life, while productively occupying their own lands.

Gordon Coates was the first pakeha politician to provide leadership on Maori issues. As Minister of Native Affairs between 1921 and 1928 he was determined to ‘remove the old grievances so that economic and social change could proceed’. Among many initiatives, he established the Sim Commission to investigate the Waikato and Taranaki land confiscations (its findings largely upheld Maori grievances), and also the Maori Purposes Fund to make grants for educational, social, and cultural activities. With Ngata as Native Minister from 1928 to 1934 the momentum of reform continued. But the leadership of these two politicians began to be challenged by the spiritual leader Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana, who was an advocate for the interests of the ‘Morehu’—detribalised, non-chiefly common people—to whom he offered a vision of spiritual and material betterment. His teachings seemed increasingly attractive as the Depression worsened. Maori are thought to have comprised some 40 percent of the jobless, and by 1933 three out of every four adult male Maori were registered as unemployed.

The Labour Party won power in the 1935 election, when it gained a total of 59 seats (counting a few sympathetic independent MPs) compared to the 19 retained by the Coalition government's candidates. In 1938 it was re-elected, with an increased share of the vote and 53 seats to a new National Party's 25. These successes inaugurated a 14-year tenure of office which, like the Liberal era of the 1890s, was to establish new patterns and set the terms of economic and political debate for the next 40 years. Like the Liberals, Labour benefited by being elected as the economy recovered from depression. And, as befell the Liberals, the administration of Labour's achievement was eventually to be taken over by its conservative political opponents.

Labour won office because it was seen to represent a genuine alternative to the orthodox economic policies which had entailed hardship for too many. In addition, although export prices and the general economy were recovering in 1935, dairy produce receipts were still low. Discontented dairy farmers, who approved Labour's promises of guaranteed prices and cheap credit, were decisive in turning the Coalition's defeat into a rout. Led by the former ‘Red Fed’ and Socialist Party militant Michael Joseph Savage, the Labour government moved to restore and direct the economy and introduce a comprehensive social welfare system.

Previous cuts in wages and conditions of employment were reversed, and the normal manufacturing working week was reduced to 40 hours. Pay rates for relief work were substantially increased. Unemployment fell to 38 000 in 1936, and continued economic growth combined with a large public works programme to leave only about 8000 on ‘sustenance and relief by December 1937. In 1936 full jurisdiction was restored to the Arbitration Court, and union membership was made compulsory for all workers subject to awards. The number of unionists rose in consequence from 103 000 in 1935 to 249 000 in 1938. The Agricultural Workers Act 1936 set a minimum pay rate for previously unprotected rural labourers, and required the provision of decent living conditions for them. By buying out private shareholding in the Reserve Bank (created by Coates in 1933 to give the state some control over monetary policy), the government assumed conclusively the power to use the ‘people's credit’. Finance issued by the Reserve Bank underwrote housing construction, public works, and guaranteed prices for dairy products. Cheap mortgages from the revitalised, government-controlled State Advances Corporation helped efficient but indebted farmers remain on the land.

During Labour's 14 years in power some 30 000 ‘state houses’ (government-owned, privately-built rental dwellings) were constructed. State Advances mortgages financed a further 19 000 houses built for private ownership in the same period. The two schemes together gave government assistance to two in every five houses built. Spreading state house suburbs whose inhabitants shared similar lifestyles came to symbolise an egalitarian ‘levelling upwards’ in the quality of New Zealand life. Educational reforms included the lowering of the school-entry age from six to five. The primary-level Proficiency examination was abolished, and after the leaving age was raised to 15, was effectively replaced by the new School Certificate. These changes required much greater spending on school construction and teachers' salaries. The landmark Social Security Act of 1938 was intended not merely to provide a subsistence income but to meet the ‘normal needs’ of beneficiaries. Essentially free, general medical care was introduced against the bitter opposition of doctors, who, ironically, were to be the group who benefited most from the new ‘welfare state’. Social security and public admiration for Savage were major factors in Labour's 1938 electoral triumph, which was blighted only by the recapture of some rural seats by a more united Opposition.

