Whole document restricted, see Access Instructions file below for details of how to access the print copy. / The spectre of block obsolescence of major weapons platforms loomed throughout the 1980s, facing successive governments with significant challenges as they worked to make sustainable decisions on replacement or upgraded equipment for the New Zealand Defence Force. This thesis identifies the critical factors that have shaped and influenced defence acquisition decision-making processes from the election of the Fourth Labour Government in 1984 and the subsequent ANZUS crisis, through to the events of 9/11 and the following 'war on terror'. The thesis explores and analyses decision-making processes in relation to six acquisition decisions which have been made over a twenty year period. These are the decisions on the ANZAC frigates; the military sealift ship HMNZS Charles Upham; the second and third decisions on the ANZACS; the lease of the F-l6 strike aircraft; the upgrading of the P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft; and the purchase of armoured vehicles for the Army - the LAV IIIs. A model of decision-making processes is developed and evaluated in order to undertake the analysis, with the model demonstrating its utility in analysing complex processes throughout the course of the thesis. From here the thesis concludes that whilst many factors are brought to bear, New Zealand's own view of the world, external relationships, and the timing of decisions are amongst the most significant elements impacting on the decision making process, whilst individual actors play a significant part in shaping the process. Although there has been a great deal of publicity in recent years about rivalry between the Services and the place of bureaucratic politics, it nevertheless is apparent that officials have continued to work with rigour over time to provide the best judgement and advice possible to Ministers. Three out of six of the case studies which have been analysed, the ANZAC frigates, the upgrade of the P-3 Orions and the LAV III, have been or are in the process of successful implementation. In each case officials have worked to ensure that they provided the Government of the day with the most appropriate advice upon which to base decisions, although that advice has not always been popular. The analysis of each case study demonstrates key aspects of the decision-making process providing specific insights into the way defence decisions are made.

The main purpose of this thesis is to provide a history and political analysis of the organisation, policies, membership and leadership of the Social Credit party between 1953 and 1986. The introductory chapter describes the methodology and reviews the literature on third parties in general and Social Credit in particular. Chapter Two provides a prelude to the formation of the Social Credit Political League in 1953. It traces the movement's decline as an education and pressure group under the first Labour Government. Chapter Three examines the debate surrounding the decision t o engage in direct political action and describes the process by which the Political League was formed. Chapter Four considers the reasons for and the findings of the Royal Commission on Monetary, Banking and Credit Systems (1956) and accounts for the growing internal debate culminating in the removal of Mr Wilfrid Owen as Leader in 1959. In Chapter Five the impact on the party of Mr Vernon Cracknell's victory in Hobson in 1966 is considered, along with an assessment of his role in Parliament as the sole third party representative. The reasons for his defeat at the 1969 general election and replacement as Leader some six months later are investigated, and Chapter Six is devoted to the brief but stormy experiment with Mr John O'Brien as Leader, followed by his split from the League in 1972 and the formation of the New Democrat Party. The early Beetham years, including attempts to revise the party's monetary reform dogma, broaden the scope of its message, and to give it a more professional organisation are considered in Chapter Seven. I n Chapter Eight the reasons for and the internal consequences of the party's rapid rise in popularity from early 1978 and its decline after March 1981 are analysed. The chapter ends with an account of Mr Beetham's defeat as Leader in 1986. The thesis concludes that Social Credit's history as an electoral organisation has been conspicuously cyclical, that its progress has been regulated largely by the electoral performances of the two major parties and by the presence or absence of minor party competition, that its leadership has been distinctly oligarchic, and that Social Credit has not been one, but several different parties. Why has the party not been more successful? And why has it lasted so long? These questions are addressed in the final chapter.

