Public Policy and Governance Frontiers in New Zealand

Evan Berman, Girol Karacaoglu, Evan Berman, Girol Karacaoglu

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781838674564
• eBook ISBN: 9781838674571
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Affairs & Administration
• Index: Politics & International Relations

New Zealand (NZ) is widely regarded as being at the frontier of public policy reforms and public governance innovations. Bringing together acclaimed scholars and practitioners from NZ, including those who have led reforms, this edited collection examines the evolution of public policy in NZ. Through focusing on four areas of NZ's strength in public policy governance and management - managing and governing the economy, governing the natural environment, the effectiveness and management of the public service, and the advancement of minority populations - the authors highlight specific challenges, contexts and responses, with an emphasis on contemporary matters such as wellbeing, sustainability and fiscal responsibility. The authors discuss practices for developing innovative public policy and governance, discuss public governance reforms in detail and examine the use of innovative public management and e-government practices. Through the analysis of specific policies and management tools, this title offers an assessment of the impact of policies and their implementation. This book will appeal to scholars, practitioners, policy advisors and consultants in national and international organizations who are interested in, or involved with, cutting-edge, innovative public policy and governance strategies.

CHAPTER 1

NEW ZEALAND IN THE MAKING: PAST AND PRESENT

Gary Hawke

1. ‘NEW ZEALAND’

Like all countries New Zealand has both a history and a set of myths. Common beliefs are that it is a small country which is unusually influential in international affairs and that it is isolated but nevertheless a significant part of the world community. As is usual with national myths, these are exaggerations with elements of truth within them.

Modern New Zealand evolved in the nineteenth century as one of the late parts of European overseas expansion. The indigenous Maori have a longer history, having been in New Zealand from somewhere about 1,300 ad. They had arrived as part of the major settlements of the Pacific by Polynesians, as the result of extraordinary ocean voyaging. However, Maori had become isolated; when Europeans began settlement in the late eighteenth century, they had no contact with the Pacific or anywhere outside New Zealand.

Modern New Zealand developed as part of the international economy. Initially, it was a source of naturally occurring resources such as timber, whales and seals. Later, it was a source of gold, but New Zealand’s gold deposits were small relative to those of Australia (or California). The development, however, initially was dependent not on natural resources but on wool-growing. New Zealand’s climate was favourable for the growth of grass – imported grasses since they were more nutritious than native ones – and wool could be raised in New Zealand and be transported around the globe to industrial areas in the North Atlantic where despite transport costs it was competitive with domestic production. The New Zealand economy emerged as an early example of the effect of off-shoring – or New Zealand developed because Britain was prepared to outsource its agriculture.

Later in the nineteenth century, the technology of refrigeration made it possible to add foodstuffs – refrigerated meat and dairy produce – to wool. There were challenges within New Zealand to adapt landholdings to new possibilities, and to develop institutions to finance and market the additional products, but the originating force came from the international economy. Some remnants of the earlier resource exploitation remained, especially timber exports to the growing urban centres of Australia beside its use in New Zealand towns as additional areas of native forests were sacrificed to provide space for grass. Furthermore, the New Zealand population, fed by immigration mostly from the United Kingdom, located itself in towns requiring all aspects of urban development and demanded commodities known to be available overseas. Urban industries, more usually characterised by ‘making and dealing’ than by large-scale manufacturing, were added to the economy.

New Zealand by the end of the nineteenth century was a sophisticated economy and society. However, it remained as an essential component in the international economy rather than an autonomous entity. New Zealand is still often thought of as an ‘agricultural economy’, but that is true only in when agriculture contributes more to its exports than for most economies with comparable income levels. Overall, as in most advanced economies, services are the most common economic activity. Even in exports, dairy products are the leading product, but while farms supply an essential input they provide directly only about 20 per cent of the final value, processing activities adding about the same and various distribution services much more. Services are exported, but embedded in goods rather than explicitly. In more recent times, tourism and education have emerged as major income earners for New Zealand. Nevertheless, despite efforts towards diversification, and as highlighted in Chapter 3, products of the (fixed) land and sea, directly or indirectly, continue to contribute a very significant share of the country’s export revenue.

The processes of integration and transformation were not entirely harmonious. The indigenous population, who called themselves ‘Maori’ (meaning ‘common’) adapted to an inflow of immigrants, who they called ‘Pakeha’, a Maori term of indeterminate origin but with a sense of ‘pale’ or ‘outsider,’ sometimes meaning specifically ‘British’ but more usually including all non-Maori other than Pacific Islanders who became numerous only after World War II.

