New Zealand
A map of New Zealand showing the major cities and towns. Not shown are the
Antipodes Islands, Auckland Islands, Bounty Islands, Campbell Island,
Chatham Islands, The Snares, and the Kermadec Islands
New Zealand is an island nation state in the south-western
Pacific Ocean. The country consists of two major islands and a number of smaller
islands. A popular Māori name for New Zealand is Aotearoa, often
translated as The Land of the Long White Cloud. New Zealand is a parliamentary
democracy and a Commonwealth Realm. New Zealand is responsible for the
self-governing states of the Cook Islands and Niue and administers Tokelau and
the Ross Dependency.
Overview
Of New Zealand's four million people, roughly three million live in the North
Island and one million in the South Island. These islands are among the List
of largest in the world and the combined land area is comparable to the
British Isles or the US state of Colorado. Along with Aotearoa, another
Māori name for New Zealand was Niu Tireni, a
transliteration of the English name.
Other islands of New Zealand have much smaller populations and cover much less
land area. The most significant of these islands are:
-
Stewart Island (south of the South Island), the third largest island by land
area with a population of around 400
-
Waiheke Island, an island in Auckland's Hauraki Gulf, and, with about 8,000
people (far more in summer), the third most populated island in New Zealand
-
Great Barrier Island, east of the Hauraki Gulf
-
the Chatham Islands, an outlying group of islands with a population of about
750.
History
New Zealand is one of the most recently settled major land masses. Polynesian
settlers arrived probably some time between 500 and 1300 AD, and established
the indigenous Māori culture.
The first Europeans known to reach New Zealand were led by Abel Janszoon
Tasman, who sailed up the west coast of the South and North islands in 1642.
The Dutch thought it was a single land which they named Staaten Landt. It was
later named "Nieuw Zeeland" after the area in Batavia, Dutch East
Indies where they had been based, which in turn was named after the Dutch
province of Zeeland. In 1769 Captain James Cook began extensive surveys of the
islands. This led to European whaling expeditions and eventually significant
European colonisation.
New Zealand became a British colony with the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840, which
promised 'Tino Rangatiratanga' to the Māori tribes of New Zealand.
This phrase, translated as 'Governorship" by the British, more accurately
means 'Sovereignty' in Maori. This difference in translation continues to
cause friction today.
New Zealand was involved in a Constitutional Convention in March 1891 in
Sydney, New South Wales, along with the then-Australian Colonies. This was to
consider a potential constitution for the proposed federation between the
then-British Colonies. New Zealand lost interest in federating with Australia
after this convention.
New Zealand became an independent dominion on 26 September 1907 by royal
proclamation. Full independence was granted by the United Kingdom Parliament
with the Statute of Westminster in 1931; it was taken up upon the Statute's
adoption by the New Zealand Parliament in 1947. Since then New Zealand has
been a sovereign constitutional monarchy within the Commonwealth of Nations.
Politics
New Zealand is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary democracy. Under
the New Zealand Royal Titles Act (1953), Queen Elizabeth II is Queen of New
Zealand and is represented as head of state by the Governor-General, Dame
Silvia Cartwright.
Parliament consists of the unicameral House of Representatives, normally
consisting of 120 members, from which an executive Cabinet of about 20
ministers is appointed. There is no written constitution.
The Cabinet is led by the Prime Minister of New Zealand, currently Helen Clark
of the centre-left Labour party, which governs in coalition with the
further-left Progressive Party, and with support from the Christian
conservative United Future.
General elections are held every three years; the most recent were held in
July 2002. The Leader of the Opposition is Don Brash who became leader of the
National party on 28 October 2003. Currently eight parties are represented in
the House of Representatives, which since 1996 has been elected by a form of
proportional representation called Mixed Member Proportional (MMP).
New Zealand is a party to the ANZUS security treaty between Australia, New
Zealand, and the United States. In 1985 New Zealand refused to allow US
nuclear-powered or nuclear nuclear-armed ships to enter its ports, causing the
US to abrogate its ANZUS responsibilities to New Zealand in 1986. New Zealand
has not formally withdrawn from the treaty but still has a policy against all
forms of nuclear power generation and weapons. In practise, therefore, ANZUS
is dormant and remains a source of friction between New Zealand and its
allies.
New Zealand is a member of the following geo-political organisations:
- APEC
- Commonwealth of Nations
- OECD
- United Nations
Judiciary
New Zealand has a High Court (until 1980 known as the Supreme Court) and a
Court of Appeal (formerly part of the Supreme Court), as well as subordinate
courts. Until 2004, appeals from decisions of the Court of Appeal could be
appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London.