This thesis analyses the impact of the1990s new public management reforms in New Zealand on one particular agency, the National Archives. It explores the unique combination of features that enabled this small low-profile agency and its stakeholders to stymie some of the machinery of government reforms that were proposed. This thesis is a qualitative study that draws on material from primary and secondary sources, with a heavy reliance on official documents. It chronicles the lack of value placed on the archives’ administrative, constitutional and heritage functions by successive politicians and senior public servants. The thesis compares the values of the reformers, who had interests that were not specific to the Archives, and the values of the archiving professionals and their stakeholders, whose perspective was agency and policy-specific. The main reform time periods are 1994-2001, and 2005. While the clash between the two sets of values during this time is analysed chronologically, the thesis provides historical background prior to the reform period. The perspectives of various actors are told in their own words, where possible. This study illustrates the tensions between the need to co-ordinate the wider public sector with the peculiarities of a specific policy area. It also demonstrates the tensions between the highly theoretical and ideological nature of the public sector management reforms in New Zealand from the mid-1980s, and the values of one group of professionals that were not compatible with these reforms. While the policies of the reformers evolved over time, the values of the archivists were more static. These static values contributed to consistency in their preferred model of organisational design and placement within the public sector. Ironically the outdated legislation archivists complained about for decades and low political priority the policy area received, bestowed crucial protection against public sector management reforms that were contrary to international archival trends. Following a change in political leadership, the stable of professional values of the archive were adopted, removing archives from the policy change agenda.

The task of attending to cultural difference amongst women while also ‘bridging’ these differences is deeply contested in feminism. This concern arose in response to criticisms that ‘hegemonic’ feminism is indeed part of the colonial project. These critiques demonstrated that the notion of feminism as a universal movement for all women is deeply problematic and founded on the exclusion of sex, race, and class differences. Subsequently, the aim to recuperate a notion of the universal that refuses these exclusions is of central concern to contemporary feminism. As feminism comes to grip with the impact of globalization on women in different parts of the world, this impetus to engender understanding and alliances across cultural difference is more salient than ever. This thesis explores one response to the dilemma which I term the ‘feminist decolonizing impulse’. Only recently emerging from the field of contemporary feminist theory, this impulse and the key authors which inform it has not be examined in any substantial way. This is where the original contribution of this thesis lies. My main focus is to explore the central aim of this emerging set of ideas and to identify their strengths and weaknesses. I argue that the central aim of the decolonizing impulse is to build feminist alliances and coalitions that are premised, first and foremost, on women’s heterogeneity. It thus purports to offer a re-constructed vision of the ‘universal’. This is a universalism where differences and particularities are privileged in advance of any announcement of the ‘universal’. To do this, I first establish how the ‘feminist decolonizing impulse’ emerged from different fields of scholarship, including postcolonial studies, indigenous political thought, Third World, postcolonial and poststructuralist feminisms. I then map the major features of the ‘feminist decolonizing impulse’ by examining the work of important authors who have given shape to this impulse. To discover the strengths and weaknesses of the decolonizing impulse, I engage with the work of two prominent contemporary feminist theorists, Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Martha C. Nussbaum. Both Mohanty and Nussbaum aim to advance a model of cross-cultural feminism, though go about this in vastly different ways.