Maori adapted to Pakeha customs, especially religion, while also maintaining much inherited culture, and they participated in the Pakeha economy, including shipping services as well as growing crops and engaging in construction. But their land was wanted by Pakeha settlers. It was acquired in various ways, consensual purchase, manipulated purchase, or confiscation. Maori and Pakeha intermarried from early days and Maori who adopted a Pakeha style of living were assimilated. But Maori institutions were marginalised.

2. FOUNDING EXPERIENCES

Modern New Zealand developed as a British colony and governing institutions soon showed little Maori influence. Colonisers had mixed motives and attitudes. Missionary societies, conscious that whalers, sealers and seamen were interacting with Maori, wished to exert government control so as to facilitate their own activities. Others were conscious of opportunities for profit from New Zealand land and resources. The British Government, 65 years after the American Declaration of Independence, was not enthusiastic about colonies but it acquiesced, and in 1840 New Zealand became a British colony. (For administrative and legal convenience, it was initially absorbed into the existing colony of New South Wales but that was never more than a fig-leaf.)¹

From 1840, New Zealand was governed by a British-appointed governor and the advisers he selected. (There was never a woman governor.) But the settlers soon demanded and obtained a role in their governance. In the 1840s, Canadian settlers worked out with the British government the concept of ‘responsible government’. Settlers in Australian colonies and in New Zealand followed suit. From the early 1850s, governors were required to follow the advice of elected parliamentarians. There were some qualifications. What we now call external relations remained essentially an imperial matter and the British government made some efforts to retain the unity of English law but soon deferred to the responsible government. More important, the early idea of a special responsibility for Maori persisted for some time.

One of the expressions of British scepticism of colonies in the mid-nineteenth century was parliamentary restraint on the executive government acquiring colonial responsibilities, without either parliamentary approval or the acquiescence of the colonised people. To avoid the need for parliamentary debate, the British government concluded a treaty at Waitangi with an assembly of local Maori in northern New Zealand – then the centre of greatest concentration of Pakeha activity and also with a relatively large Maori population. The treaty was carried around New Zealand and signed by several but not all other tribes. Treaties were not uncommon in British colonisation, but the Treaty of Waitangi was unusual in being written in both English and Maori.

In modern times, in a process akin to how Magna Carta, an agreement between a dissolute king and some rebellious barons over baronial rights, became a charter of individual freedom, the Treaty of Waitangi became the ‘founding document’ of New Zealand. It was a simple document, in English transferring sovereignty, guaranteeing possession of land, and conferring the status of British subjects, while in Maori, although the translation was well-intentioned, being much more ambiguous about what was transferred and what property was guaranteed (see Chapter 4).

In particular, mana and rangatiratanga, the Maori terms closest to ‘sovereignty’ were not used, and the Maori chiefs explicitly acquiesced only in transferring kawanatanga, a transliteration of ‘governorship’. The ambiguity which always existed, and social and governance changes over 180 years, mean that the terms of the Treaty of Waitangi are now interpreted in circumstances far beyond any comprehension by those who made the agreement. This guarantees a continuing fruitful field for jurisprudence, as part of a much wider and ongoing exploration of ways of giving effect to biculturalism. New Zealand, like many other modern countries, has shared the fruits and challenges of multiculturalism, but it has been among the leaders in seeking a way to include in its public life acknowledgement of a distinct indigenous culture. Most obvious, the Maori language has official status and is widely, if mostly incidentally, used in everyday settings. (It nevertheless remains in danger of being swamped by the majority language.)

The Treaty of Waitangi was not highly regarded initially, being neglected or rejected not only by colonists but also by British governments. (Nor did all Maori tribes participate in its acceptance.) However, the motivation of missionary organisations persisted in official circles in London, and the British government acknowledged a responsibility for Maori and excluded ‘native affairs’ from the ambit of responsible government. Nevertheless, governors were caught up in local affairs and were leaders rather than restraints in the warfare by which some Maori were dispossessed of their land, and the British government did not prevent local legislation which led to a great deal more dispossession.

Governors became more and more symbolic in time. New Zealand governments asserted the right to make trade agreements in the 1870s and the British government decided not to maintain any imperial authority. New Zealand governments recognised that they could not pursue ambitions in the South Pacific without the support of the Royal Navy, but they did not recognise or experience any imperial constraints on their power to decide on matters which were important to colonists. For New Zealand, gaining independence was not a momentous occasion; it simply evolved as colonists decided they wanted to control some aspects of their lives. New Zealand considered itself at war in 1914 because the king declared the British Empire to be at war, but had there been any significant body of opinion in New Zealand opposed to the Imperial government, the outcome would not have been obvious.

