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The authors offer observation on the victory of the New Zealand Labour party, headed by Jacinda Ardern. Topics discussed include significance of the Labour's victory, inter-related crises inherited by the Labour party which includes skyrocketing poverty rates and a lack of adequate and affordable housing, and comparison of Ardern's political ambivalence and governing style with former Prime Minister John Key.

The management of plastic waste is a global problem which currently lacks a global solution. As one of the highest per capita producers of household waste in the developed world, New Zealand has a key role to play in addressing the plastics crisis at multiple levels of governance. This article analyses the various policy options available to the New Zealand government and offers a series of recommendations, including prioritising policy and investment at the top of the waste hierarchy (refuse, rethink, redesign, reduce and reuse); linking plastic waste to toxicological risk and commitments to carbon reduction targets; implementing global commitments domestically; and supporting a proposed international legally binding agreement that captures the full lifecycle of plastics and regulates the transboundary flows of plastic pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Delegates left the Third International Conference on Wellbeing and Public Policy with great expectations following three days of inspirational addresses by some of the world's most prominent thinkers and policymakers. In this article we ask: what is required for a wellbeing approach to public expenditure to be successfully implemented and sustained?. The wellbeing approach arose out of concerns about whether the current suite of measures used by policymakers provides sufficient information on the full range of contributors to or components of the good life. Sometimes divided on what wellbeing is and how to measure it, proponents of the wellbeing approach agree that the ultimate goal of public policy should be to improve wellbeing for all citizens. In order for this wellbeing approach to be successful, we believe it must address three main challenges: measurement, representation and engagement. We must be clear about how wellbeing will be measured, whose wellbeing we will assess, and the extent to which all New Zealanders are represented in the conversations that will determine the first two issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the paid parental leave policy in New Zealand. It considers the various design elements of the policy and, in particular, the payment rate. Although the policy ostensibly provides wage replacement, paid parental leave is subject to a cap of approximately the minimum wage. This creates financial pressure for those previously earning a higher amount and may restrict its use by the higher earner in a two-parent family. The article highlights how the rate of payment compares poorly both internationally and against a local example of support for another temporary absence from employment (ACC). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In New Zealand, disabled children are more likely to live in a oneparent household than are non-disabled children. The primary carers of disabled children have a higher unemployment rate than oneparent households in general. As a result, households with disabled children are significantly more likely to experience income poverty. This is not the case in the United Kingdom, where households with disabled children tend not to be at greater risk of income poverty. A key factor in preventing a greater risk of income poverty is the higher disability-related allowances in the United Kingdom: the median payment rate is almost three times higher than the New Zealand equivalents. There is a clear case for increasing the payment rate of the New Zealand disability-related allowances. There is also a clear case for an overhaul of support for households with disabled children to better enable carers/parents to work and to provide more equitable and effective support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws attention to the nature and impact of sexual harm in the New Zealand public service. It examines the scope and substance of official advice and tools available to public managers when responding to incidents of sexual harm, and builds a set of recommendations for central government. Recommendations include a central register of all complaints and reports of sexual harm to the public caused by public service workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights regarding the comparison between the leadership of former New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange and British Labour Party and Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn. Topics include the appeal of both leaders who were attractive to baby boomers and Internet generation, the challenges faced by the export market of New Zealand, and the resentment of New Zealanders to nuclear testing.

The article profiles Norman Kirk, the Labour Party prime minister-elect of New Zealand in 1973. Information on Kirk's credentials as anti-apartheid activist in the 1960s, diplomatic vision and his experience of participating in debates over New Zealand's link with apartheid South Africa in 1972 is offered. The role of Frank Corner, secretary of foreign affairs, and his assistant, Malcolm Templeton, in resolving the controversy over the New Zealand-South Africa rugby football match is discussed.