The government now looked forward to years of development, but was immediately reminded that New Zealand remained a small, dependent trading economy. Withdrawal of private capital combined with the expense of overseas-purchased machinery and supplies to reduce the country's sterling reserves from £29 million to £8 million within six months. Foreign exchange controls were introduced in December 1938. Minister of Finance Walter Nash won few concessions in months of negotiation with the British government and financiers. But bleak prospects were transformed by the outbreak of the Second World War. Britain rapidly agreed to bulk purchase arrangements at prices favourable to New Zealand for meat and dairy products, and later wool. Imports declined as European production was diverted to war purposes, or made unobtainable by shipping difficulties. The exchange crisis was quickly succeeded by a healthy balance of payments surplus, which even allowed the repayment of some earlier loans.

As in the First World War, the country's major contribution to the Allied effort was the provision of food, which went mostly to Britain, and later the Pacific theatre. While the war claimed some 12 000 New Zealand lives and saw 17 000 wounded, these were significantly lower casualties than the First World War inflicted on a society of half a million fewer people. Nevertheless, some 150 000 were serving in the armed forces when they were at their peak, and civilians were mobilised in support of the war effort. Prices and wages were tightly controlled, and the labour force was subject to direction into essential occupations. Secondary industry, already stimulated by economic expansion, public works, and import licensing, was now boosted by the need for greater self-sufficiency. A ‘hot-house growth of manufacturing’ resulted as many small, previously marginal ventures secured a disciplined labour force and guaranteed markets. The strongest growth occurred in Auckland, which was the largest focus for the urbanisation which had resumed with the end of the Depression. With so many men in the armed forces, women entered the work-force in large numbers. The proportion of Public Service clerical workers who were female rose from 5 percent in 1939 to 25 percent in 1947. By 1945 nearly 15 percent of married women under 30 were in full-time employment, a percentage which was not to decline after the war ended. From national necessity, many women entered rural and industrial occupations previously assumed to be ‘men's work’.

As with perceptions of women's role in society, assumptions about New Zealand's place in the world were irrevocably altered by the Second World War. The Balfour Report of 1926 recognised that Britain's dominions were de facto independent states. The United Kingdom legislated in the Statute of Westminster 1931, which effectively relinquished the British parliament's power to make laws for the dominions. New Zealand was not to accept this formally until 1947. The Labour government, like its conservative predecessors, sought consultation with Britain rather than an independent foreign policy. In the late 1930s New Zealand's support for the League of Nations and collective security brought disagreement with the appeasement-minded British. In 1945 Prime Minister Peter Fraser was to be a leading advocate for the rights of the small nations represented in the new United Nations Organisation. In the intervening years the limits of British power had been particularly brought home by the rapid capitulation to the Japanese in 1942 of the vaunted Singapore military base. The necessity of reliance on United States protection was underlined by the wartime presence of 100 000 American ‘GIs’ at New Zealand staging bases. Unlike Australia, New Zealand kept its best fighting troops in the Mediterranean theatre throughout the war. After participating in the unsuccessful defence of Greece and Crete in 1941, they endured the hardships of the North African desert and the slow, difficult advance through Italy. Although operating within the British command structure, New Zealand troops remained under New Zealand Government control. The war also stimulated a redirection of New Zealand trade. New Zealand's exports to non-British markets doubled to about 40 percent of all its exports in the decade after 1941, and were never to return to the levels of the previous half-century.

While a multi-party War Cabinet made the major decisions, Labour's regular Cabinet continued its largely-domestic business. Pragmatic politics counterpointed national sacrifice. The 1943 Servicemen's Settlement and Land Sales Act empowered the government to control prices in all land transactions, and to buy land suitable for subdivision. Farmers hoping to profit as before from a wartime rise in land values, and dissatisfied with the level of guaranteed prices, turned against the government. Despite its abolition of the country quota, Labour won a majority of only four seats in the 1946 election. In contrast with 1919, the reintegration of returning service personnel into the economy was impressively successful, backed as it was by full employment, enforced wartime savings, and guaranteed markets abroad. But the continuation of many wartime restrictions—symbolised by the 1948 Economic Stabilisation Act—was irksome. Maintaining supplies to impoverished Britain required continued rationing, electricity use was limited, and soaring marriage and birth rates outstripped house building.