Maori were dispossessed and marginalised. Intermarriage and assimilation remained strong, and a Maori was acting the prime minister of New Zealand before the end of the nineteenth century. At the same time, Maori leaders emerged who sought for ways of integrating Maori and Pakeha institutions. They had some success, symbolised by the way that ‘native affairs’ became ‘Maori Affairs’, but it was in the last quarter of the twentieth century that the ‘principles’ of the Treaty of Waitangi and the idea of a partnership between Crown and Maori became prominent. In essence, it was recognised that New Zealand institutions have always to meld the ideas of Pakeha culture, and its inheritance of British and international thinking, with Maori traditions and expectations.

Maori introduced the single biggest distinction of New Zealand from other British colonies. But there are others. Responsible government quickly became Cabinet government as the local ministers recognised the power of a united front presented to the governor. There was an experiment with provincial governments from the 1850s to the 1870s when the main settlements in New Zealand were widely distributed around a long coastline. But railway communication and the need for central control of government borrowing in the UK for development purposes brought about the abolition of the provinces. The central government was supported by local territorial authorities, townships and county, and by a myriad of special administrative authorities for health, roading, the control of rabbits and other local issues.

New Zealanders tend to think of New Zealand as a small country; it is actually on most measures of geographic size in the upper quartile of approximately 200 members of the United Nations; in geographic size, it is slightly larger than the UK. Even in terms of gross national product, New Zealand is not small. It is however small in relation to the populations of countries with which New Zealanders like to compare themselves – the UK, the USA, Australia and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The more significant point is that New Zealand is centralised. In a community of half a million in the 1880s, 1 million in about 1910, 2 million in the 1950s, and nearly 5 now, the centralised government has always been readily accessible to the population at large. In this sense, New Zealanders have never shared the sense of ‘mystery’ (or remoteness and deference to hierarchy) of government that Europeans seem to have about their governments, or even the remoteness of the central government relative to states and local authorities in the USA. Nor was there anything of the federal government surrounded by state governments as in Australia after 1901.

Responsible government was established in New Zealand with a courtesy towards the contemporary British structure of a House of Lords and a House of Commons. It had a body of individuals thought to be especially equipped to manage the public interest and a body representative of the public. The latter was quite quickly associated with a wide understanding of the public, adult males being enfranchised in the 1870s and adult women in 1893, a pioneer among countries.

The upper house, the Legislative Council could hardly be composed of hereditary aristocrats, and unlike the US Senate and the Australian Senate after 1901, it could not be a “states’ house” either. Initially, it was simply a body of people nominated by governments to have a lifetime tenure. When it conflicted with the representative house, it was made clear that the governor should follow the advice of ministers and nominate enough members of the Legislative Council with appropriate views to guarantee the government a majority, and the tenure of councillors was reduced to seven years. It did not play a significant role and it was abolished in 1951. New Zealand then had the distinction of being a highly centralised, unicameral government.

Constraints on government were initially self-imposed. Parliament adopted rules about its own proceedings, including provision for public submission to select committees. In the 1990s, after a reforming government with a mission of settling issues from first principles in the 1980s, there was public support for a change in the electoral system which made it less likely that any political party could dominate the Cabinet and make quick decisions. This was a political response to the economic reforms of the 1980s which were influenced by the theory of New Public Management and motivated primarily by a drive for economic efficiency (see Chapters 3 and 8 for elaborations). While these reforms undoubtedly delivered improved economic efficiency, they also caused a lot of economic disruption and pain (primarily through loss of jobs). The electoral system of mixed-member proportional representation, MMP, is still the principal constraint on centralised, Cabinet government.

MMP is nearly 25 years old (Hawke, 1993). There is little debate about the core provision that a popular vote determines the proportional allocation of parliamentary seats. A little over half the seats are nevertheless determined by individual electorates, and then ‘list members’ are added so as to adjust the allocation of constituency seats to the required proportionality. The intent has always been clear, namely to achieve a parliament which reflected popular opinion while maintaining the ancient British belief that members of parliament should represent local communities. Nevertheless, and maybe inevitably, simplicity soon disappears.

Maori had been allocated specific seats in parliament since the 1860s, and Maori opinion strongly resisted losing ‘their’ element of parliament. A parliament of many small parties would probably not maintain stable governance, and therefore a threshold established a minimum share of the popular vote for representation at all. Parliament’s ‘representativeness’ was inevitably qualified, and by-elections made ‘distortions’ readily apparent, especially when they originated in a member’s withdrawal of support for their party’s position on an issue.

Hoping that ‘list members’ might have a ‘national’ rather than a ‘local’ perspective were disappointed, especially when parties allocated responsibility to list members to service constituents in seats held by other parties. More important, and less recognised, the design of MMP implicitly assumed that the population would elect a parliament, and the members of p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction New Zealand: At the Frontiers of Public Policy Innovations
• Chapter 1 New Zealand in the Making: Past and Present
• Part I Public Policy
• Part II Public Governance
• About the Authors