Talk:New Zealand

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Points of interest related to New Zealand on Wikipedia
Portal - Category - WikiProject - Stubs - Deletions - Cleanup

An event mentioned in this article is a September 26 selected anniversary

Because of their length, the previous discussions on this page have been archived. If further archiving is needed, see Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page.

Previous discussions:

To-do list for New Zealand: edit · history · watch · refresh

Checklist
This is a list of things to do to get to FAC standard. Please cross off as completed.

  • Expand lead somewhat
  • Add choice of Capital city to the history section
  • Government section need reorganisation, polishing
  • Foreign relations should include discussion of involvement in Asia/Pacific institutions and other recent military operations.
  • Flora and fauna should mention more about flightless birds with examples and actually mention the flora
  • Economy should get refs and indicator stats like unemployment, breakdown of industries in terms of GDP, top export markets
  • Demographics should also describe language breakdown, education and education levels
  • Culture should be expanded to include fine and performing arts, contemporary arts including music, sport should be trimmed and merged into culture.
  • Fill in more of the topics table
  • Add photo and info on Nz's most important(capital) city Wellington

Contents


[edit] Aotearoa - translation

'Land of the Long White Cloud' is not really a translation of the Māori, since there is no 'Land of' in the Māori. Ao=cloud, tea=white, roa=long. So I called it a paraphrase. Its not necessarily the only translation anyway. Kahuroa 06:11, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Northland - subtropical?

Why? Doesn't meet the geographical requirements, except maybe a few k's of the very far north which are in the less than 35 deg S zone, and temperature wise, not even. Or are we using the British definition of subtropical? If you go by the Wikipedia article subtropical Northland would be marginal = almost, at best, in terms of latitude and and even more marginal in terms of temperature - subtropical places are significantly warmer. They had quite a few frosts this winter by the way, even in the Bay of Islands. I think almost subtropical is more accurate than subtropical. Kahuroa 07:56, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey, its colder that tropical, so its subtropical, ok. Don't panic!!!! I'm just jivin'. Yes, Northland is indeed marginal. And yes, the Bay of Islands did have frosts this winter. We had one last week in Kerikeri in fact. Moriori 08:57, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Ha ha, I wasn't panicking really. I guess I like to challenge common assumptions sometimes. Maybe we should call Dunedin subpolar? Good for tourism? Ha ha. Cheers Kahuroa 10:06, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Nowhere in New Zealand is sub-tropical apart from Raoul Island in the Kemerdecs!

[edit] Islam

User 203.97.169.134 removed Islam from the list of religions in NZ, saying it was not considered a significant minority. The page Demographics of New Zealand lists it as one of the largest non christan religions according to the 2001 census.

The article's demographic list had an advisory: Please do not add your ethnic group (and your religion) here. How pathetic for someone to do that like they actually can block or ban any of us, even if the entries are backed or correct. Islam is regarded one of the largest non-Christian religions in the Statistics New Zealand population report. According to demographers who studied the rise of Islam in the western world (Europe, North America and Australasia), Islam is 1.5% of New Zealand's population and the majority composed of immigrants from South Asia (India or Indonesia) or Middle East countries. 63.3.14.1 13:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, there are ethnic and religious groups in New Zealand. But to list them all is not going to add anything to the article - listing the top one or two is all that is needed in a general article like this. If you wish to add information about more of New Zealand's religious groups, an appropriate place would be a separate article on New Zealand ethnicity, already linked above as Demographics of New Zealand. Compare similar articles for other countries - these usually do not list religious affiliations if fewer than about 3 - 5% of the population belong to specific doctrines. Grutness...wha? 18:32, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
According to [1] 2006 cencus will be released in the next few days. We can hopefully update some numbers then. - SimonLyall 01:09, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Motto

We could add the NZ motto somewhere. Anyone agree? And is our motto still "She'll be right"? rossnixon 02:37, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

The motto use to be "Onward", but we no longer have a national motto. I suggest "She'll be right" be placed into the culture section if you want to add it to the article as an unofficial motto. --Midnighttonight Procrastinating on uni work... 03:08, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ethnic Groups

Quote from the Demographics section "At present, immigrants from the United Kingdom constitute the largest single group (30%) but immigrants are drawn from many nations, and increasingly from East Asia.". Several news reports have indicated that in recent years the number of Asian immigrants has declined since 2001 both in proportion of total immigrants and in absolute numbers. Whether this trend continues in future remains to be seen. Bjddavies2006 02:37, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