The National Party, in its post-war guise, promised more efficient management of key Labour gains and greater personal freedom (such as the right of purchase for state house tenants). Led by Sidney Holland, National won the 1949 election. In 1951 it increased its majority in a rare snap election called to take advantage of the government's crushing termination of a major industrial dispute which had been precipitated by a breakdown in relations between waterfront workers and their employers. The Labour Party, though clearly not laggards in their enthusiasm for the ‘Cold War’—they introduced peacetime compulsory military training in 1949—were outmaneuvered by a government which consolidated its support around the popular themes of ‘law and order’, anti-Communism, and curbing the unions. Labour's ambivalence towards the strikers reflected divisions within the union movement, inside which a militant Trade Union Congress had emerged in opposition to the cautious Federation of Labour.

National continued to present itself to the electorate as the party which would best defend the ‘national interest’ against divisive sectional concerns. Buoyed by continuing prosperity, it was interrupted in its self-stated role as the ‘natural party of government’ only by the one-term Labour administrations of 1957–60 and 1972–75. Both these periods saw adverse alterations in New Zealand's terms of trade. Both Labour Cabinets made changes too rapidly for the liking of an electorate more comfortable with the ‘steady-does-it’ approach epitomized by Keith Holyoake's term as Prime Minister in the 1960s. In that decade political life sometimes seemed to dimly reflect the American scene. New Zealand troops fought in Vietnam, New Zealand youth rebelled against their parents' staidness and complacency, the voices of New Zealand's indigenous inhabitants began to be heard by the wider society. Seen as more efficient at managing a mixed economy, the National Party retained power even in the troubled economic times between 1975 and 1984.

In the quarter-century after 1950, New Zealand for many at last lived up to Seddon's characterisation of it as ‘God's Own Country’. National wealth per head rose continuously, if at varying rates, until the ‘oil crisis’ of 1973 began a period of stagnation. Standards of living mirrored this ‘pervasive prosperity’. The proportion of houses owned rather than rented rose from 61 percent to 69 percent during the 1950s. Low-cost suburban bungalows of uniform style were furnished with a widening range of consumer durables. Electric stoves, refrigerators, and washing-machines, found in only about half of all houses in the 1940s, were nearly universal by the mid-1960s (as were radiograms and, eventually, television sets). New Zealanders had more choice in spending their increasing discretionary incomes. Although many men remained preoccupied with sport, home-centred leisure (gardening, reading, TV-watching) increased with suburbanisation. Car ownership and substantial expenditure on roading (secondary routes as well as showpiece motorways) brought unparalleled mobility to many. Passenger use of railways declined as air transport came to dominate long-distance personal travel.

The dream of creating a materialist Utopia in New Zealand was kept alive by the unprecedented continuation of full employment for 30 years after the Second World War, when for the first time there had been the possibility of a job for almost everyone who wanted one. More white-collar work balanced continuing relative decline in rural employment. The proportion of the labour force employed in agriculture fell from about one-third in 1938 to an eighth in the early 1970s. Farming productivity rose at about 1 percent annually, as all aspects of farm management became more sophisticated. Capital improvements compensated for a diminishing labour force: tractor numbers increased tenfold from 1938 to the 1970s, and aircraft were widely used to spread fertiliser. By 1972 the number of farms had fallen by nearly a third from the post-war peak of 92 000, reached in 1955. The number of dairy farmers declined particularly dramatically, from nearly 40 000 in 1950 to about 17 000 in 1976. This reflected changes in the relative profitability of different types of farming, as well as a general exodus from the ranks of the small farmer. Meanwhile, male, blue-collar employment rose steadily, roughly in proportion to the overall growth of the labour force. By 1976 there were more than 400 000 blue-collar workers, 47 percent of the male work-force. Most rapid expansion came in white-collar employment, which occupied a quarter of working men in 1951, a third in 1971. The same proportions of all women aged over 15 were in paid employment in each of these years. In 1971, 62 percent of working woman had white-collar jobs. Most women continued to work in jobs performed mostly by women. At the beginning of the century the majority of working women had been employed in one of nine major occupational groups: as nurses, teachers, servants, domestics, drapers' assistants, shop assistants, clerks, tailoresses, and farmers' wives. These occupations remained female-intensive.

