The proposition of this thesis is that, policy and legislation pertaining to natural resources, specifically the fisheries and the aquatic environment of New Zealand, do not meet Robert Goodin’s public policy and moral criteria for successful maintenance of such resources in accordance with his green theory of value. This proposition is derived from an assessment indicating a policy tradition in New Zealand resulting in failure to ensure ecological sustainability in accordance with this country’s international obligations to biodiversity and futurity. This thesis urges change from the prevailing narrowly economistic political agenda to one based upon Robert Goodin’s green theory of value. Such a political agenda would be promoted by a third force over and above the traditional parties of the Left and Right, arguably, The Greens: the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand. The argument for change is based upon an analysis of fisheries related policy and legislation in New Zealand to April 2000. The analysis is organised into successive historical periods, beginning with the arrival of the first Polynesians and ending with the outcome of the 1999 general election. These periods include the development of the common property subsistence fishery of the Maori and its commercial open access Pakeha successors, the institution of an export industry involving in turn delicensing, rationalization, privatization, corporatization, and the process of devolution of fisheries management to industry. It is argued the cumulative outcome is impoverishment of natural resources, the capitalization of Nature and the theft of the “people’s right of fishery”. Goodin’s green theory of value is carefully stated, developed, analyzed, and compared and contrasted with the prevailing economistic argument. The validity and desirability of the green theory of value and the political agenda to which it gives rise is established. This political agenda is found similar to that of green parties. The political and social milieu in which The Greens must presently operate is analysed. Current environmental policy in general, and fisheries related policies in particular are analysed and found incompatible with Goodin’s criteria. The outcome of policies and legislation affecting aquatic ecosystems-maintenance is examined in case studies covering major fisheries and the aquatic environment, and found to be generally disastrous. Alternative policies are proffered, based upon a green political agenda arising from a philosophy similar to that explicated in Goodin’s green theory of value.

There is a strain of social criticism, dating back to the fifties and sixties, which alleged that New Zealand was about to become a society more clearly divided by lines related to "class". New Zealand was presented as a society in which a natural egalitarianism of social habits and attitudes had flourished. The critical voices of this earlier period feared that as New Zealand's economy evolved further, so would the degree of social demarcation within society. They expected that these changes would show up most rapidly, and with deeper effects, in the northernmost part of New Zealand, particularly in Auckland. There the postwar period's industrial development and population growth was greatest. In the suburbs of the north, middle class beliefs and life styles would develop. Suburban life, in areas of new housing containing those who most notably benefited from these changes, would provide mutual reinforcements for the evolution of a much more consciously middle class way of life. Many of the implications of this social criticism are explored in this thesis by means of a questionnaire professionally administered to a sample of 312 respondents in three Auckland electorates. East Coast Bays was chosen as an example of a burgeoning middle class suburb, Te Atatu as a newer area of working class settlement, and Birkenhead as a bridge between the two of them, socially and politically. The survey was administered shortly before the 1978 general election. A variety of facts about, and attitudes to, housing, employment, life styles, suburban locations and indistrialisation are explored. These are normally related back to the basic dependent variables of voting choice, electorate, the propensity to think in class terms, and subjective class identification. The overwhelming pressure of the evidence is that of continuity with the egalitarian past. The chief hypothesis tested is that "following on the most rapid processes of postwar industrialisation in New Zealand, new suburban contexts have evolved in Auckland in which the middle class beneficiaries of Auckland's growth are reinforced in attitudes that reject egalitarianism, accept differential rewards and life styles, and are associated with distinctive political and social attitudes". On the evidence presented in this study it must be rejected.