What about immigrants from South Asia? the Middle East? and other European or North American countries? There was an increase of US or American citizens purchased second homes in New Zealand in recent years. The increased travel route from New Zealand and/or Australia with Chile and Argentina of South America has provided a new cultural exchange and some migration between the two regions of the Southern hemisphere. Of course, the high porportion of Polynesians in the country's population reminds us the country is closely tied to the Pacific islands, than one thinks of New Zealand (or Australia) are (but not) purely "British". + 207.200.116.204 07:27, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

There may be an increase in immigrants from other areas, but they make up a small proportion of the immigrants overall. There is no intention of providing a list of every area from which immigrants to New Zealand originate.-gadfium 07:57, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Who deleted Greeks of the list for? Surely the Italians and South Slavs are the largest white ethnic groups in NZ, but the Dutch are on the list. There was waves of Germans and Scandinavians came to NZ after WW2, but wasn't mentioned. If you live on NZ coast ports, you'll meet a few fishermen from Portugal and Malta spend the busy season under labour contracts. I noticed Americans and Australians are quite a large group in the country, but except for their accents, aren't told apart from other Zedlanders. The drop in Asian racial immigration is a result of economic opportunity in those countries, be it Indian, Chinese or Indochina for that matter. The number of Filipinos, Malaysians and Indonesians has grown in NZ before it tapered off in the early 2000s. 207.200.116.204 01:22, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NZ copyright

Hi all. I'm curious about NZ copyright rules as regards to public domain + government agencies. In Wikipedia, we often come across documents from the US government, which are noted to be in the public domain (though I wonder if this 'taken by an employee of the federal governemnt and thus public domain' also applies to spy photos ;-).

Well, anyway, is there something in NZ law that is similar? Are *any* of the photos I find, for example on a Council or Transit NZ website public domain? MadMaxDog 07:45, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

The place to ask this question is on Wikipedia:New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board.- gadfium 07:50, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Where are the Maori editors of this article?

I don't think this article has any Maori articles, it is too biased towards the white man.

65.97.14.167 20:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you should look at the article history. You don't have to go back very far to see some Maori names.- gadfium 20:59, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
You don't even have to do that - have a look at the first comment on this talk page! Grutness...wha? 21:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Could you please expand on your comment that the article is biased? I don't think simply not having "Maori articles" equates to bias in itself. --Lholden 22:51, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Looks like a troll, that (US based) IP asked similar questions in other articles. See Special:Contributions/65.97.14.167 - SimonLyall 07:17, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "New Zealand Aotearoa (Maori) New Zealand"

The infobox says "New Zealand Aotearoa (Maori) New Zealand", is there any need for the second "New Zealand"? Brian | (Talk) 23:12, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

None that I can see, so I've removed it.- gadfium 00:19, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Main article: Economy of New Zealand"

New Zealand is a country heavily dependent on trade, particularly in agricultural products, as almost 20% of the country's output is exported (by comparison it is 21% for the United Kingdom, 49% for Finland and 83% for Belgium). This leaves New Zealand particularly vulnerable to slumps in commodity prices and global economic slowdowns. Is this correct ? It sounds contradictory?? User 210.246.24.30 00:30, 30 October 2006 (UTC) John New Zealand

The output figure seems far too low to me - although it does make sense in that our exports are based on a narrow range (i.e. smaller than many other countries) thus we are more vulnerable. --Lholden 01:33, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Date of Polynesian settlement