Feminist political science scholarship has burgeoned internationally since the 1980s, evidenced by the volume and diversity of work published in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals, editions and book series. In New Zealand we have witnessed a plethora of feminist analyses that have focused on some element of the 'political'. However, feminist engagement with 'mainstream' New Zealand politics has been more limited, while traditional New Zealand political science has tended to view 'official' politics within and between states as gender neutral. This article explores this historically tense relationship and what it has meant for the development of New Zealand feminist political science. I identify four strands of feminist scholarship in New Zealand politics that have emerged in recent years. However, I suggest that despite increases in this scholarship, in the number of women hired, and in the work undertaken by the women in New Zealand's political science professional association to address the concerns of women in the discipline, these contributions have remained on the margins of New Zealand political science. Reasons for this marginal status may include the relatively small size of the field, and that there are few senior feminists in the field of New Zealand politics. But it may also be that New Zealand feminist political scientists are more comfortable engaging with the gender politics community internationally. I conclude with a brief discussion of what this might mean for the future of feminist political science and New Zealand politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Updates on the parliamentary governments of member countries of the international organization Commonwealth including Sri Lanka, New Zealand, and Great Britain for 2015 are presented. Topics include the 19th amendment passed in the parliament of Sri Lanka, the government budget for 2015 and retirement of long servicing Clerk of the House in New Zealand, and new elected members at the parliament of Great Britain and the country's budget for 2015.

The article discusses the implications of decentralization of government in New Zealand, based on the World Bank's diagnostic framework for analyzing decentralization. Topics discussed include the elements of decentralization which include political, administrative and fiscal decentralization, the benefits of decentralization, and the public and social accountability of the local government under decentralization.

Due to elections and retirements half of the Canadian provincial and territorial Speakers have changed since October 2011. While there are differences in the role and standing orders of each jurisdiction there are many more similarities across Canada and indeed throughout the Commonwealth rules. This article looks at how question period, points of order and other issues are dealt within the New Zealand House of Representatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses New Zealand's Defence White Paper released in December 2010. He talks about the country's strategic environment, the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) capabilities and the financial implications. He suggests ways on how to use the NZDF and looks forward to working with Secretary of Defence John McKinnon and Chief of Defense Force Lieutenant General Rhys Jones for proper implementation of the White Paper.

Gill on v MacDonald (1878) was the climax of a feud that caused division in, and undermined the reputation of the early New Zealand legal profession. Gillon features one of the most controversial episodes of contempt of court by a barrister in colonial legal history. The nature of the New Zealand legal profession, and in particular the relationship between bench and bar, is exposed through the case, its prologue and its aftermath. The complex saga occurred over several years and involved all three branches of government. Its causes are open to debate, but this article argues that personal and professional rivalry lies at the heart of the saga, and in particular, an obsessive vendetta on the part of George Elliot Barton. The events described in this article had far reaching consequences including possibly influencing New Zealand's most infamous legal decision, Wi Parata v Bishop of Wellington (1877). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biosecurity politics in New Zealand is implicated in the constitution of a new dimension of citizenship, a biosecure citizenship. This form is distinct in that the political determinants of citizenship do not fully rest on the individual body, but on the body’s connections to other entities, the inter- and intra-active symbiotic condition of human-non-human ‘living together’. Through its constitutive role in enabling the ‘dangerous’ mobility of pathogens, viruses and invasive species, symbiotic individuality has become politicised as a matter for state determination and control. Contemporary articulations of biosecure citizenship emphasise a variety of contractual and non-contractual responsibilities, which augment the national coordinates of citizenship, reconstitute symbiotic individuality, and justify the state penetration of the private sphere. Drawing on biosecurity legislation, public education campaigns and research with community weed removal projects, I chart the reinforcement and practice of this biosecure citizenship. I argue that there is an urgent need to democratise decisionmaking about the construction of biological threat, about where and how to make cuts in our symbiotic associations with different species, and between species and spaces. By articulating biosecure citizenship not only as a discourse of ecological responsibility but of rights, biosecurity could be reinvigorated as ‘bios-security’, the inclusive politics of continually questioning the ecological good life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a perspective on the act of state terrorism when Rainbow Warrior was bombed on July 10, 1985 at Auckland Harbour in New Zealand. At first, France denied any involvement, but it was discovered on September 21, 1985 that French Minister of Defence Charles Hernu had approved the assault and President François Mitterand had authorised the operation. Investigation has been made by New Zealand government regarding the bombing which resulted to the lost of the Greenpeace flagship.

