scholarly journals New Zealand's Green Party and Foreign Troop Deployments: Views, Values and Impacts

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Simon Beuse

<p><b>this thesis reviews and analyses the Green Party of New Zealand‘s views on the use of force in international relations, particularly when that involves the deployment of NZ troops. It addresses three key questions:1) When does the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand believe it is legitimate to use military force overseas?</b></p> <p>2) How have the Greens attempted to influenced the public debate and the parliamentary decision making process regarding to foreign troop deployments?</p> <p>3) What impact (if any) did their actions have in the three cases of Afghanistan, East Timor and the Solomon Islands? In order to answer these questions adequately, the thesis begins with an introductory review of New Zealand‘s foreign relations, highlighting key relevant events in the country‘s diplomacy. This chapter will be followed in chapter three by a brief introduction of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, its origins, evolution and influences. The main part of the thesis, however, will focus on the country‘s recent foreign troop deployments in East Timor (chapter four), the Solomon Islands (chapter five) and Afghanistan (chapter six) and the actions the Greens undertook to support or oppose those deployments. How the particular political circumstances shaped the nature of these conflicts and the responses to them will be examined in the individual chapters. Finally, in the conclusion I sum up what I believe is the Green Party‘s position and influence on the use of military force. I argue that the Greens have developed a coherent approach to the issue, giving greatest importance to the international legitimacy of the intervention. They have, however, been pragmatic in some respects when it has come to the source of that legitimacy, preferring United Nations support but accepting regional endorsement in the case of the Solomon Islands. Second, I argue that in practice, the Greens had a limited influence on New Zealand‘s military deployments. This has been the case even when the party has been involved in supportive relationships with the government.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Simon Beuse

<p><b>this thesis reviews and analyses the Green Party of New Zealand‘s views on the use of force in international relations, particularly when that involves the deployment of NZ troops. It addresses three key questions:1) When does the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand believe it is legitimate to use military force overseas?</b></p> <p>2) How have the Greens attempted to influenced the public debate and the parliamentary decision making process regarding to foreign troop deployments?</p> <p>3) What impact (if any) did their actions have in the three cases of Afghanistan, East Timor and the Solomon Islands? In order to answer these questions adequately, the thesis begins with an introductory review of New Zealand‘s foreign relations, highlighting key relevant events in the country‘s diplomacy. This chapter will be followed in chapter three by a brief introduction of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, its origins, evolution and influences. The main part of the thesis, however, will focus on the country‘s recent foreign troop deployments in East Timor (chapter four), the Solomon Islands (chapter five) and Afghanistan (chapter six) and the actions the Greens undertook to support or oppose those deployments. How the particular political circumstances shaped the nature of these conflicts and the responses to them will be examined in the individual chapters. Finally, in the conclusion I sum up what I believe is the Green Party‘s position and influence on the use of military force. I argue that the Greens have developed a coherent approach to the issue, giving greatest importance to the international legitimacy of the intervention. They have, however, been pragmatic in some respects when it has come to the source of that legitimacy, preferring United Nations support but accepting regional endorsement in the case of the Solomon Islands. Second, I argue that in practice, the Greens had a limited influence on New Zealand‘s military deployments. This has been the case even when the party has been involved in supportive relationships with the government.</p>


1998 ◽  
Vol 162 ◽  
pp. 267-272
Author(s):  
K. Leather ◽  
F. Andrews ◽  
R. Hall ◽  
W. Orchiston

Carter Observatory is the National Observatory of New Zealand and was opened in 1941. For more than ten years the Observatory has maintained an active education program for visiting school groups (see Andrews, 1991), and education now forms one of its four functions. The others relate to astronomical research; public astronomy; and the preservation of New Zealands astronomical heritage (see Orchiston and Dodd, 1995).Since the acquisition of a small Zeiss planetarium and associated visitor centre in 1992, the public astronomy and education programs at the Carter Observatory have witnessed a major expansion (see Orchiston, 1995; Orchiston and Dodd, 1996). A significant contributing factor was the introduction by the government of a new science curriculum into New Zealand schools in 1995 (Science in the New Zealand Curriculum, 1995). “Making Sense of Planet Earth and Beyond” comprises one quarter of this curriculum, and the “Beyond” component is astronomy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kibblewhite ◽  
Peter Boshier