This article states that Polynesians first reached NZ between the 13th and 15th centuries; the articles History of New Zealand and Timeline of New Zealand history both say between the 11th and 13th. I've read many books on the history of NZ, and the date of first settlement remains a much debated question. James Belich suggests the mid-eleventh century, but admits it's only a hypothesis; other historians suggest it could have been as early as the 10th century, while others say it probably wasn't before the 13th. (I've never found anyone saying it could have been after the 13th, though, so I'd be curious to see a source for that.) In any case, I don't think Wikipedia can make categorial assertions. For now, I'm simply changing "Polynesian settlers arrived in their waka some time between the 13th century and the 15th century" to "Polynesian settlers arrived in their waka some time between the 9th century and the 15th century". Unless a source can be produced for the 15th century claim, though, that should probably be "some time between the 9th century and the 13th century". Aridd 15:59, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree our articles should be consistent. One of the problems is that archaeologists' ideas of the date of first settlement have changed over the decades. Accordingly, reputable books will give different dates depending on when they were written, but the older ones are no longer considered reliable. My source is H R Lowe Howe, The Quest for Origins, ISBN 0-14-301857-4, 2003. He's Professor of History at Massey University in Albany, and he's presenting the mainstream archeological view, as far as I can tell. I've heard almost exactly the same story as he gives at a conference of the NZ Archaeology Society. (I'm not an archaeologist, but I have enough of an interest in the matter to have gone to a public session of their conference about ten years ago.)
On pages 176-177 of Howe's book, he points out that from the 1960s to 1980s it was thought that Maori arrived and settled in 1000 AD or even earlier. The current thinking is that the 13th century is more likely, based on radiocarbon datings and direct archaeological evidence. Also, the eruption of the volcano Kahuroa covered much of the North Island with ash between 1300 and 1390, and there have been no human artefacts found beneath that ash layer. Artefacts can be found beneath ash from eruptions in the 1400 to 1450 period.
There is also the contradictory evidence comes from the dating of some kiore (Rattus exulans) bones to 2000 years ago, and the genetics show the rats came from eastern Polynesia. There is no known way for rats to have come to NZ without humans. It is possible that humans came at that point but didn't stay or didn't survive, but it seems very unlikely, since eastern Polynesia was only being first inhabited at the time. The dating has been challenged. A source more recent than 2003 may clear this up.
I suggest you make all dates consistent, but go with the mainstream figures of say 12th to 14th centuries. That covers the period from 1101 to 1400, and I think you wouldn't get much opposition from reputable archaeologists. Alternatively, you could say ""Polynesian settlers arrived in their waka in about the 13th century". If you have access to a University library, take a look at Archaeology in New Zealand, Dec 2002; v.45 n.4:p.289-292, which has the following abstract "Canvasses archaeologists attending the 2002 Russell conference for their estimates of the date of first settlement of NZ, comparing the responses to those from similar surveys taken in 1994 and 1988, and noting the trend over the years toward the acceptance of a more recent date. Graphs the answers to a second question regarding the century of first settlement of Pacific rats, or kiore." I can get a copy of this but I don't have time to go into the library for it for another couple of weeks.
Nobody has yet changed what I think I wrote in Cabbage tree (New Zealand) based on the (oldish, revived) documentary that said radiocarbon suggested 1000 AD was a likely time. Robin Patterson 05:48, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm suspicious that the documentary was based on Frankhauser's thesis of 1986. I'm not sure if more evidence has come to light since then, or radiocarbon dating techniques have improved (probably both), but archaeologists have changed their opinions.- gadfium 06:11, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
I think we should in the longer term expand History of New Zealand to include a full section on the first settlement date, with at least as much detail as I've provided above. This could be a separate article, which could then also briefly address the many alternative theories of human settlement in New Zealand (most of them of no scientific credibility, e.g ancient celtic settlements). I'm happy to help, but not until my exams are over in a couple of weeks.- gadfium 19:07, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
/boggles at the impressive source material/ - cool, a short version for the main page, and extended detail as above for the History page. Happy to help, I know some good sources for the ancient Celtic stuff. Good luck with the exams. --Tirana 02:47, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Boggles even further. What "good sources" for ancient Celtic stuff do you mean? Moriori 02:59, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Howe is a good source refuting such notions. I hope that's the sort of thing Tirana has too.- gadfium 03:26, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Martin Doutré is the main architect of the Celtic claims, which are helpfully online and easily accessible to cite as an example of the "theory", which from the context draws a lot from his opinion of Maori culture generally. He links to the One New Zealand Foundation, and they return the favour. I found an astronomer from Auckland once, or maybe the Skeptics' Society, that ripped into the supposedly significant stone circles business quite well. Most serious academics don't touch it with a bargepole, but this Howe (or is it Lowe?) guy sounds like he's recent enough to at least have heard the conspiracy version, whether or not he wants to directly address it. --Tirana 04:53, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Kerry Howe. I've fixed the name above. His book is mainly about the fringe theories, but gives Doutre only one paragraph.- gadfium 06:11, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Also there are some funny late 19th century musings from Edward Tregear, who thought that Maori were a lost tribe of Jews I think. Throw in the Kon Tiki business, and we could have a whole section on unsubstantiated theories. The Tamil Bell deserves a mention somewhere, too. --Tirana 05:03, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Query

The FA on Australia begins "Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia ...". I'd like to know what New Zealand's analogous "official" title is. Thank you. Saravask 21:32, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The name's New Zealand. The Aussies had a constitutional convention at the end of the 19th century and decided on the name "Commonwealth of Australia". If you want to quibble about a long form of NZ's name, you could go for the Realm of New Zealand, as NZ is a monarchy and can be styled a "Realm". However, the Acts of Parliament that make up NZ's constitution refer to the country as "New Zealand". AJD 23:49, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I'm not interested in quibbling -- I was just wondering. Since, as you state, "Realm of New Zealand" is not constitutionally enshrined, my concoction of a long form would seemingly violate WP:NOR. Thanks for the clarification. Saravask 01:45, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] About New Zealand's Economy. . . .

