DOCSLIB.ORG

Probably Killed Nobody, and Who Escaped Within a Year Or So of Conviction, Perhaps to Canada, Though Never Seen Again

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Probably Killed Nobody, and Who Escaped Within a Year Or So of Conviction, Perhaps to Canada, Though Never Seen Again 96 REVIEWS probably killed nobody, and who escaped within a year or so of conviction, perhaps to Canada, though never seen again . Hill does not labour with explanation of such cases — his text is invaluable for uncovering and bringing together just such extraordinary episodes. The theoretical burden is perhaps ageing by this stage — the continuum of 'benign' to 'condign' may be just too simplistic at some levels to account for the varieties of policing. Hill's use of hegemony stands for domination in too many cases, rather than itself being the product of consent marshalled through numerous techniques of government or mouldings of history. And the ever present middle classes or bourgeois interests are shadowy figures in this history, exerting influence through police, but not too often being given a definition themselves (though a subtle chapter on the contest over the need for women police helps to define more precisely the complexities of the moral order). In reflections on the work as a whole, however, a concluding chapter allows Hill the space to review some of the larger issues of interpretation, modulating some of the theoretical framework. Against these quibbles over theoretical frameworks, 1 would want to balance the immense value of a text which offers such rich archival excursions. What we find here are police who not only do all the things we expect to read of — street work, detection, corruption, incompetence, and so on — but also those who display a surprising degree of independence (e.g. Butterworth who refused to testify in the case against Rua), who argue with their superiors over issues of principle or of perceived rights. The result is a picture of policing during a time of order as itself highly contingent, a mode of governing which is less rule bound, more vulnerable to the whims and politics of its human actors, than some might think. Not many will have the patience or time to read all of Hill's volumes or any whole one of them — but a table of contents emphasizing the narrative structure, together with a very comprehensive index, enable researchers or general readers to access this history, not only for what it tells of police and policing but for tracing many episodes in the history of New Zealand as a unique social formation. MARK FINNANE Griffith University Coates of Kaipara. By Michael Bassett. Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1995. 325pp. NZ price: $39.95. ISBN 1-86940-117-4. THIS IS a most welcome addition to New Zealand political history, a genre treated almost with disdain in some circles. That Coates was a centre-right politician makes it the more welcome. Gordon Coates, in practical terms New Zealand's first native-born Prime Minister, was elected as an Independent Liberal in 1911 but soon joined Reform. He was an able Minister of Public Works and the obvious successor to Massey in 1925. A huge majority in 1925 was reversed in 1928 when Ward and the Liberals were exhumed and narrowly won office. Brought back into the Coalition of 1931-35, Coates endured a major share of the opprobrium accruing to the government, and died in office as a member of the War Administration in 1943. At Public Works, centralization of hydro-electrical generation was perhaps Coates's enduring achievement, with a national roading policy a close second. As Native Minister — the most enlightened for decades, if not since 1840 — he REVIEWS 97 began to address land development. Relatively young, handsome, and an able adminis- trator, Coates was bound to shine, especially given the generally undistinguished nature of Reform cabinets. Coates's career is comprehensively described in Coates ofKaipara, although analysis is at times a little understated. As Bassett makes clear, Coates was let down by more than uninspiring colleagues. His nonideological approach, preferring 'businesslike' adminis- tration, which made him such a success as Minister of Public Works, was a weakness in a Prime Minister, who needs to articulate a vision. Coates was also caught between his own reformist instincts and the rest of the Reform party, for instance over a comprehen- sive pension system which had been promised in 1925. If in 1928 he was displaced by a desire for 'miracles and nostalgia', he himself had been promoted as the new Messiah in 1925, and his government was no more able to cope with recession than was Ward's pathetic last administration. Coates was not the last Prime Minister done in by unscrupulous media manipulation. Indeed the parallels between 1925-28 and 1972-75 are striking — in both cases a government swept to office in triumph, but burdened by impossible expectations; in both cases depression struck, which required, as Coates put it, 'careful nursing and guidance'. Instead voters fell prey to the promise of economic wizardry and instant solutions. As the Depression intensified, talk of fusion of the two anti-Labour parties became more insistent. That Coates allowed Forbes to make the running in 1931 was the ultimate testimony to Coates's lack of political skill, a lack which went far beyond high- mindedness. Even if Downie Stewart set the financial parameters for Coalition policy, Coates's own record as Minister of Unemployment was generally orthodox until 1933. Protection of farmers' incomes was laudable, but massive retrenchment revealed that Coates's world of backblocks settlers was far distant from the New Zealand of the 1930s. A ten-acre unit Small Farms Scheme was no compensation for cutting the Public Works budget by nearly 80%. There is no evidence that before 1933 Coates understood that urban wage-earners, as well as farmers, had purchasing