'A toaster with pictures' was the characterisation of television by the former chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission and advocate of broadcasting deregulation, Mark Fowler. It encapsulates the view of the neo-liberal reformers who set about to deregulate broadcasting as part of the wide-ranging economic attack on the structures of state regulation. Broadcasting was a consumer industry like any other. It conformed to the rules of economic behaviour and performed at its optimum in an environment of a free market. This thesis traces the deregulation of broadcasting in New Zealand from its theoretical origins, to its adoption by policy advisors of the New Zealand Treasury, and its legislative enactment by the Government in the late l980s and early 1990s. But the account also traverses wider than those narrow boundaries. It is argued that in order to understand why this country undertook such a thoroughgoing reform of the broadcasting sector it is necessary to look at its history and account for the apparent wholesale rejection of the previous structures which were portrayed as regulated public service broadcasting. It is also essential to the story of broadcasting deregulation in New Zealand to determine why this country was a pathfinder of reform. The essential conditions which enabled the speedy implementation of the policy whilst in other nations the reform process in broadcasting was stalled, only partially implemented, or rejected. The comparative overview also brings into focus the arguments of the opponents of deregulating this ‘particular' or 'peculiar' industry with its social and cultural role in society. As New Zealand was the first nation deliberately to enact the deregulation of broadcasting, the final sections of the thesis look at the 'model' and assess its impact. The reforms have led to a new marketplace of broadcasting in which the audience is viewed as consumers rather than citizens. The dismantling of the social contract in broadcasting between the state and citizens and its replacement by supposedly individual contracts between broadcasters and consumers is, it is suggested, dysfunctional for democratic civil society.

In 1996, at a special session of the United Nations General Assembly, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was opened for signature. Within one week, seventy states, including all five nuclear-weapon states, signed the Treaty. This brought to an end fifty years of both nuclear tests and nuclear test-ban negotiations. For many states, the achievement of the CTBT was a major success for nuclear arms control. New Zealand played an important role in the early stages of the CTBT negotiation. Every year from 1972, New Zealand and Australia tabled a resolution in the General Assembly calling for a CTBT. After two decades of diplomacy, the resolution was adopted by consensus in 1993, allowing negotiation for a CTBT to take place in the Conference on Disarmament. Substantive negotiation for a CTBT began in 1993, but test-ban negotiations had been taking place almost since the start of nuclear testing in 1945. Like many other nuclear arms control issues, the negotiations had been dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union. Engaged in their own nuclear arms race, the two superpowers pursued their own bilateral nuclear arms control negotiations to manage their strategic relationship. Until the CTBT negotiation, multilateral nuclear arms control was mostly limited to the Treaty for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The NPT reflected the desire of many non-nuclear states to become involved in nuclear arms control and use multilateral agreements to place obligations on the nuclear-weapon states. While both bilateral and multilateral nuclear arms control often languished due to disagreements, multilateral nuclear arms control negotiation has also dealt with the complexity of reconciling the perspectives of many states. This complexity has made the use of negotiation theories difficult, although if used pragmatically, theory can be a useful tool for the study of negotiation events. Through the test-ban resolution, New Zealand was able to contribute to the process of reaching consensus by acting as a facilitator. New Zealand is a good example of how a small non-nuclear state can make a useful contribution in multilateral nuclear arms control negotiation, typically dominated by large nuclear-weapon states, and still advance its national interests.

Ideally, a citizen is an individual who is a formal member of a self-governing political community, with individual rights and freedoms that are equal to those of other citizens, and which are protected by law. This thesis investigates how closely the citizenship status of non-Maori ethnic minorities in New Zealand approximated this ideal during the 1990s. Its particular focus is on how the neo-liberal ideology of National and Coalition Governments between 1990 and 1999, and those Governments' understandings of the nature and political significance of ethnicity, affected the ability of those belonging to non-Maori ethnic minority groups to be full and equal members of the New Zealand political community, with an equal capacity for self-governance at the individual level and as members of the political community. The thesis takes the form of a survey of public policy and law over a period of nine years. Five broad areas or aspects of public policy are examined: the collection and dissemination of official 'ethnic' statistics; immigration and citizenship policy; civil rights provided for in domestic and international law; mechanisms for ensuring access to political decision-making; and social policy. The question asked in the thesis is whether the policies developed and administered in each of these areas during the 1990s enriched or detracted from the citizenship status of non-Maori ethnic minorities.

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.

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