In the Top Three
New Zealand has made the top-three list of the best place to live in the world, following a United Nations human development annual survey. Norway took first place, followed by Australia in second place….
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Formalised Relationship
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited New Zealand in November “formalising its progressively warm relationship with New Zealand,” writes Wall Street Journal blogger Lucy Craymer from Wellington. “With a strategic agreement that promises…
Transparency reigns
New Zealand has tied with Denmark and Singapore for first place as the world’s least corrupt governments and public sectors, according to watchdog group Transparency International (TI). Finland, Sweden, Canada, Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland and…
Political management
Policy analyst Luke Malpass, who is based in Sydney where he works for the Centre for Independent Studies, claims that New Zealand is in the midst of a “great regression” though “once a beacon…
Market reforms pay off
Korea should follow the example of New Zealand farmers Special Agricultural Trade Envoy Alistair Polson tells the Korea JoongAng Daily on a recent visit to Seoul to meet Korean agricultural industry leaders. Once highly…
Unanimous decision
“New Zealand’s parliament voted unanimously in September to pass the Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Act (CERRA), which gives government ministers the power to override almost any law in the country’s statute books,” Tom…
Revenue-neutral process
“Killing the lowly was a painless, revenue-neutral adventure for New Zealand, according to a finance official from that country,” Bryn Weese writes for the Toronto Sun as Canada looks at…
Economical happiness
New Zealand has retained third place in a world economic freedom report carried out by Canada’s leading public policy think-tank, the Fraser Institute. The 21 report takes data from 28 and compares 141 countries…
Constitution Conundrum
Former Labour deputy Prime Minister Dr Michael Cullen is calling for an end to the British monarchy. This month Cullen, who stepped down from Parliament when Labour lost power in 28, will deliver a…
Smiling Assassin Woos Investors
John Key, nicknamed “the smiling assassin” during his time at global exchange in London, is now using his trademark beam to woo billionaire immigrants, foreign investors and high-end tourists according to Bloomberg Markets magazine….
On Race and Harawira
Senior Lecturer at Victoria University’s School of English Film Theatre and Media Studies Dr Alice Te Punga Somerville discusses Maori party MP Hone Harawira’s recent comments about intermarriage in the Guardian. “Harawira stated to…
UAE presence strengthens
New Zealand will open an embassy in Abu Dhabi, its first in the UAE and second in the Gulf region, where it is located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully…
Anniversary of sinking
Twenty-five years ago two French agents coordinated the bombing of the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior in Waitemata Harbour, a tragedy in which Portuguese-Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira drowned. The attack on the ship was remembered…
Tokyo Strategies
Anti-whaling activist Pete Bethune, 45, has been convicted by a Tokyo court of assault and obstruction of Japanese whaling ships in the Antarctic Ocean, receiving a suspended two-year prison sentence. Anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd…
Against the grain
“An act of real political courage by the National Party would be to increase its commitment in the dangerous areas of Afghanistan and to announce that New Zealand was rejoining the ANZUS Alliance, which…
Peace reigns supreme
New Zealand has been named the most peaceful nation for the second year running in the fourth annual Global Peace Index (GPI). Compiled by global think tank Institute for Economics and Peace, the report…
Making a stand
The trial of anti-whaler Pete Bethune, 45, of the Sea Shepherd marine conservation group, who was arrested after clambering aboard a Japanese whaling ship in February, has begun in Tokyo. The trial opens as…
All in Good Time
New Zealand switched to proportional representation in 1993 and since then no single political party has been able to command a majority. New Zealanders have come to regard elections as a two-phase affair: first,…
Under the Garden
New Zealand’s $30 million pavilion at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai is expecting 400,000 visitors through its doors over the next six months. New Zealand Commissioner-General Phillip Gibson said that, even before the…
Controversial Precision
“New Zealand is joining the global race to meet a surging demand for energy and minerals, with a plan to open up highly protected conservation areas to mining,” writes Paul Cleary for The Australian. The…
Happy Birthday
“New Zealand has marked the Queen’s 84th birthday by rejecting an attempt to abolish the monarchy,” writes Paul Chapman for The Telegraph. A bill that would have set up a referendum on the country becoming…
Shared Heritage
“Canada and New Zealand may lie at opposite ends of the earth, but we are bound together by a common history,” Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared during John Key’s visit to the capital…
Pure Tax
In a CNN article titled, ‘Why the US can learn from New Zealand when it comes to taxes,” Dody Tsiantar writes that American tax experts and economists are pointing to New Zealand as an…
Division Debate
“There has always been sense in New Zealand and Australia being one country,” writes the Anthony Mason Professor of Law at the University of NSW George Williams in an opinion piece called, ‘A nation…
Irish Influx
Thousands of Irish are flocking to New Zealand shores for a “less hectic” yet familiar way of life, though a simultaneously exotic one too. In the past 10 years almost 30,000 Irish people have…
We’ve Got a Problem
The three men responsible for the 2008 attack on the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) base at Waihopai — a schoolteacher, a Catholic priest and a farmer, who openly admitted to the crimes —…
Maori Across the Tasman
More Maori live in Australia than in New Zealand according to leading population expert Australian Professor Peter McDonald. Studies show there are about 110,000 Maori in Australia, representing about one in four of all…
Missing the Boat
“New Zealand was a 1980s-era beacon of economic reform and rising prosperity,” writes Luke Malpass, an analyst in the New Zealand policy unit of the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney. In an article…