power; personal generosity was no substitute for state policy. Only in 1933, when he convinced his colleagues of the wisdom of devaluation, did Coates truly come into his own as Minister of Finance, pushing through debt conversion and mortgage relief as well as the creation of the Reserve Bank. Political skill came late to Coates; he would have been far better for a defeat or two before 1928. The reviewer is forced to note the irony of a leading 1980s ally of Roger Douglas applauding Coates for 'ensuring that he had access to wider views than those of Treasury' especially as 'Coates's Treasury advisers were sceptical of State activity, preferring instead to prune expenditure and allow the markets to mend the economy'. Defeat in 1935 inevitably followed the excesses of Coalition policy. If Coates was a crypto-Keynesian, this conversion resulted from travelling to Ottawa in 1931 and London in 1935. He had not opposed the cuts in 1931, and his reaction to the Labour government — he anachronistically asserted the 'British birthright of sturdy independence' — had more in common with Forbes than with Savage. Later, as Minister of Armed Forces and War Co-ordination in the 1940-43 War Cabinet, Coates brought essential ability to defence planning. He was vital in influencing Fraser's views on New Zealand's strategic position, and stiffened the Prime Minister's resolve in seeking American support. Bassett rightly emphasizes this contribution. Some areas could have been better developed. The political context of the years before 1919 is weak — Massey, in particular, is elusive and shadowy. National percentages of votes cast would have been helpful for important elections. The discussion of imperial politics lacks context. The Maori inscription on the Coates memorial should have been 98 REVIEWS given in the original as well as in translation. These weaknesses do not seriously detract from a very fine biography. JIM McALOON Lincoln University Salmond: Southern Jurist. By Alex Frame. Victoria University Press, Wellington, 1995, 294pp. NZ price: $49.95. ISBN 0-86473-286-4. SIR JOHN SALMOND (1862-1924) is considered to have been New Zealand's 'leading jurist'. He was a contemporary of Lord Rutherford, and probably equally important. His studies of the theory of jurisprudence published in the 1890s were praised by the leading legal scholars of his day and Salmond's The Law of Torts: a Treatise on the English Law of Liability for Civil Injuries, first published in 1907 and transmuted, in its 18th edition, to Salmond and Heuston on the Law of Torts, went into its 20th edition in 1992. Salmond's extraordinary career covered every aspect of a lawyer's experience: scholarship, busy small-town practice, teaching, law drafting, constitution-making, the Solicitor-General- ship and the judiciary. Salmond was an unusually powerful political figure, the legal mainstay of two governments. Liberal and Reform; his tart remark to H.H. Ostler, 'I run the civil service', had some justification. Frame's biography of Salmond is thick with important explanations of legal issues which defined early twentieth-century New Zealand: the purpose and nature of the state; how — and by what institution — Maori claims to customary land titles should be handled; the meaning of sedition and the extent of free speech in wartime, to select only a few. Salmond is relevant to historians, legal scholars and workers in the 'Treaty industry'. Frame has spent many years on this biography, consulting the copious records of Salmond's correspondence and opinions in the Crown Law Office, perusing his published work. He has brought to the work his own insights as an expert in and teacher of jurisprudence. The summaries of Salmond's legal thought and accounts of its develop- ment are more than competent. But the book has a disappointingly narrow focus. For all his eminence and power, Salmond remains elusive as a person. Biography should convey a picture of 'a real life' and Frame does not achieve this. The context of Salmond's intellectual activities is thinly and inadequately drawn. There is little sense of place in the book.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Treaty and Method’ by Bernard Cadogan
    ‘Treaty and Method’ by Bernard Cadogan This seminar is entitled “Treaty and Method” by way of demonstrating two things. Firstly where New Zealand is with the Treaty compared with other indigenous rights polities; secondly to argue that the question is not so much who and what interprets the Treaty but how it is interpreted. The wisest judges and historians, the most experienced statespersons and officials are only as good as their procedures are, for working with the Treaty. And by how I refer to the means used to interpret, not the conclusions. I give fair warning however‐ I am going to use three words from ancient Greek, used in Law‐writing, constitutionalism and political philosophy. I am sorry for that, but it can’t be helped. I would rather make you party to what I am thinking by owning up to what I am borrowing from current discourse, than hide behind synonyms. These terms are:‐ Autochthony Hermeneutics Phronesis Autochthony and Indigeneity The first term is autochthony or autochthonous. It means sprung or derived from the soil of a country. 1It is used to speak of a state or government (or people) originally introduced to a country by colonization. It does not mean indigenous. I accept the Canadian definitions of indigeneity, that Chief Justice Antonio Lamer made, 2which the Metis leader Louis Chartrand affirms, 3that indigeneity is the state of affairs when the state or Crown assumes effective sovereignty over a territory and people in it, thereby crystallizing native title. A settler successor state is never indigenous then. Some modern states in what became OECD post‐British polities did exist that were indigenous in origin, usually from the alliance of unifying warlords and chieftains with traders and missionaries.