The goal of being one's ‘own boss’ became less attainable; between 1951 and 1971 small proprietors fell from one-fifth to an eighth of the work-force. Small business operators, like small farmers, felt themselves vulnerable to growing pressure from larger rivals and regulation-enforcing bureaucrats. The resentments of these two groups were reflected in the support they gave the Social Credit party in the 1960s and 1970s (although this was too geographically diffuse for the party to gain parliamentary representation, apart from one MP for a single three-year term). By the early 1970s about 40 percent of the work-force belonged to bureaucracies—organisations with specialised jobs, structured in a hierarchy, and governed by formal rules and regulations. The public sector, with about 250 000 employees, had grown by 100 000 in 20 years. Contrary to widespread popular belief, it had not increased its share of the work-force, or of national resources. Private bureaucracies now employed some 200 000 people. The growth of both sectors was closely linked to the expansion of post-primary education. Between 1945 and 1970 spending on education rose from 6 percent to 14 percent of government expenditure, and the number of secondary school students more than trebled. By 1971 one person in every three participated directly in the education system, as full-time student, teacher or administrator. Seven-eighths of all pupils attended state-run schools. Public education, like the state's housing policy, was based on an ethos which emphasised equality of access, social integration, and cultural uniformity. University students doubled in numbers in the 1960s, becoming 10 percent of the school-leaving age-group by the end of the decade.

The pakeha birth-rate had fallen steadily from the 1880s to the mid-1930s, prompting fears of a near-stationary population. This at last came to pass in the late 1970s, but only after a period of unprecedented growth, from 1.7 million in 1945 to more than 3 million. One-third of the increase was due to immigration, at first from war-ravaged Europe, later from the Pacific islands. Both Western Samoa and the Cook Islands gained effective independence in the 1960s, but their citizens retained rights of entry to New Zealand. By 1976, 61 000 Pacific Islanders lived in New Zealand. The bulk of the population growth, however, came from natural increase—the postwar ‘baby boom’, which lasted until use of effective contraception became more widespread during the 1960s. By 1961 a third of New Zealanders were aged under 15. This generation put stress on the education system and then on the job market, and seemed likely to overload superannuation schemes and health resources as it aged. Other demographic trends were continued movements from country to town and from south to north. By 1976 only one-sixth of New Zealanders lived outside urban areas. In that year 73 percent of the population lived in the North Island. The Auckland conurbation alone had a quarter of the country's people and a third of those employed in manufacturing. Whereas the greatest number of Vogel-period immigrants had settled in Canterbury and Otago, the latest wave of European migrants went disproportionately to the cities of Auckland and Wellington, as did newly-arriving Pacific Islanders and Maori leaving rural areas.

This modernising society became more complex, more distinctive, and less self-confident as a Maori cultural renaissance began to affect the cities, more than a century of migration from Europe diminished to a trickle, and New Zealand finally lost its secure place as Britain's offshore farm. In the 1970s greatly-increased oil prices, and the global economy's inability to distribute the world's food production effectively, led to an apparently irreversible decline in the country's terms of trade with the outside world. Primary products—wood-pulp and paper as well as wool, meat, and dairy produce—continued to be New Zealand's export staples, but their share of total exports fell to 60 percent by 1975. In that year Britain (which had cut the symbolic umbilical cord by joining the protectionist European Economic Community) took only one-fifth of New Zealand's exports, and the country's four major markets (the others being Australia, the United States, and Japan) only three-fifths between them. An increasing variety of agricultural and manufactured products were sold in a growing range of markets. Primary produce sales were increasingly handled by centralised producer boards. The main focus of secondary industry was still the further processing of imported goods for local markets. Although import licensing was said to shelter inefficient industries, it seems that the average level of protection was not high by world standards. Nor is it clear that New Zealand output or standards of living have lagged nearly as far behind other developed countries as figures based on exchange-rate comparisons suggest. At worst, the country's economic performance has been an average one.