1. How the hell is New Zealand's official unemployment rate between 3-4% and it's unofficial unemployment rate at 20%?! Are there still pockets of Maori who live with autonomy within the island who comprise this "20%?" If so, recall that they would NOT be counted toward any measure of unemployment, as only those who SEEK employment and cannot find it shall be considered unemployed for the purposes of economic discussion.

2. We're doing a group presentation on New Zealand for my Geography class, and I chose to focus on economics. I would direct you to the CIA World Factbook page on New Zealand for my next question (link on main page here). Note that oil consumption per day equals almost exactly production and imports (152k=32k+120k), which works out rather nicely actually. However I don't understand then why they also export roughly 30,000 barrels of oil a day, where otherwise they would be at product-income equillibrium (my term). Thus, somewhere along the line, they're being forced to tap into their reserves of 89.62 million barrels, (2002 estimate) no? My hypothesis is that this is nearly a consequence of a capitalist-enabled economy, and that individual firms undertake these decisions, and the exporting firms of the country do not contract with the importing firms because they figure they can yield higher profits by selling to some third-party with a greater demand. But would someone like to clarify the situation for me? I couldn't find anything on the internet. Actually, let me simplify the question to a more general one----

Why do some countries import/export the same commodity? It's because of individual firms attempting to maximize profits right?

MondoManDevout 22:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Not sure about the unemployment figures you got but when I worked for the govt a few years ago and looking at stats I noticed that the decrease in unemployment claimants was almost exactly mirrored by an increase in people claiming sickness benefit.
Regarding importing and exporting the same product, this can happen. In NZ high grade steel making coal is exported to Japan while low grade steam coal (i.e. for use in power stations) is imported. They may be included in the stats as just 'coal'. Similarly, fruit may be produced in the Southern summer and exported but imported during the Southern winter.128.153.221.145 04:07, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] proposal for semi-protection

there's been lots of blanking and vandalism by anon ips lately - suggest semi-protection - comments? --Danlibbo 04:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

the vandalism here seems to have been relatively light compared to the worst cases. I personally prefer semi-protection only when there's a significant concerted attack (ala the Colbertisms at Bear) and even then the semi-prot was removed after it died down a little. Ziggurat 04:21, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citations

Where have all the citations in this article gone? Atlantis Hawk 06:17, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Were there ever more citations than at present? To some extent, this article doesn't have citations because it's a summary of the more detailed articles, eg History of New Zealand. It does need to be referenced much more thoroughly, and indeed the more detailed articles need more referencing too.
What are you looking for with the "specify" tag? The History of New Zealand article quotes the New South Wales Judicature Act 1823 as the justification for the statement that NZ was administered in a limited manner as part of NSW. Do you think we should include that footnote in the main NZ article as well? I might be misunderstanding you here, because of all the unreferenced (but mostly unchallenged) facts, you seem to be querying one that is adequately dealt with in the subarticle.-gadfium 07:10, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] There is nothing about the world famous singers

but about sports of different types. why???? Who has deleted the information? There are: Kiri Te Kanawa, Dame Malvina Major, but the others I cannot remember now. Austerlitz 88.72.20.196 13:43, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget - Crowded house, Split Enz - Unsigned comment by Kiwi.piranha 05:31, 22 November 2006

because having a section of famous people who live in each country is ridiculous - you can create a list, but seriously, how many people, looking up New Zealand, expect a list of famous people in the article? imagine the page for the U.S.; half the bloody page would be celebrities --Danlibbo 22:56, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Contradiction

This article claims that Zealand (Sjælland), the Danish island, is New Zealand's namesake, not the Dutch province of Zeeland. However, the exact opposite is stated at Zealand. Given the articles actually interlink I would think that maybe they would have agreeable information. Gorman 08:28, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you have read a vandalised version, although I cannot find a recent version which made this claim. The article claims (correctly) that New Zealand was named after the Dutch province, but the spelling was corrupted. It may also be that the link to Zealand is confusing; perhaps that should be removed.-gadfium 22:20, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
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