    [Show full text]
  • (2017) Perceptively Noted in This Book, While the Gallipoli Campaign
    136 New Zealand Journal of History, 51, 2 (2017) perceptively noted in this book, while the Gallipoli campaign holds a special place in the collective memory of Turkey, Australia and New Zealand, ‘this history is neither a single nor a simple one’ (p.34). NOTES 1 Peter Stanley, Quinn’s Post, Anzac, Gallipoli, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2005, p.xix. The historian who made the comment about the research grants was Robin Prior. 2 For a detailed report on the May 2015 conference see Peter Stanley, ‘Headphones, genocide and Fanta: Reflections on the Canakkale Gallipoli conference, Honest History, 4 August 2015, http://honesthistory.net.au/wp/canakkale-gallipoli-conference-reflections-2015/ GLYN HARPER Massey University The Broken Decade: Prosperity, Depression and Recovery in New Zealand 1928–39. By Malcolm McKinnon. Otago University Press, Dunedin, 2016. 556pp. NZ price: $49.95. ISBN: 9781927322260. THE BROKEN DECADE is a comprehensive history of the period between 1928 and 1939 and will likely become the standard account of the era. Whereas popular (as distinct from scholarly) memories of the era tend to see it as a ‘slump’ beginning in 1929 which was only rectified when Labour rescued and rebuilt New Zealand after being elected in 1935 (echoing, in popular memory at least, the Liberals who revived New Zealand after the ‘Long Depression’), McKinnon is much more nuanced in his analysis. His book is structured around four key phases: an ‘Indian Summer’ between 1928 and 1930 when high export prices and public works spending made for a relatively buoyant economy; a slump in export earnings and a crisis of rising unemployment between 1930 and 1933, accompanied by cuts to wages, public works and, perhaps most controversially, a devaluation of the currency; a partial recovery between 1933 and 1935; and, finally, a fuller recovery under the Labour government, albeit one followed by a financial crisis in 1938 which was only averted by the outbreak of World War Two.
    [Show full text]
  • A Shifting Balance: Parliament, the Executive and the Evolution of Politics in New Zealand *
    A Shifting Balance: Parliament, the executive * and the evolution of politics in New Zealand John E. Martin ** Abstract The reforms to the New Zealand Parliament of the 1980s and 1990s shifted the balance between executive and legislature away from the former. Through much of the twentieth century the executive had dominated. This article looks at an earlier period when the balance between the executive and legislature was strikingly different. It describes the shift towards greater executive dominance in three respects important to the functioning of Parliament — parliamentary expenditure, the impact of political parties and electoral politics, and increased government control over business in the House of Representatives. Introduction In a modern society in which government assumes a central place it is easy to take it for granted that Parliament provides the jousting ground for ‘continuous election campaigns’ that allow governments to demonstrate their prowess and Oppositions to put forward an alternative and to examine and criticise current policy. The recent adoption of mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) as New Zealand’s electoral system has broadened this combative atmosphere between contending groups so that a range of parties touts their wares, but it has not deflected the long- term trend towards the electorate and away from the arena of the chamber in which the country’s representatives are gathered. Instead, the continuous election campaign orientation has spread beyond the chamber and into select committees. MMP has undermined the sense of assurance of governments that an unproblematic majority would emerge out of elections and that this would be sustained through a full parliamentary term.
