'A Wonderful Lot of Chaps': Observations on New Zealand Army Culture in War Letters from Rod to Molly McLeay, 1940-1942

The prevalent egalitarianism, mateship and hierarchy in the New Zealand army and as expressed in the letters of a junior officer Roderick Moscrop McLeay to his wife Molly during his period overseas during World War Two is analyzed. The letters show that the New Zealand Army at war was a hierarchical organization with clear distinctions among the various ranks

Caretaker Government and the Evolution of Caretaker Conventions in New Zealand

Since the financial crisis immediately following the 1984 general election, various efforts have been made to clarify the role and responsibilities of caretaker governments in New Zealand. The need to do so was given added urgency as a result of the referendum in 1993 in favour of proportional representation. This article examines the recent evolution of New Zealand's caretaker conventions and assesses their application following the first MMP election in late 1996. The article begins with a brief description of caretaker conventions in other parliamentary democracies. It then considers the operation of the caretaker conventions in New Zealand under the previous first-past-the-post electoral system, and discusses the measures taken in the early-to-mid 1990s to clarify these conventions in preparation for MMP. Having evaluated the conduct of government during the lengthy interregnum in late 1996, the article concludes with an analysis of some of the continuing policy issues generated by caretaker governments and outlines possible ways of reducing the frequency and duration of caretaker periods

Convergence of marine megafauna movement patterns in coastal and open oceans

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2017. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115 (2018): 3072-3077, doi:10.1073/pnas.1716137115.The extent of increasing anthropogenic impacts on large marine vertebrates partly depends on the animals’ movement patterns. Effective conservation requires identification of the key drivers of movement including intrinsic properties and extrinsic constraints associated with the dynamic nature of the environments the animals inhabit. However, the relative importance of intrinsic versus extrinsic factors remains elusive. We analyse a global dataset of 2.8 million locations from > 2,600 tracked individuals across 50 marine vertebrates evolutionarily separated by millions of years and using different locomotion modes (fly, swim, walk/paddle). Strikingly, movement patterns show a remarkable convergence, being strongly conserved across species and independent of body length and mass, despite these traits ranging over 10 orders of magnitude among the species studied. This represents a fundamental difference between marine and terrestrial vertebrates not previously identified, likely linked to the reduced costs of locomotion in water. Movement patterns were primarily explained by the interaction between species-specific traits and the habitat(s) they move through, resulting in complex movement patterns when moving close to coasts compared to more predictable patterns when moving in open oceans. This distinct difference may be associated with greater complexity within coastal micro-habitats, highlighting a critical role of preferred habitat in shaping marine vertebrate global movements. Efforts to develop understanding of the characteristics of vertebrate movement should consider the habitat(s) through which they move to identify how movement patterns will alter with forecasted severe ocean changes, such as reduced Arctic sea ice cover, sea level rise and declining oxygen content.Workshops funding granted by the UWA Oceans Institute, AIMS, and KAUST. AMMS was supported by an ARC Grant DE170100841 and an IOMRC (UWA, AIMS, CSIRO) fellowship; JPR by MEDC (FPU program, Spain); DWS by UK NERC and Save Our Seas Foundation; NQ by FCT (Portugal); MMCM by a CAPES fellowship (Ministry of Education)

The Australian and New Zealand Parliaments: Context, response and capacity

We compare Australian and New Zealand parliamentary demands on executive governments to 'do something' about globalisation, noting that parliaments are distinctive institutionally - functioning as umbrellas protecting arenas of adversarial competitiveness, with little scope for cohesive institutional capacity. We define 'globalisation' as it is defined by the parliamentary actors themselves: that is, quite broadly with different actors taking different postures towards globalisation depending on party and on political and institutional perspectives. Whether parliaments can respond effectively to globalisation depends on their institutional capacity and political composition - their political resources. We establish the international context in which the two parliaments operate, establishing our hypotheses about institutional capacity from Lisa Martin's book Democratic Commitments: Legislatures and International Cooperation . We conclude that both parliaments have made significant, if often unnoticed, contributions to the political management of globalisation

The Firing Line: When and Why Do Prime Ministers Fire Ministerial Colleagues?

Prime Ministers (PMs) in parliamentary systems shape ministerial succession through hiring and firing their ministerial colleagues.1 This chapter identifies the different ways in which PMs in New Zealand (NZ) and the United Kingdom (UK) punish ministers who perform poorly, examining the similarities and differences that exist both institutionally and in the personality or style of the PMs involved. We explore this issue by thinking about the relationship between PMs and ministers in agency terms. Cabinet government can be thought of as a system whereby the government is accountable to parliament and through parliament to the electorate. In practice that line of accountability works through the party (Brennan and Hamlin, 1993; Str�m, 2000). The PM is supported by her party (or parties in coalition governments) whilst the party gains enough public support.2 The PM�s role is to construct and direct government on behalf of her party, and each minister is directly an agent of the PM and through her indirectly an agent of their party

‘Urgent’ legislation in the New Zealand House of Representatives and the bypassing of select committee scrutiny

The day after the opening of the new Parliament in December 2008, the National Party minister and Leader of the House, Gerry Brownlee, moved a motion to accord urgency to certain aspects of business. This was passed by 63 votes to 52, with the Māori Party abstaining. It was resolved ‘that urgency be accorded the introduction and passing of Government bills dealing with taxation, employment relations, bail, education and sentencing’, and some other aspects of House business (New Zealand House of Representatives (NZHR), 2008). Although National had insufficient votes to govern on its own (58 in the 122-seat House) it knew that the House would approve the urgency motion because National had the support of three other parties, the Māori Party (five), the ACT party (five) and United Future (one), giving the government a secure majority so long as either ACT or the Māori Party voted for its bills and procedural motions. The above bills were not referred to select committees for public submissions and scrutiny.&nbsp