In 2003 the Supreme Court Act was passed, abolishing appeals to the Privy
Council, with effect from 2004 and setting up a Supreme Court of New Zealand
in Wellington.
The current Chief Justice is Dame Sian Elias.
Local Government
When originally settled, New Zealand was divided into provinces. These were
abolished in 1876 so that government could be centralised for financial
reasons. As a result, New Zealand has no separately represented subnational
entity such as a province, state or territory apart from its local government.
The spirit of the provinces however still lives on, and there is fierce
rivalry exhibited in sporting and cultural events.
Since 1876, local government has administered the various regions of New
Zealand. Due to its colonial heritage, New Zealand local government was
modelled fairly closely on British local government structures, with elected
city, borough, and county councils. Over the years some of these councils
merged or had boundary adjustments by mutual agreement, and a few new ones
were created. In 1989, the government completely reorganised local government,
implementing the current two-tier structure of regional councils and
territorial authorities.
Today New Zealand has 12 regional councils for the administration of
environmental and transport matters and 74 territorial authorities that
administer roading, sewerage, building consents, and other local matters. The
territorial authorities are 16 city councils, 57 district councils, and the
Chatham Islands Council. Four of the territorial councils (one city and three
districts) and the Chatham Islands Council also perform the functions of a
regional council and thus are known as unitary authorities. Territorial
authority districts are not subdivisions of regional council districts, and a
few of them straddle regional council boundaries.
Geography
New Zealand comprises two main islands and a number of smaller islands. The
South Island is the largest land mass, and is divided along its length by the
Southern Alps, the highest peak of which is Aoraki/Mount Cook, at 3754 metres.
There are 18 peaks of more than 3000 metres in the South Island. The North
Island is less mountainous than the South, but is marked by volcanism. The
tallest North Island mountain, Mount Ruapehu (2797 metres), is an active cone
volcano.
The total land area of New Zealand, 268,680 km2, is somewhat
less than that of Japan or of the British Isles, and slightly larger than
Colorado in the USA. The country extends more than 1600 km along its main,
north-north-east axis.
New Zealand is the most geographically isolated of all countries. Its closest
neighbour, Australia, is 2,000 km to the north-west of the main islands,
across the Tasman Sea. The only landmass to the south is Antarctica, and to
the north are New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga.
Partly because of its geographical isolation from neighbouring countries, and
partly because of the number and location of numerous uninhabited islands
belonging to it, New Zealand's Exclusive economic zone of marine resources was
the world's fifth largest, at 4.2 million square kilometres in the year 2000
(according to New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric
Research).
The usual climate throughout the country is mild, mostly cool temperate to
warm temperate, with temperatures rarely falling below 0°C or rising above
30°C. Conditions vary from wet and cold on the West Coast of the South
Island to dry and continental in the Mackenzie Basin of inland Canterbury and
subtropical in Northland.
In Wellington the average minimum temperature in winter is 5.9°C and the
average maximum temperature in summer is 20.3°C. Of the main cities,
Christchurch is the driest, receiving only some 500 millimetres of rain per
year. Auckland, the wettest, receives a little less than three times that
amount.
Scenic backdrop
New Zealand's scenery has appeared in a number of television programmes and
films. In particular, Hercules and Xena were filmed around
Auckland, Heavenly Creatures Christchurch. The Tribe is set and
filmed here too. Peter Jackson shot the epic The Lord of the Rings
trilogy in various locations around the country, taking advantage of the
spectacular and relatively unspoiled landscapes, and Mount Taranaki was used
as a stand-in for Mount Fuji in The Last Samurai. Other movies
currently filming in New Zealand include King Kong and The Lion,
the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Flora and Fauna
Because of its long isolation from the rest of the world, New Zealand has
extraordinary flora and fauna. Until the arrival of the first humans less than
two millennia ago, 80% of the land was forested and, barring two species of
bat, there were no non-marine mammals at all. Instead, New Zealand's forests
were inhabited by a diverse range of birds (many of them flightless),
reptiles, and insects—some of them almost the size of a mouse.
Economy
Auckland at night, with the Sky Tower in the background
New Zealand has a modern, developed economy. Its primary export industries are
agriculture, horticulture, fishing, forestry and information technology.
There are also substantial tourism and export education industries. The film
and wine industries are considered to be up-and-coming.
Since 1984 successive governments have engaged in major economic
restructuring, transforming New Zealand from a highly protectionist and
regulated economy to a liberalised free-trade economy. Despite periods of
dynamic growth in the mid 1980s and early '90s, average yearly economic growth
has been poorer than expected and is highly reliant on massive levels of
immigration to boost GDP. However, since 1999 New Zealand has enjoyed a
period of relatively strong and sustained growth.