Much the same could be said in social terms. In New Zealand many features of Western social change have been experienced on a smaller scale. These have included the rise of youth culture (as both a new form of consumerism and a serious attempt to transform styles of living), the revitalisation of ethnic minorities, and the assertion by women of their right to participate fully in all aspects of economic and social life. Equal pay for equal work became a legal requirement in 1972, showing the extent of change since 1936, when the first minimum-wage legislation had set the female minimum rate at 47 percent of the male. But women remained over-represented in low-status occupations, and the twentieth-century idealisation of motherhood continued to be a potent source of guilt for mothers who, from necessity, took paid employment. As age, ethnic, and gender distinctions came to matter more, class divisions grew more subtle and apparently less important. Although extremes of wealth and poverty were rare, equality of income and status had been brought no closer by decades of formal equality of access to society's resources. And social consensus as to the desirability to relative equality and social security was being eroded by harsh economic realities and the diversification of individual aspirations.

The state of Maori health still caused concern in the 1930s. In 1938 the Maori death rate was 24 per 1000, compared with 10 for pakeha, and the infant mortality rate was 153 for each 1000 live births, as against 37 for non-Maori. In 1940, 36 percent of Maori people were said to live in houses unfit for habitation by minimum pakeha-standards. Funding by the first Labour government of the Native Housing Act 1935 resulted in the construction of some 3000 houses by 1951. More systematic efforts to improve Maori health saw experts such as H. B. Turbott combine with community leaders like Te Puea to introduce health programmes. Effective control of diseases like tuberculosis and typhoid, and falling infant mortality, led to a rise in Maori life expectancy from 46 years in 1925 to 58 in 1956. These factors, and a continuing high birth rate, saw the Maori population double in 30 years, reaching 116 000 in 1951. In that year 57 percent of Maori people were aged under 21, compared with 35 percent of non-Maori. In 1955 the Maori birth rate was 44 per 1000, as against 25 for non-Maori. By 1966 half of all Maori were aged under 15. Continuing high fertility and improved health saw the Maori population reach 270 000 in 1976. Maori now comprised 9 percent of all New Zealanders.

Movement of Maori to the cities began during the Second World War, when manpower regulations and the work of the Maori War Effort Organisation opened up a variety of urban employment opportunities. In any case, farming could not have sustained the rapid increase in numbers. Eleven percent of Maori people had lived in urban areas in 1936. Forty years later, three-quarters of the Maori people were urbanised, and a fifth lived in Auckland, whose Maori population doubled during the 1960s. Migration to the cities meant improved housing conditions, but most Maori could not afford to live outside areas offering low-cost accommodation. Urbanisation was reflected in employment data. While 40 percent of male Maori had worked in agriculture, forestry and fisheries in 1951, only 16 percent did so by 1971. The respective figures for blue-collar employment were 52 percent and 70 percent. Over the same period, the proportion of Maori women in service occupations fell from 42 percent to 23 percent, while blue-collar workers rose from 24 percent to 36 percent of the female work-force. By the late 1960s, Maori and Pacific Islanders in Auckland and Wellington formed a ‘new under-class’, most holding poorly-paid jobs which offered little security or prospects for advancement.

Maori education benefited from the first Labour government's introduction of free secondary education and a school-leaving age of 15. By 1953, while special Maori schools (directly administered by the Department of Education) were still numerous, 60 percent of Maori children attended ordinary state primary schools. By 1960 most Maori children went on to secondary school; but they did so on average at a later age, and left earlier, with fewer qualifications than pakeha children. In 1960, 5 percent of Maori pupils gained School Certificate, compared with 30 percent of non-Maori of the same age. The state school system was still almost entirely monocultural. Educational under-achievement was both a cause and an effect of low occupational status.

From 1943, with the defeat of Apirana Ngata, the Ratana-Labour alliance held all four Maori parliamentary seats. Much of the discrimination against Maori workers was removed by the first Labour government, and Maori shared in the general expansion of economic activity and in social security provisions. The Maori Social and Economic Advancement Act 1945 set up tribal committees and executives concerned especially with welfare and marae administration. In 1947 the word ‘Maori’ replaced ‘Native’ in all official usage, an acknowledgment that Polynesian New Zealanders now more than before saw themselves as one people. National organisations such as the Maori Women's Welfare League (formed in 1951) and the Maori Council (established in 1962) helped strengthen the authority of a postwar generation of leaders. Many had served with distinction in the Maori Battalion in North Africa and Italy, or in essential industries. Returning servicemen were able to demand equality with more success than had their counterparts in the First World War Pioneer Battalion, who had received no rehabilitation assistance. Maori sporting ability (demonstrated particularly in rugby union and league) also earned respect from the wider community.