This article explores Britain's influence historically over legislation passed in the New Zealand Parliament. It suggests that Britain's role was substantial, particularly in the 19th century. For nearly a century, from 1854 until New Zealand adopted the Statute of Westminster in 1947, all New Zealand laws (of which nearly one hundred laws were reserved) were sent to Britain for scrutiny. In thirteen instances laws were considered sufficiently problematic that Britain either disallowed legislation already assented to by the Governor or, alternatively, refused assent to or withheld assent from reserved legislation. Other legislation was amended on Britain's instructions. The exercise of royal assent was an important ingredient in New Zealand's development and an integral part of its movement from colony to independent nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the post-Cold War foreign policy of New Zealand, as a representative example of how small democracies adjust to changes in global international relations. The variety of choices open to small states in responding to the instabilities of the post-Cold War era are discussed, as are the particular choices of New Zealand. Specific topics discussed include: its nuclear-free status since 1984 and other military issues; its adjustment to neoliberalism in international trade relations; and its involvement in humanitarian, environmental, and other matters of international diplomacy.

Campbell and Miller's article from 1957 is the precursor of a series of studies in political science focusing on rescinded votes. The extensive implantation of electoral systems with mixed members beginning in the 1990s presents an opportunity to test the validity of theories frequently used to account for this phenomenon in a new institutional context. This study analyzes the 1999 and 2002 Parliamentary elections in New Zealand and offers empirical evidence of the importance of prospective and retrospective control mechanisms used by politicians to explain rescinded votes. To summarize, this study concludes that the rescinded vote in countries with this type of institutional framework is the response of an electorate with negative judgments of the qualities or performance in office of a candidate, and thus of their political party at the national or local level. [TRANSLATION]

This paper examines contemporary debates in Maori politics by responding to the argument of the former leader of the opposition National party, Don Brash, that Maori public policy is most properly based on "need" alone because indigenous status offers no "rights" beyond those of common national citizenship. The paper's alternative argument is that the politics of indigeneity and associated theories of self-determination provide a way of avoiding a general belief that addressing need is all that is required to include Maori fairly in the national polity. It is argued that Maori ought to enjoy rights of indigeneity as the basis of an inclusive, cohesive and fair society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on women in political leadership in Australia and New Zealand. It explains that studies conducted on the lack of women in the public sphere differentiate between women politicians and feminist politicians. The social movement of the 1970s is mentioned and the focus on leadership beginning in the 1980s is examined. It is explained that the 1980s ended the similarities between the two countries concerning women in politics. In Australia, more women politicians came to office and in New Zealand, feminist women became leaders. The politician Helen Clark of New Zealand is discussed.

• Despite the importance of insider trading laws in promoting a strong financial market, the impact of regulations in minimizing the detrimental effects of insider trading is unsettled. • We add to the literature by examining the impact of the introduction of the Securities Market Amendment Act 2002 in New Zealand on several aspects of the market, namely bid-ask spreads, liquidity, price volatility and the cost of capital. • We find strong evidence of predicted reductions in the cost of capital, bid-ask spreads and volatility accompanied by increases in liquidity. We conclude that the change in regulations has had a positive impact on the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the Equal Pay Amendment Bill passed by the Parliament of New Zealand. Topics covered include bill's aim to amend New Zealand's law on equal pay for women, the support it received from all parties, and the delay in the passage of this Bill due to reduced House sitting hours during the COVID-19 lockdown.