    [Show full text]
  • Confidential: for Review Only
    BMJ Confidential: For Review Only Does the stress of politics kill? An observational study comparing premature mortality of elected leaders to runner-ups in national elections of 8 countries Journal: BMJ Manuscript ID BMJ.2015.029691 Article Type: Christmas BMJ Journal: BMJ Date Submitted by the Author: 02-Oct-2015 Complete List of Authors: Abola, Matthew; Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Olenski, Andrew; Harvard Medical School, Health Care Policy Jena, Anupam; Harvard Medical School, Health Care Policy Keywords: premature mortality, politics https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/bmj Page 1 of 46 BMJ 1 2 3 Does the stress of politics kill? An observational study comparing accelerated 4 5 6 mortality of elected leaders to runners-up in national elections of 17 countries 7 8 Confidential: For Review Only 9 10 1 2 3 11 Andrew R. Olenski, B.A., Matthew V. Abola, B.A., , Anupam B. Jena, M.D, Ph.D. 12 13 14 15 1 Research assistant, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, 180 16 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115. Email: [email protected] . 17 18 2 19 Medical student, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, 2109 Adelbert 20 Rd., Cleveland, OH 44106. Phone: 216-286-4923; Email: [email protected]. 21 22 3 Associate Professor, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, 180 23 24 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115; Tel: 617-432-8322; Department of Medicine, 25 Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA; and National Bureau of Economic 26 Research, Cambridge, MA. Email: [email protected]. 27 28 29 30 31 Corresponding author from which reprints should be requested: 32 33 Anupam Jena, M.D., Ph.D.
    [Show full text]
  • No 90, 6 December 1935, 3629
    Jumb. 90. 3629 THE NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE EXTRAORDINARY. WELLINGTON, FRIDAY, DEOEMBER 6, 1935. Resignation of Member8 of the Executive Council and of Members of Executive C011,ncil appointed. Ministers. Executive Council Chambers, Wellington, 6th December, 1935. IS Excellency the Governor-General has been pleased to> H appoint- Official Secretary's Office, The Honourable MICHAEL JOSEPH SAVAGE; Government House, The Honourable PETER FRASER; Wellington, 6th December, 1935. The Honourable WALTER NASH; The Honourable DANIEL GILES SULLIVAN; IS Excellency the Governor-General has been pleased to The Honourable HENR,Y GREATHEAD REX MASON; accept the resignation of- H The Honourable HUBERT THOMAS ARMSTRONG; The Right Honourable GEORGE WILLIAM FORBES, hold­ The Honourable ROBERT SEMPLE; ing a seat in the Executive Council, and the offices of The Honourable WILLIAM EDWARD PARRY; Prime Minister, Minister of Railways, Native Minister, The Honourable PATRICK CHARLES WEBB; Minister of External Affairs, Minister for the Cook The Honourable FREDERICK JONES; Islands, and Attorney-General; The Honourable WILLIAM LEE MARTIN; The Honourable FRANK LANGSTONE; and The Right Honourable JOSEPH GORDON COATES, M.C., The Honourable MAR,K FAGAN; holding a seat in the Executive Council, and the offices to be members of the Executive Council of the Dominion of of Minister of Finance, Minister of Customs, Minister New Zealand; and the above-named gentlemen have taken of Stamp Duties, and Minister of Transport; the oath of office accordingly. C. A. JEFFERY, The Honourable Sir ETHELBERT ALFRED RANSOM, Clerk of the Executive Council. K.C.M.G., holding a seat in the Executive Council, and the offices of Minister of Lands, and Commissioner JJIinisters appointed.
    [Show full text]
  • Government in New Zealand, 1940–511
    4 An Age of the Mandarins? Government in New Zealand, 1940–511 John R . Martin The passage of more than half a century allows us to view the period following the end of the Second World War until the 1950s genuinely as history. Research materials, principally in archives, are supplemented by official histories, and biographies, with a few interviews enriching the story. I have been struck by the number of leading public servants of the period who were still in office during the 1950s and 1960s and who influenced the public service in which I spent 35 years. I was privileged to have known a number of them. In this chapter, after sketching the political and economic situation in New Zealand in 1945, I identify two principal challenges – managing the economy and national development – facing the Labour Government led by Peter Fraser. I also examine changes in organising government business made after the National Government came to office late in 1949. I then describe briefly the state of the public service as New Zealand emerged from the war. I consider the role played by several prominent public servants – a team to set against the Seven Dwarfs – and reflect on what we know about their working relationships with ministers. In essence, the picture is, first, of a group of outstanding and long-serving public servants who worked very closely with Prime Minister Fraser and his deputy, Walter Nash, the minister of finance, through the war and afterwards. With the change of government in 1949, the close, personal and somewhat haphazard methods of working under Labour were succeeded by a more conventional (in the Westminster model) relationship between ministers and officials, conducted within a more formal machinery for the handling of Cabinet business – a change sought unsuccessfully by officials when the Labour Government was in office.2 1 In writing this chapter I have benefited greatly from discussions with Dr Brian Easton, Professor Gary Hawke, Sir Frank Holmes and Mr Noel Lough.