In the 1940s Ngata spoke of the need for a ‘continuous attempt to interpret the Maori point of view to the pakeha in power’. Te Puea argued that ‘unity of Maori and Pakeha can only grow from each sharing the worthwhile elements in the other's culture’. As urbanisation brought the two races together, discrimination and the lack of equal opportunity grew more visible. Maori were told they must adapt to the pakeha way of life; there was no equivalent pressure on pakeha. From the late 1960s groups such as Nga Tamatoa (‘the young warriors’) challenged the continuing loss of land, declining use of the Maori language, and what came to be called ‘institutional racism’ in pakeha-dominated society. A cultural resurgence which emphasised tribal identity, traditions, and protocol developed in parallel with a drive to establish urban marae. Under the third Labour government, multiculturalism replaced integration as official policy. Maoritanga (the experience and expression of Maoriness) had an officially recognised place in the future of Aotearoa.

See under historical works in the bibliography, ‘Books about New Zealand’, at the end of this volume.

The events occurring immediately after the July 1984 general election highlighted the need for constitutional reform, Difficulties experienced by the incoming government, in taking what was considered urgent action, revealed uncertainties in the rules for the handing over of power from an outgoing government to an incoming government. That issue was resolved but constitutional reform was considered necessary.

An officials committee was set up to examine the rules for the handing over of power and make proposals for their reform. (The committee comprised representatives of a number of government departments having an interest in constitutional matters, and a university law professor.) The committee was also asked to carry out a general reorganisation of statutory constitutional provisions with a view to gathering them together in one piece of New Zealand legislation. The committee was given this task because the constitutional difficulties of 1984 had also pointed to the need for reform of a number of other aspects of constitutional law. Statutory constitutional law was fragmented—scattered amongst a number of New Zealand and United Kingdom Acts—and often uncertain. Some provisions were long out of date, while others were found in obscure places. For example, few people would have realised before July 1984 that it was the Civil List Act 1979 which had a section embodying the principle of responsible government, that is, by persons responsible to the electorate.

The officials committee's recommendations included a draft Constitution Bill. These recommendations were set out in two reports presented to the Minister of Justice and then made available to the public early in 1986. The Constitution Act 1986 was passed by Parliament in December 1986 and came into force on 1 February 1987. Reflecting the two-fold task of the officials committee, it clarifies the rules relating to the handover of power and brings together in one Act the most important statutory constitutional provisions.

Before outlining the provisions of the Constitution Act 1986, it is worthwhile noting the principles inherent in New Zealand's system of government which were taken into account in formulating its recommendations. The committee spelt out these principles in the following terms:

Responsible government—The persons who are appointed to act as the Crown's advisers are to be chosen from persons who are elected by the people, and who have the confidence of the House of Representatives.

Continuity of government—There must always be a government capable of acting, of advising the Governor-General, and of accepting responsibility for that advice. The Governor-General must not be left without advisers.

Certainty and flexibility—It has long been the practice in New Zealand for a government defeated at a general election to stay in office for approximately 14 days before the new government is sworn in. This contrasts sharply with British practice, where a defeated government is replaced within 24 hours of the election.

At the heart of the parliamentary system lies the power to make laws that is vested by the Constitution Act 1986 in the Parliament of New Zealand, which consists of the Sovereign in right of New Zealand (normally represented by the Governor-General) and an elected House of Representatives. The Sovereign's role is formal, and the term ‘Parliament’ effectively means the House of Representatives.

The principal functions of Parliament are to enact laws, supervise the Government's administration, vote supply, provide a government, and redress grievances by way of petition.

The Constitution Act 1986 forbids the House to allocate public funds for any purpose unless first recommended by the Crown. Although the reasons for this provision are historical, it is also used by governments to defeat legislation brought forward by individual members which ministers are unwilling to support or adopt. On the other hand, the law forbids the Crown to tax citizens without express parliamentary approval.