This dissertation explores the relationship between peacebuilding, theory and praxis, and women. It examines the impact that peacebuilding has on women and the ways in which women participate in peacebuilding, both during conflicts and in the period of transformation that follows. In this dissertation I argue that women are profoundly affected by conflict and are crucial to peacebuilding and post-conflict transformation. This dissertation seeks to make a contribution to our understanding of how peacebuilding and post-conflict transformation impacts on women. The dissertation includes a study of Bougainville. The ten year civil war which began in 1989 ended in 1998 with a formal ceasefire and was followed by the Bougainville Peace Agreement in 2001. It was the role that women played throughout the conflict which has been widely cited in the literature that is of most interest to me. Bougainvillean women have been credited as being the motivating force behind the peace process during the war, in the lead up to the ceasefire and peace agreement, and an integral part of the post- conflict transformation of Bougainville. Many suggest that one explanation for this is because Bougainville is mostly a matrilineal society. Although some literature suggests matrilineality is restricted to lineage and land, this dissertation contends that matrilineality in Bougainville gave women substantive power and authority over most aspects of society. With some exceptions, the literature on peacebuilding is relatively recent, galvanized by Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s An Agenda for Peace (1992). A more historical body of literature postulates an enduring relationship between women and peace. These two bodies of literature provide the context for this dissertation. The literature that directly frames the argument of this dissertation is the feminist literature on women and peacebuilding. This literature proposes that the conflict and its aftermath are profoundly gendered phenomena. Birgitte Sorensen’s 1998 report, Women and Post-conflict Reconstruction: Issues and Sources, categorises peacebuilding into the areas of political, economic and social and critically examines the impacts of each of these areas of peacebuilding from the perspective of women. This report provides an excellent framework for this study. I use Sorensen’s model but have extended it to include a fourth category on postconflict justice to explore how issues related to women and justice are addressed. I do this because there are a number of issues related to women and post-conflict justice that need to be explored in greater detail, such as women’s access to land and gendered violence. This dissertation examines how each area of peacebuilding impacts on women, and how women and men participate in these areas of peacebuilding. This approach provides the structure of the dissertation. This dissertation concurs with the proposition that conflict and its aftermath are profoundly gendered. Even in the matrilineal society of Bougainville where women enjoy relatively high status, conflict has its disempowering effects on women. Peacebuilding adds new dimensions to the power of women and their disempowerment. In relation to political peacebuilding, there is an uneasy hybrid system of authority in Bougainville as the people of Bougainville attempt to retain some of their traditions in the newly constructed Western models of governance. The evidence is clear that women are under-represented in the introduced Western institutions. Over time, these institutions accumulate more of the power and authority. Within the economy, women are, as ever, the producers. In the past women’s ownership and control of land gave them control over the labour of men (in some parts of Bougainville), but the ending of the conflict has opened up new spaces for men to control land. Nihilistic spaces have emerged where once there was fighting. The shape of the new Bougainvillean economy is by no means clear, but there are disturbing signs that women will not be accorded their due as producers within society. Much of the feminist literature on peacebuilding points to the fact that women’s work in peacebuilding is unseen in mending the torn social fabric of post-conflict society. This dissertation confirms that hypothesis. This is where the women in Bougainville have managed to retain their traditional matrilineal strength as carers and healers of the social body. However they face new problems in relation to land and in relation to the escalation of domestic violence. They also face ongoing problems of how to heal and remedy the trauma of what was simultaneously a struggle for independence and a civil war. Matrilineality has protected Bougainvillean women from some of the traumas of war. The children of women raped during the conflict are welcomed into their matrilineal clan and women are able to exercise considerable authority within their communities. Nonetheless, it is a profoundly disturbing finding of this dissertation that peacebuilding in Bougainville may itself be setting boundaries around the power and authority of women in matrilineal Bougainville. Bougainvillean women may yet need to contend with men for their rightful place in the new society.

The thesis is a study of Richard Casey and the Department of External Affairs in the 1950s, and the policies proposed or adopted by the Department in relation to three Asian nations: China, Indochina and Indonesia. This will illuminate the workings of a key government department that was at the front line of the early Cold War. The 1950s was a crucial decade in fostering relationships with Australia’s northern neighbours, many either emerging from, or fighting against, colonial rule. The actions of the Minister for External Affairs and his Department, whether positive or negative, would lay the foundations of Australian foreign policy for future decades. The thesis explores the ways in which Casey approached different regions in Asia in order to provide an analytical framework of how his policies toward Asia developed over time. The thesis examines whether Casey’s ideas about Asia were influenced by the particular circumstances of each country or whether other imperatives determined his approach to Asia. A study of Casey’s tenure in External Affairs will also involve an analysis of the level of support for Casey and his department both within Federal Cabinet and from Prime Minister Menzies.