    [Show full text]
  • WF Massey Through the Lens of Environmental History
    ‘The Best Crop the Land Will Ever Grow’: W.F. Massey through the Lens of Environmental History MIchAEL RochE Shortly after entering Parliament in 1894 as MP for Waitemata, Bill Massey repeatedly pressed John McKenzie, the formidable Minister of Lands in the Liberal government, over claims of illegal killing, skinning and the sale of native birds from Little Barrier Island, which had been acquired that same year as a flora and fauna reserve. Massey even quoted in translation a letter from Kiri and Tenetahi naming the perpetrator, before describing the species in question, the stitchback, as ‘the rarest and most beautiful and valuable of native birds, as members could see if they look at Sir Walter Buller’s book on the subject’.1 In the 30 year parliamentary career that followed, Massey was generally more circumspect about applauding rarity and beauty in nature. In part, this was because, as Barry Gustafson has written, Massey ‘saw farmers as the developers of the countryside, the base of the economy and the personification of the young nation’s pioneering spi r it’. 2 Gustafson noted that this attitude brought Massey and the Reform Party into conflict with sectional interests, particularly the unions and the Labour Party. This provides clues as to the perspective from which Massey viewed nature, natural resources and what he and many others of the time termed ‘preservation’ – which today we might call ‘conservation’ and ‘environmental management’. This paper pulls together Massey’s views about natural resources and conservation as expressed across his political career. It adds to the small body of biographical work that explores the conservationist impulse in late nineteenth and early twentieth century New Zealand.
    [Show full text]
  • The Business of Parliament in History.Pdf
    The business of Parliament in history June 2010 In the past 150 years the way in which Parliament has conducted its business has changed greatly. The length of time Parliament sits, the hours it sits for, and the ways it deals with business are very different now from in the past. This is the result of the changing role of Parliament and its MPs. An MP from the 1850s who stepped into the twenty-first century chamber would find it a very unfamiliar place indeed. (This paper looks at the House of Representatives although much of the discussion applies equally to the upper house of the Legislative Council which existed from 1854 until 1950.) 1. Sessions and sittings Today Parliament works all-year-round. In the past Parliament was usually summoned mid-year to approve the following year’s money. Sessions were annual in those days. They would last two or three months over the winter. This was the slack time for farms and businesses and 1 suited many MPs. By the end of the nineteenth century sessions extended into December as parliamentary business expanded. For much of the twentieth century the traditional mid-year opening remained. With business increasing, daily sittings became long and arduous and there was a tremendous rush of business at the end of the session. Many less important bills had to be dumped at the last minute. From 1984 the traditional sessional pattern was abandoned as a result of pressure to start earlier and for the session to have periodic adjournments to cater better for family life.
    [Show full text]
  • Crimes of Torture Amendment Bill
    A shifting balance: Parliament, the executive and the evolution of politics in New Zealand John E. Martin This paper is reproduced with permission as published in the Australasian Parliamentary Review, vol 21, no 2, Spring 2006 Abstract: The reforms to the New Zealand Parliament of the 1980s and 1990s shifted the balance between executive and legislature away from the former. Through much of the twentieth century the executive had dominated. This article looks at an earlier period when the balance between the executive and legislature was strikingly different. It describes the shift towards greater executive dominance in three respects important to the functioning of Parliament — parliamentary expenditure, the impact of political parties and electoral politics, and increased government control over business in the House of Representatives. Introduction In a modern society in which government assumes a central place it is easy to take it for granted that Parliament provides the jousting ground for ‘continuous election campaigns’ that allow governments to demonstrate their prowess and Oppositions to put forward an alternative and to examine and criticise current policy. The recent adoption of mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) as New Zealand’s electoral system has broadened this combative atmosphere between contending groups so that a range of parties touts their wares, but it has not deflected the long-term trend towards the electorate and away from the arena of the chamber in which the country’s representatives are gathered. Instead, the continuous election campaign orientation has spread beyond the chamber and into select committees. MMP has undermined the sense of assurance of governments that an unproblematic majority would emerge out of elections and that this would be sustained through a full parliamentary term.
