New Zealand
The 1923 and 1926 Imperial Conferences decided that New Zealand should be allowed to negotiate its own political treaties, and the first commercial treaty was ratified in 1928 with Japan. During the period of the New Zealand colony, Britain was responsible for external trade and foreign relations. The Ross Dependency is New Zealand's territorial claim in Antarctica, where it operates the Scott Base research facility. The southern and southwestern parts of the South Island have a cooler and cloudier climate, with around 1,400–1,600 hours. Oceania is a wider region encompassing the Australian continent, New Zealand, and various island countries in the Pacific Ocean that are not included in the seven-continent model. The plateau also hosts the country's largest lake, Lake Taupō, nestled in the caldera of one of the world's most active supervolcanoes. Fiordland's steep mountains and deep fiords record the extensive ice age glaciation of this southwestern corner of the South Island.
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Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) were formed in 1992 from existing government-owned research organisations. As of 2017update, the United Nations International Telecommunication Union ranks New Zealand 13th in the development of information and communications infrastructure. A large-scale rollout of gigabit-capable fibre to the premises, branded as Ultra-Fast Broadband, began in 2009 with a target of being available to 87% of the population by 2022. He named that area Murderers’ Bay, and called the country Staten Landt. DNA mapping of their Maori descendants indicates links to the indigenous people of Taiwan. The relative proximity of New Zealand to Antarctica has made South Island a gateway of sorts for scientific expeditions and tourist excursions to the icebound continent. Over 75 percent of the forest cover has been burnt or felled, and the land converted into pasture. It also has a diverse range of birds, including the flightless moa (now extinct) and the kiwi, the kakapo, and the takahē, all of which are endangered. Evergreens such as the giant kauri and southern beech dominate the forests. The Māori were the first people to reach New Zealand, followed by the early European settlers. While the demonym for a New Zealand citizen is New Zealander, the informal "Kiwi" is commonly used both internationally and by locals. For legacy systems which can only accept one ethnicity, people are usually allocated to a single ethnicity based on a pre-determined priority order, with Māori given highest priority and New Zealand European given lowest priority. Statistics New Zealand allows people to choose multiple ethnicities and reports ethnic data based on total responses, therefore ethnicities add up to more than 100%. The median age of the New Zealand population at the 2018 census was 37.4 years, with life expectancy in 2017–2019 being 80.0 years for males and 83.5 years for females. About 82% of New Zealand's indigenous vascular plants are endemic, covering 1,944 species across 65 genera. Physical isolation has caused biological isolation, resulting in a dynamic evolutionary ecology with examples of distinctive plants and animals as well as populations of widespread species. Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch all receive a yearly average of more than 2,000 hours of sunshine. Of the seven largest cities, Christchurch is the driest, receiving on average only 618 millimetres (24.3 in) of rain per year. Conditions vary sharply across regions, from extremely wet on the West Coast of the South Island to semi-arid in Central Otago and the Mackenzie Basin of inland Canterbury and subtropical in Northland. The colony gained a representative government in 1852, and the first Parliament met in 1854. These conflicts, mainly in the North Island, saw thousands of imperial troops and the Royal Navy come to New Zealand and became known as the New Zealand Wars. New Zealand was administered as a dependency of the Colony of New South Wales until becoming a separate Crown colony, the Colony of New Zealand, on 3 May 1841. In 1835, following an announcement of impending French settlement by Charles de Thierry, the nebulous United Tribes of New Zealand sent a Declaration of Independence to King William IV of the United Kingdom asking for protection. The Māori population declined to around 40% of its pre-contact level during the 19th century; introduced diseases were the major factor. Following Cook, New Zealand was visited by numerous European and North American whaling, sealing, and trading ships. New Zealand art and craft has gradually achieved an international audience, with exhibitions in the Venice Biennale in 2001 and the "Paradise Now" exhibition in New York in 2004. Certain items of popular culture thought to be unique to New Zealand are called "Kiwiana". In the 1960s, as tertiary education became more available, and cities expanded urban culture began to dominate, but rural imagery and themes are common in New Zealand's art, literature and media. From the early 20th century until the late 1960s, Māori culture was suppressed by the attempted assimilation of Māori into British New Zealanders. More recently, American, Australian, Asian and other European cultures have exerted influence on New Zealand.Community Bookmarks
- The Ross Dependency is New Zealand's territorial claim in Antarctica, where it operates the Scott Base research facility.
- In 1989, the government reorganised local government into the current two-tier structure of regional councils and territorial authorities.
- The New Zealand Parliament holds legislative power and consists of the king and the House of Representatives.
- The formal relationship with the U.S. changed, in 1986, however, after the Labour government adopted an anti-nuclear position, which ended visits of American warships.
- The Maori language is used on sign posts, at Maori culture concerts, as secondary names of government departments, on the Maori-language television channel, and on a number of tribal radio stations.
- The discovery of gold on South Island in 1861 sparked concerns that settlers there would form a separate colony, so in 1865 the capital was moved to the more central city of Wellington.
- It is the sixth-largest island country by area and lies east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga.
- Today, New Zealand enjoys particularly close relations with the United States and is one of its major non-NATO allies, as well as with Australia, with a "Trans-Tasman" identity between citizens of the latter being common.
- During the 1980s, New Zealand underwent major economic changes that transformed it from a protectionist to a liberalised free-trade economy.
- In 1951, the United Kingdom became increasingly focused on its European interests, while New Zealand joined Australia and the United States in the ANZUS security treaty.
- The entry of Britain into the European Community in the early 1970s, however, forced New Zealand to expand its trade relations with other countries.