The Waitangi tribunal in New Zealand

The Waitangi Tribunal has been initiating major changes in New Zealand in the relationships of Maori and Pakeha. It has helped to revitalise the Treaty of Waitangi to redress Maori grievances over land, fisheries and many other matters. The paper outlines the jurisdiction, composition and procedures of the Tribunal and discusses the Treaty briefly. The Treaty and Maori rights have been given little recognition in legislation until recently and consequently little recognition by the Courts. A major decision of the Appeal Court in 1987 in relation to land held by State‐owned enterprises is discussed, leading to a consideration of the partnership principle fundamental to the Treaty. Because the Tribunal is not exclusively concerned with judicial questions but has a political role as well, its relations with government and administration have to be considered in some detail. Notwithstanding criticism of it and the belief of some that it should have more power, the Tribunal is a major instrument of reform in New Zealand.     

Status Rivalry and the Politics of Biculturalism in Contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand

Could it be that despite a huge literature spanning decades from many disciplines, a corpus of writing that examines seemingly every twist and turn of a complex situation, we still are missing something basic and fundamental to a proper understanding of contemporary cultural politics in Aotearoa New Zealand? A thing so obvious and omnipresent, that it was characterized long ago in the anthropological literature as the fundamental dynamic of Polynesian culture, and acknowledged even further back by Maori in their ancestral sayings? He tauranga uta, he toka tu moana (a resting place ashore, a firm rock at sea). ‘This metaphor describes the chief whose influence is unchallenged in his territory which extends from the land to the sea’ (Mead and Grove 2003:125). But surely real chiefs, those solid anchoring points, no longer exist as they did before the coming of the Pakeha. Be that as it may, the elements of social organization and associated cultural values of chiefly status continue to resonate in contemporary society. This paper argues that Goldman's concept of status rivalry is that crucial overlooked aspect of cultural politics necessary to a full understanding of what is happening today in the Waitangi Tribunal, Parliament, and so many other places where biculturalism and multiculturalism are debated and discussed, and that it is an aspect of Polynesian culture that has been part of the interrelationship between the Crown and te tangata whenua (the indigenous people) since their first encounters.     

The New Zealand Environmental Movement and the Politics of Inclusion

Engagement with the state has rarely been a comfortable association for environmental movement groups. As Dryzek (1996) illustrates, the conditions for the benign inclusion of environmental and other social movement groups are quite complex, usually requiring not just an intersection between movement and state aspirations but also the continued presence of movement groups in civil society as a democratic counterweight to state power. New Zealand's environmental movement, after a decade of relative political obscurity, may once again be presented with opportunities for political inclusion following the election of a LabourAlliance coalition and seven Green Party representatives in late 1999. This article reflects on the New Zealand environmental movement's past engagement with the state in the light of Dryzek's criteria for benign political inclusion, highlighting the extent of the challenge presented to groups in the movement and the opportunities for future reconciliation with the state.     

The Politics of Superannuation in Australasia: Saving the New Zealand Standard of Living

Support for retired individuals is one of the key policy issues facing governments throughout the OECD. The need for a long-term approach to the issue of retirement saving is well established. New Zealand and Australia have adopted different approaches to retirement saving. Two primary differences exist in retirement saving policy – New Zealand offers little in the way of incentives and there is no compulsion; conversely, Australia provides highly concessionary tax incentives and a mandatory occupational retirement savings scheme exists. This paper offers suggestions on how and why two countries that typically approach policy issues from a similar direction have adopted such different attitudes to the topic of retirement saving.     

The Construction and Use of National Identity in Contemporary New Zealand Political Discourse

New Zealand's Labour-led coalition governments in power from 1999 to 2008 committed themselves to defending and promoting a unique and confident sense of national identity. While Labour officially defined the nation in terms of openness, diversity and tolerance, this article argues that in practice they tended to stress a narrower set of identity markers: those, such as creativity, flexibility and innovation, consistent with its reading of global economic necessity. The article demonstrates how the construction of a supposedly unique and confident New Zealand identity remained strongly structured by global norms. It also shows how an insistence on a shared national vision and a common identity can lend itself to a reductive address of citizens as role-performers and, therefore, to a problematic marginalisation of divergent interests and identities.     

The growth of antinuclearism in New Zealand

This paper explores the transformation of antinuclear opinion in New Zealand into a more durable and structured political orientation. Antinuclear opinion first gripped a large portion of the New Zealand public after that nation's government banned the entry of United States nuclear warships in 1984. At that time, the public rallied behind the government's action. This consolidation effect, however, showed signs of being impermanent by 1986; antinuclear opinion appeared to be on the wane. Surprisingly, by 1989 this sentiment had finned into a more structured attitude, regardless of the fact that the government responsible for the nuclear ships ban had become very unpopular. The youthful cast to antinuclearism in New Zealand suggests that this orientation is in the process of becoming a fixture of that country's political culture. Political socialisation experiences best explain the continuation and growth of this orientation. The database used in this study comes from a series of national surveys—the most pertinent of which are polls conducted in 1985 and 1989.     

The New Zealand Historical Atlas

The New Zealand Historical Atlaswill be published late in 1997. The project is dscribed and placed briefly in the broader contexts of other historical atlases, of recent New Zealand historiography and of critical perspectives on cartography.     

日苏中立条约在中国的争议及其政治延伸

1941年4月签署的日苏中立条约,一方面对苏联有利,另一方面也对日本有利.这种双重性质反映在中国,一方面对共产党有利,另一方面则对国民党不利.同时,由于日苏变相承认满、蒙①,极大地刺激了广大国民的民族情绪.基于以上多种原因,日苏条约在中国引发了巨大的政治争议.中共全力支持,国民党强烈不满,而一般社会舆论则首先质疑苏联的对华政策,继而又质疑中共的民族性.日苏条约在今天看来,仍然很难根据某一个方面的立场,做出完全肯定或否定的结论,它仍将作为一个双重或多重性质的条约,而长久地留在历史的争议之中.     

驾临新西兰 感受人间梦幻田园

<正>了解新西兰是从一本英文小册子开始的,册子的开头这样写道:新西兰(又译纽西兰)是国土面积比英国略大,比日本略小的国家,人口439万。经过两周的申请,我终于拿到了入境签证,踏上了驾临新西兰的神奇而难忘旅程。     

Official Statistics and the Contemporary Politics of Indigeneity

Critical scholarship on colonisation tells us that official statistics have reflected the perspectives of the colonisers. However, the colonised, in asserting ‘Indigenous rights,’ have begun to use official statistics to advocate policies that will relieve the continuing structural injustice that is colonisation's legacy. This paper examines Aboriginal and Maori intellectuals' efforts to quantify, using official statistics, the ‘unfinished business’ of settler colonial liberalism. Examining Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioners' annual Reports, the paper argues that their quantitative comparisons of Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations highlighted the contested implications of ‘equality.’ Turning to New Zealand, the paper reviews two issues: the appropriate boundary of the ‘Māori population,’ and whether it is possible to measure Māori well-being according to Māori norms. The paper draws on the work of Andrew Sharp to make sense of the difficulties and opportunities that face Indigenous intellectuals in Australia and New Zealand when they operationalise ‘social justice’ in the terms of a comparative statistical archive. The paper argues that there are now two distinct idioms in which to represent the collective Indigenous presence within settler colonial nation-state—one signified by the concept ‘population,’ the other by the concept ‘people.’ The tensions between ‘population’ and ‘people,’ resonating with undecided issues about the claims of Indigenous citizenship upon a liberal policy, are a feature of contemporary Indigenous political discourse.