The current New Zealand government's economic objectives are centred around
moving from being ranked among the lower end of the OECD countries to
regaining a higher placing again, pursuing free-trade agreements,
"closing the gaps" between ethnic groups, and building a
"knowledge economy."
Unlike in previous decades, New Zealand has now contained inflationary
pressures, meaning double-digit inflation has been consigned to the past.
New Zealand is heavily dependent on trade—particularly in
agricultural products—to drive growth, and it has been affected by
global economic slowdowns and slumps in commodity prices. Since agricultural
exports are highly sensitive to currency values and a large percentage of
consumer goods are imported, any changes in the value of the New Zealand
dollar has a strong impact on the economy.
In 2004 it began discussing free trade with China, one of the first countries
to do so.
During the late 1980s, the New Zealand Government sold a number of major
trading enterprises, including its telecommunications company, railway
network, a number of radio stations and two financial institutions in a
series of asset sales. Although the New Zealand Government continues to own a
number of significant businesses, collectively known as State-Owned
Enterprises (SOEs), they are operated through arms-length shareholding
arrangements as stand-alone businesses that are required to operate
profitably, just like any privately owned enterprise. Various items of
protective legislation establish business objectives yet prevent shareholding
governments from having influence over the day-to-day operations of the
business. Postal services, electricity companies, radio and television
broadcasters, hospitals and other trading enterprises are established in this
way. The core State Service consists of government departments and ministries
that primarily provide government administration, policy advice, law
enforcement, and social services.
Demographics
New Zealand has a population of slightly over 4 million. About 80% of the
population is of European descent. Māori people are the second
largest ethnic group (14.7%). Between the 1996 and 2001 censuses, the number
of people of Asian origin (6.6%) overtook the number of people of Pacific
Island origin (6.5%) (note that the census allowed multiple ethnic
affiliations).
Christianity is the predominant religion in New Zealand, although nearly 40%
of the population has no religious affiliation. The main Christian
denominations are Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, Roman Catholicism and
Methodism. There are also significant numbers who identify themselves with
Pentecostal and Baptist churches and with the Mormon church. The New
Zealand-based Ratana church has many adherents among Māori.
According to census figures, other significant minority religions include
Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam.
Time
New Zealand Standard Time is 12 hours in advance of coordinated Universal Time
(UTC). Between the first Sunday in October each year and the third Sunday in
March of the following year New Zealand observes Daylight Saving time, which
is 13 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. The Chatham Islands are 45
minutes ahead of New Zealand standard and daylight times.
Sport
New Zealand's most popular sports are rugby (primarily rugby union but also
rugby league), soccer (the most popular sport amongst children), cricket, and
netball (the sport with the most players), golf, tennis, rowing, cycling and a
variety of water sports, particularly sailing.
Snow sports such as
skiing and
snowboarding are also popular.
Equestrian sportsmen and sportswomen make their mark in the world, Mark Todd
being chosen international "Horseman of the Century"), and all the
way down to the juniors at pony club level.
Olympic Games
The country is internationally recognised as achieving extremely well on a
medals-to-population ratio at Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games.
Rugby
Rugby as a sport is closely linked to New Zealand's national identity. The
national rugby team is called the All Blacks and has the best winning record
of any national team in the world. The style of name has been followed in
naming the national team in several other sports. For instance, the nation's
basketball team is known as the Tall Blacks. New Zealand's national sporting
colours are not the colours of its flag, but are black and white (silver). The
silver fern is a national emblem worn by New Zealanders representing their
country in sport. The haka—a traditional Māori
challenge—is often performed at sporting events. The All Blacks
traditionally perform a haka before the start of international matches.
Yachting, America's Cup
Auckland hosted the last two America's Cup regattas (2000 and 2003). In 2000,
Team New Zealand successfully defended the trophy they won in 1995 in San
Diego, but in 2003 they lost to a team headed by Ernesto Bertarelli of
Switzerland, whose Alinghi was skippered by Russell Coutts, the
expatriate Kiwi who helmed the victorious Black Magic in 1995 and
New Zealand in 2000.
Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth, along with several other Team New Zealand
members, defected to Bertarelli's Alinghi team, taking with them a wealth of
experience that allowed the new team to win the America's Cup on the first
challenge. Coutts has now been dismissed from the Alinghi team and is fighting
a court battle with Bertarelli to allow him to sail in the 2007 America's Cup
contest in Spain.
External links
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation
License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "New Zealand".