    [Show full text]
  • The Role of the Governor General
    New Zealand Centre for Public Law Te Wananga o Nga Kaupapa Ture a Iwi o Aotearoa The Role of the Governor-General by Dame Silvia Cartwright October 2001 Occasional Paper No 6 FACULTY OF LAW Te Kauhanganui Tatai Ture Staff of the Centre Director Professor Matthew Palmer Deputy Director Andrew Erueti Administrator Claire Blanchfield How to find out more To find out more about the Centre please contact the Administrator, The NZ Centre for Public Law, Faculty of Law, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington. Contact details are: Phone +64-4-463 6327, fax +64-4-463 6365, email [email protected]. Web site: www.vuw.ac.nz/ nzcpl/ Funded through the VUW Foundation. ISBN 0 - 475 - 50067 - 9 THE ROLE OF THE GOVERNOR- GENERAL DAME SILVIA CARTWRIGHT* Professor Palmer, thank you for your welcome and for your invitation to talk today about the role of the Governor-General. As many of you know, my predecessor Sir Michael Hardie Boys gave a number of significant speeches on the role of the Governor-General in the MMP context, particularly in relation to government formation.1 So, rather than return to this focus, I propose to take a different approach to the subject. Today I will traverse some of the historical developments relating to the office of Governor-General, for it is an office in which there have been many significant changes since 1840. Reflecting on these changes will help inform our view of the role of the Governor-General at the beginning of the 21st century. Such reflection must take account of the patchwork of cultures that now constitutes New Zealand society – and the need for the role of Governor-General to be relevant to all New Zealanders.
    [Show full text]
  • New Zealand in the League of Nations: the Beginnings of an Independent Foreign Policy, 1919-1939'
    H-Diplo Brooking on Chaudron, 'New Zealand in the League of Nations: The Beginnings of an Independent Foreign Policy, 1919-1939' Review published on Thursday, May 10, 2012 Gerald Chaudron. New Zealand in the League of Nations: The Beginnings of an Independent Foreign Policy, 1919-1939. Jefferson: McFarland, 2012. vii + 270 pp. $55.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-7864-6639-9. Reviewed by Tom Brooking (University of Otago)Published on H-Diplo (May, 2012) Commissioned by Seth Offenbach I must admit that I came to this book with the suspicion that it would add very little to a well- researched aspect of New Zealand history. W. David McIntyre, Ann Trotter, and Malcolm McKinnon have covered the diplomatic history of the interwar period in various publications.[1] Similarly, Ian C. McGibbon has also studied New Zealand’s military preparedness prior to World War II, or rather lack of it, in several studies.[2] Then there are many biographies of leading politicians, including Michael Joseph Savage, Peter Fraser, Walter Nash, and John A. Lee on the “left”; Joseph Ward in the middle; and Gordon Coates on the “right” that traverse this same ground.[3] A couple of doctoral theses have also examined New Zealand’s role at the Versailles conference, including the contributions of Ward and William Ferguson Massey, and its involvement in the Spanish Civil War.[4] In addition, there are several autobiographies written by such key players as the two main architects of New Zealand’s foreign policy--Carl Berendsen and Alister McIntosh.[5] In short, it is hard to think of any part of New Zealand history that has a richer archive, or that has been so thoroughly examined by both thesis students and experienced historians.
    [Show full text]
  • The Post-Leadership Activities of New Zealand Premiers
    LIFE AFTER POLITICS? THE POST-LEADERSHIP ACTIVITIES OF NEW ZEALAND PREMIERS AND PRIME MINISTERS, 1856-2008. BY JESS BOOKER A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts in Political Science Victoria University of Wellington 2013 2 Acknowledgements Much of this thesis has been written from Pipitea Street, Thorndon. Working from this setting has brought the area to life, particularly as I have worked through New Zealand’s early colonial history. Each morning as I walked to my office, I passed through the centre of New Zealand’s political system, knowing how rich in history it was. I therefore want to say thanks in particular to the bronzed Keith Holyoake on Molesworth Street, now the unexpected bastion of the New Zealand Rugby building. Keith’s friendly demeanour as I headed to work on my thesis reminded me of the important contribution that each political leader has made to New Zealand. I must also thank Jon Johansson for his incredible support in writing this thesis. I am forever indebted for the valuable knowledge and insights that Jon contributed to this work. At times I struggled to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and his words of encouragement have helped me greatly to get to this point. I would like to also thank my friends, family and colleagues for the various offers of wine, proof-reading and encouragement. They have enriched this thesis in ways they probably never thought possible. I thank Colin for his love and support, without it I would have never have finished this thesis.
    [Show full text]