Referendum in Sight
New Zealand is due to hold an election referendum in 2011 to enable the population to decide between using AV or the current ‘first-past-the-post’ system. Ken Ritchie, the chief executive of Britain’s Electoral Reform…
Attention to Change
Former prime minister Helen Clark, now head of the United Nation’s Development Agency, was recently at Sydney’s Lowy Institute calling for climate change to be put at the centre of international development strategies. In…
To Scrap or not to Scrap
The New Zealand Herald has called for the country’s 108-year-old-flag to be scrapped. Under the banner headline “It’s time for a change”, The New Zealand Herald, the country’s largest circulating daily newspaper, devoted almost its…
Place for NZ in Chile
The New Zealand government has gifted the Chilean capital Santiago a new plaza in the municipality of Providencia. Plaza Nueva Zelandia aims to represent New Zealand culture, landscape, flora and fauna, and to provide…
Miniature by might
A 25-hectare replica New Zealand city, dubbed “Little New Zealand” is being constructed in the northern Chinese city of Qufu. The $4 million New Zealand Gardens initiative will come with its own Maori village…
Arguing the Green
“Sometime in the 2020s, New Zealand will become responsible for a massive surge in emissions from its forests,” writes Fred Pearce in his Guardian series ‘Greenwash’. “The central problem seems to be that when…
Least bent
New Zealand is the least corrupt country in the world according to the annual Transparency International index which ranked 180 countries on a scale of zero to 10 with zero being perceived as highly…
Green Mirage
The Guardian newspaper’s ‘greenwashing exposer’ Fred Pearce uncovers a number of offending countries who have succeeded in raising their emissions from 1990 levels despite signing up to reduce them. “Step forward Spain, Portugal, Ireland and…
Slump looks likely
New Zealand economist Robert Wade, a professor at the London School of Economics, predicts a further slump into global recession in 2010 or 2011. Wade, who made his name analysing East Asia’s economic…
Compensation comparisons
New Zealand “has some good ideas” when it comes to tort reform writes Newsweek blogger Katie Connolly, who uses this country’s government-operated Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) as an example of a system the US…
Looking at Labour
Former New Zealand Rhodes Scholar and Vice Chancellor of Waikato University Bryan Gould writes in the Guardian that “barring a miracle, and miracles seem likely to be in short supply, Labour will lose…
Seoul mates
New Zealand’s trade commissioner in Seoul Graeme Solloway, who is responsible for promoting bilateral trade and investment, has been in the South Korean capital promoting technological ties between the two countries. “Both Korea and…
Wall Street Suggestions
“The findings of the ‘Emissions Trading Review Committee’ … is green PR gone wild,” writes the Wall Street Journal. “New Zealand already boasted one of the world’s most pristine environments before it passed cap-and-trade last…
Liquidity rules
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has “become the first authority to pass hard-and-fast rules for liquidity since the crisis”, writes The Economist in an article called ‘Lord of the Ratios’. Locally incorporated banks…
Strengthening Relations
New Zealand’s outgoing ambassador to Vietnam James Kember has received a medal from the Vietnamese government for his contributions to relations between the two countries. Speaking at the award presentation ceremony in Hanoi, President…
Hands Up For A Smack
New Zealanders have voted overwhelmingly to overturn a law that prohibits parents from hitting children, according to the results of a nationwide referendum, but the government says the law is working and won’t be…
Same but Different
On the eve of talks between Australian and New Zealand cabinets in Sydney last week, Sydney Morning Herald columnist Andrew Tink looks back to 1840 – when New Zealand was briefly a dependency of…
Tasman Union Imminent
Flights between New Zealand and Australia will soon be as cheap as domestic flights under new efforts to streamline trans-Tasman travel. Following talks between New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and Australian Prime Minister…
Clark enjoys anonymity
Head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) former Prime Minister Helen Clark, 59, has told the Dominion Post that “New Zealand is just not quite big enough for me at the moment”…
New Zealander in NY
Former Prime Minister Helen Clark, now in the role of administrator for the United Nation’s Development Programme (UNDP), talks candidly to TV1’s Breakfast show host Paul Henry in New York about “fitting in” as…
Sustainability Ninja Exits
UK Green party member, adviser and Treasury antagonist Jonathan Porritt, 59, has left his post as chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) after nine years “trying to crash the gears of the machine of…
Sustainability ninja exits
UK Green party member, adviser and Treasury antagonist Jonathan Porritt, 59, has left his post as chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) after nine years “trying to crash the gears of the…
Arrivals Soar
New Zealand saw the number of Australian tourists exceed the one million mark for the first time and the total annual immigration increase to a two year high, Statistics New Zealand has reported. The…
It’s All Turned Sour
Federated Farmers President Don Nicolson has lashed out against President Barack Obama and US milk subsidies in an opinion piece for the latest issue of The Wall Street Journal. Nicolson vented his frustrations in…
Madcap genius
What were the 1949 “leading thinkers at the London School of Economics” to make of New Zealand inventor Bill Phillips’ hydraulic water system used to predict the economy, wonders New York Times’ columnist Steven…
On Women in Yemen
Former Prime Minister Jenny Shipley has been in Yemen lecturing in a workshop promoting local women’s political participation with a special emphasis on New Zealand women and their role in decision making and development…
Not Much on Television
Birth rates in New Zealand are the highest since 1991 with the average number per woman at 2.2 births. In the 12 months to March 31 this year, 64,160 babies were born Statistics New…
Fatter But Happier
New Zealand men are a little shorter than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation Development average and New Zealand women are quite a bit shorter according to the latest report from the Organization, a report…