Constitutional law includes the law and custom of Parliament, itself derived from a variety of sources. The Bill of Rights 1688 saves any proceeding in Parliament from being questioned in any forum, other than the House itself, and the Legislature Act 1908 provides that the powers, privileges, rights, and immunities of the House (and its committees and members) are those possessed by the British House of Commons on 1 January 1865. One aspect of the powers of the House is the ability to make rules for the conduct of its business. Most of these are contained in the Standing Orders, although some are made on a sessional, and others on an ad hoc basis. The traditional three readings given to a bill are part of Standing Orders, but it is open to the House to alter or suspend its rules at any time. The House has retained the right to punish breaches of its privileges, whether by members or citizens, from which there is no appeal (although the courts could be asked to decide whether the privilege claimed is one recognised by law).

Perhaps the most important privilege of the House is that of freedom of speech, guaranteed by the Bill of Rights 1688, and claimed by the Speaker upon confirmation in office by the Governor-General.

The House meets as Parliament in answer to a summons from the Governor-General. Sessions of Parliament are marked by a formal opening when the Government's legislative programme is described in the Speech from the Throne, read by the Governor-General, and a closing prorogation by proclamation. Unless the House, by resolution made under the authority of the Constitution Act 1986, carries forward business to the next session, all business before the House on prorogation lapses. Parliament is either dissolved by the Governor-General or expires after three years, and another general election is held.

Because control of the House's business lies with the Government, many of the rules and customs of the House are designed to ensure that members are given a full opportunity to debate any aspect of government proposals. A central figure in Parliament is the Speaker, who is elected to act as an impartial chairman when the House is in session. The Speaker controls debates and the conduct of members, and ensures the Standing Orders are complied with. The Speaker is assisted by permanent officials, headed by the Clerk of the House, who is charged with the administration of the House and the provision of advice on parliamentary law and custom.

Persons 18 years and over have the right to vote in parliamentary elections. Enrolment as an elector is compulsory, but voting is not. To qualify for enrolment persons must (i) be at least 18 years old; (ii) be New Zealand citizens or permanent residents; (iii) have lived continuously in New Zealand for at least a year at some time; and (iv) have last lived continuously for one month in the electorate they are to be enrolled in. Maoris, including persons of Maori descent, may choose to enrol for either a Maori or general electorate, but may make the choice only at certain times. The electoral rolls are maintained by New Zealand Post.

The Controller and Auditor-General is an officer of the Crown appointed by the Governor-General under the Public Finance Act 1977. Much like the judiciary, he or she is independent of the executive government and can only be removed from office by the Governor-General upon an address from the House of Representatives. There is also a Deputy Controller and Auditor-General, whose mode of appointment and tenure of office are the same. The Controller and Auditor-General, and persons acting under delegation from him or her, are collectively called the ‘Audit Office’. No minister is in any way responsible for the carrying out or exercise by the Audit Office of its functions, duties, and powers.

The Audit Office audits the financial statements of government departments, local authorities, and most government-controlled corporations, boards and companies. These organisations are also subject from time to time to reviews which ascertain whether their resources have been applied effectively and efficiently in a manner consistent with the policies of their governing bodies.

The constitutionally important role of the Audit Office is to act as a monitor on behalf of Parliament, and take part in the procedures laid down in the Public Finance Act 1977 to control issues of money out of the Public Account. The Audit Office has to be satisfied that all issues from the Public Account to meet the Government's expenditure requirements are within the appropriations and other authorities granted by Parliament. This role is crucial to the ability of Parliament to control the supply of funds to the Crown, and in certain circumstances the Audit Office may prevent the issue of money from the Public Account.

To enable it to carry out its functions, the Audit Office has a number of powers. These include rights of access to the books, accounts, and property of its clients, and the right to require persons to supply information, or deliver up books and accounts in their possession, or under their control.

The Controller and Auditor-General has no general power of sanction to remedy shortcomings discovered during an audit. The principal recourse is to report to the management of the organisation either by letter or in the formal audit opinion on financial statements, to a minister, or to Parliament and its select committees. If there is a deficiency or loss of public money or stores, the Controller and Auditor-General has the power to surcharge the persons responsible to recover the amount involved. This power is rarely used.