This creative thesis is written in two parts: Volume 1 is a novel and Volume 2 is the accompanying exegesis which explains the process of contextualising a school of philosophy’s politics within the novel. These volumes combine to build a new window onto contemporary theoretical debate regarding the sustainability of so-called liberal democracy. Volume 1, the novel, provides a fictionalised account of federal government involvement with the popular music industry in Australia during the 1990s. The story is told from the point of view of a newcomer to a music industry organisation funded by the federal government called the ‘Oz Rock Foundation’. This organisation is run by a former federal politician who maintains close links with his political colleagues still in government. When the newcomer discovers a young Aboriginal prisoner with exceptional musical talents, the former politician seizes this opportunity to help launch the Oz Rock Foundation in the ‘Year of the Indigenous Person’. This venture, however, has unexpected consequences which emerge as the story develops. Volume 2, the exegesis, employs a narrative framework to explain the process by which an analysis of philosopher Richard Rorty’s version of neopragmatism fed into the creation of the novel. Political issues raised by neopragmatism are thematically linked to fictional contexts informed by the history of government experimentation with the Australian music industry. The process is guided by questions designed to assess whether a neopragmatic version of liberal democracy is sustainable in this form. The novel is further shaped by its attempt to extend a particular tradition, within the genre of the political novel, that contextualises themes related to ‘natural rights’ as the foundation of liberal democracy. The exegesis, in its discussion of issues raised by the completed novel, then draws on existing research into the sustainability of democracy in order to synthesise an overall perspective. NOTE: Due to copyright arrangements with the publisher of Making Noises, the text of the novel (Volume 1) is not available as part of the digital version of this thesis. The novel was published in November 2006 by OverDog Press (Melbourne, Australia). The ISBN is: 9780975797921

The theory and practice of ‘proletarian internationalism’ was a vital dimension of the modus operandi of communist parties worldwide. It was a broadly encompassing concept that profoundly influenced the actions of international communism’s globally scattered adherents. Nevertheless, the historiography of the Communist Party of Australia has neglected to address sufficiently the effect exerted by proletarian internationalism on the party’s praxis. Instead, scholars have dwelt on the party’s links to the Soviet Union and have, moreover, overlooked the nuances and complexity of the Communist Party’s relationship with Moscow. It is the purpose of this thesis to redress these shortfalls. Using an extensive collection of primary and secondary sources, this thesis will consider the impact of a Marxist-Leninist conception of proletarian internationalism on the policies,tactics and strategies of the Communist Party of Australia from 1928-1945. The thesis will demonstrate that proletarian internationalism was far more than mere adherence to Moscow, obediently receiving and implementing instructions. Instead, through the lens of this concept, we can see that the Communist Party’s relationship with Moscow was flexible and nuanced and one that, in reality, often put the party at odds with the official Soviet position. In addition, we will see the extent of the influence exerted by other aspects of proletarian internationalism, such as international solidarity, the so-called national and colonial questions and the communist attitude towards war, on the Communist Party’s praxis.

In New Zealand there is a marked scarcity of material on the workings of the indigenous news media. This thesis is intended to partially fill the large gap in New Zealand scholarship in this area. It provides a case study of the production of meaning by mainstream New Zealand news media organisations. Its purpose is to explicate the dominant messages in circulation from 1981 through 1983 regarding unemployment. The neutral face of the news discourse is shown to conceal the routinized signification practices of journalistic professionalism. These practices act to separate the normative from the deviant. They also serve the interests of society's established and legitimated institutions. This process was aided by the simplistic, as opposed to simplified, nature of news media presentations.

This thesis analyses the impact of the1990s new public management reforms in New Zealand on one particular agency, the National Archives. It explores the unique combination of features that enabled this small low-profile agency and its stakeholders to stymie some of the machinery of government reforms that were proposed. This thesis is a qualitative study that draws on material from primary and secondary sources, with a heavy reliance on official documents. It chronicles the lack of value placed on the archives’ administrative, constitutional and heritage functions by successive politicians and senior public servants. The thesis compares the values of the reformers, who had interests that were not specific to the Archives, and the values of the archiving professionals and their stakeholders, whose perspective was agency and policy-specific. The main reform time periods are 1994-2001, and 2005. While the clash between the two sets of values during this time is analysed chronologically, the thesis provides historical background prior to the reform period. The perspectives of various actors are told in their own words, where possible. This study illustrates the tensions between the need to co-ordinate the wider public sector with the peculiarities of a specific policy area. It also demonstrates the tensions between the highly theoretical and ideological nature of the public sector management reforms in New Zealand from the mid-1980s, and the values of one group of professionals that were not compatible with these reforms. While the policies of the reformers evolved over time, the values of the archivists were more static. These static values contributed to consistency in their preferred model of organisational design and placement within the public sector. Ironically the outdated legislation archivists complained about for decades and low political priority the policy area received, bestowed crucial protection against public sector management reforms that were contrary to international archival trends. Following a change in political leadership, the stable of professional values of the archive were adopted, removing archives from the policy change agenda.