The Commissions of Inquiry Act 1908, provides that the Governor-General may by Order-in-Council, appoint any person or persons to be a commission to inquire into and report upon any question arising out of, or concerning: (a) the administration of the Government; (b) the working of any existing law; (c) the necessity or expediency of any legislation; (d) the conduct of any officer in the service of the Crown; (e) any disaster or accident (whether due to natural causes or otherwise) in which members of the public were killed, injured, or were or might have been exposed to risk of death or injury; and (f) any other matter of public importance.

A Royal commission is appointed by the Governor-General pursuant to the Letters Patent, but in other respects derives its powers from the Commissions of Inquiry Act 1908. Royal commissions are generally regarded as having greater prestige. A committee of inquiry may be set up by a minister to investigate some matter, but such a committee normally has no statutory basis although there are ancillary powers in some instances.

Amendments to the legislation in 1979 and 1980 confer new rights upon any person if he or she is a party to the inquiry or satisfies the commission that he or she has an interest in the inquiry apart from any interest in common with the public. Usually the terms of reference for a commission are quite specific. While there is frequently a final term of reference which appears to include everything else, this term of reference must be considered in context. It does not confer the right on almost anyone to become a party or participant in the inquiry.

The Department of Internal Affairs administers the Commissions of Inquiry Act 1908 and provides basic services to commissions. These inquiries are not part of the justice system, nor are they part of the conventional administrative bureaucracy. The department retains important constitutional responsibilities, and is held responsible to ensure that complete independence and impartiality of the investigations is maintained.

Commissions of inquiry must report to the Governor-General, who in turn refers the findings and report to his or her ministers. It is frequently the custom for the report to be published.

The executive government of New Zealand is carried out on behalf of the Sovereign by the ministers of the Crown, who make up the members of the Cabinet and the Executive Council, and control the state services. Ministers are responsible to Parliament for their official actions by constitutional convention, and are required to be members of Parliament by the Constitution Act 1986.

After a general election the Governor-General invites the leader of the majority party in the House of Representatives to accept office as Prime Minister, and form a government. On the new Prime Minister's advice the Governor-General appoints a number of MPs as ministers, generally with responsibilities for various areas of government administration (portfolios). The Governor-General may also appoint parliamentary under-secretaries, who are not ministers and not members of the Executive Council, to assist ministers.

The Cabinet and the Executive Council are two bodies, which in normal circumstances have the same membership but different functions. The Executive Council is a formal body with formal functions, whereas the Cabinet is an informal body with deliberative functions; the Executive Council tenders advice to the Governor-General on the basis of policy formulated in the Cabinet. The Council is established under Clause VII of the Letters Patent and is the main legal vehicle for promulgating government decisions that will form part of the law such as statutory regulations, which are made by Order-in-Council.

The Cabinet is in effect the highest council of government, although it is an informal body, which exists by constitutional convention. In the Cabinet the government of the day decides on administrative and legislative proposals and policies, and co-ordinates the work of ministers. The Cabinet has a system of subcommittees with authority to make decisions on various subjects, whose members are the ministers concerned. There are Cabinet committees at present on the following subjects: policy; social equity; development and marketing; transport, communications and state enterprises; external relations and security; management and state employment; legislation; honours and appointments; and terrorism.

The proceedings of the Cabinet are informal and confidential, which encourages consensus decisions. By constitutional convention the Cabinet accepts collective responsibility for its decisions, which ensures that ministers will have the support of the Government as a whole in Parliament for their legislative and other proposals. The Cabinet Office provides services for the Cabinet and its committees. The Secretary is also the Clerk of the Executive Council.

The ministry appointed after the 1987 General Election is listed in section 3.6.

The state services consist of organisations covered by the State Services Conditions of Employment Act 1977, and include all the servants of the Crown other than those holding political or judicial office. The Act establishes that common conditions of employment apply between these bodies. The following organisations are covered: the Public Service, the education, and hospital services, the armed forces, police and some other bodies. Each has a co-ordinating role in the management of its section of the state services, and also a role in negotating conditions of employment for their staff e.g., the Ministry of Defence manages the business of the air force, navy and army and also has a role in establishing conditions of employment for these personnel as well as the civilian staff working in these units.