Concern exists that New Zealand hasn’t struck the right balance between two potentially competing principles of good government: officials should provide free and frank advice to ministers, and the public should have opportunities to participate in decision making and hold the government to account. Steps we have taken to address this include: strengthening constitutional underpinnings for free and frank advice (Cabinet Manual changes and issuing expectations for officials); a work programme to improve government agency practice in relation to the Official Information Act; and the Office of the Ombudsman reducing uncertainty about when advice can be withheld by issuing new principles-based guidance and providing more advisory services.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kezia Fairbrother

<p>In 2018, the government published the report of its inquiry into mental health and addiction in Aotearoa New Zealand, which called for a ‘paradigm shift’ in the country’s approach to mental wellbeing. This research portfolio explores the role architecture has to play in this shift, acknowledging the problematic historical associations of architecture and mental health. In doing so, the work aims to establish principles for a new architectural typology of mental health care, outside of conventional institutions. It explores contemporary approaches to wellness, and integrates research from several bodies of theoretical and evidence-based research into a new creative practice within architecture. Specifically, the research draws on theory around nonrepresentational therapeutic landscapes, third place and evidence based design. These inform creative explorations of the therapeutically affective qualities of naturally-sourced materials. The findings of this explorations are transferred to spatial design using a ‘multiplicity’ approach based on nonrepresentational theory and Māori health models, which is then applied to a specific site in Wellington, New Zealand. Finally, architectural applications for this research are proposed in the form of a community-based third place to support mental health and wellbeing.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lynne Carmichael Allan

<p>The role that the physical environment of an exhibition plays in the visitor's experience of a museum is a topic that, though increasingly acknowledged in museum studies, has not yet received detailed attention from researchers. The interaction of exhibitor and visitor, in and through exhibitions, can be situated in the wider context of the recent paradigm shirt within museum practice, towards communication with the public and developments in museum theory, which consider the qualitative aspects of the visitor experience as an active dialogue, conversation or a process of meaning-making. This dissertation examines the interactive exhibit Stowaways in the permanent exhibition, Blood, Earth, Fire - Whāngai, Whenua, Ahi Kā, at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. It considers the question 'How does the physical environment affect the meanings that the visitor makes in and after visiting the exhibition?' The study builds on existing New Zealand research, which questioned the gap between exhibition creation and visitor reception. A theoretical framework was constructed from relevant strands of the literature of museum studies, visitor studies and exhibition design. A qualitative approach was employed, in order to examine in detail both the exhibition development process and then how the visitor responded to the exhibition. Several methods were used to conduct the research, such as archival research and interviews with both the museum staff and seven visitors, who came with their families to the exhibit. The findings provide interesting evidence of the complex and deep affect that the built exhibition space can have on the visitor, not just at the time of the visit but long afterwards. This was an affect that rippled out from the individual to their family group and everyday life. This dissertation makes a small but significant contribution to museum studies in New Zealand, through an integrated examination of the production and reception of a museum exhibit, from the perspective of both the visitor and the museum. One of the main conclusions was to re-iterate the important role of exhibition evaluation in facilitating a more complete communication between museum and visitor, by allowing museum professionals to build on the experience of the development process in a way that can inform future practice.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sara Hansen

<p>This thesis provides an ethnographic study of multiculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand, which investigates the tensions between government-led stories about social harmony and tolerance and the stories told by members of multicultural communities. Examining multiculturalism from an ethnographic perspective means attempting to understand this concept through the fragmented, multiform, non-systematic, evocative and constantly changing reality of social life and everyday human interactions. Essentially, this means exploring the sometimes ‘messy’ experiences of multiculturalism.  The thesis is based on a narrative approach to ethnographic fieldwork, which involves the application of auto-ethnography, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and document analysis as different avenues for story collection and analysis. I position myself as an academic listener, who makes sense of stories about multiculturalism by placing them alongside other types of stories and organising them through life-story and discourse analysis approaches. Through extensive Wellington-based fieldwork with grassroots organisations, everyday diversity experts, and multicultural activists, as well as discourse analysis of various forms of government publications and materials (i.e. conference speeches, booklets, reports, guidelines and photos), I gather evidence that reveals the complexities of multicultural identities when contrasted with government discourses of multiculturalism. I assemble and analyse two sets of stories – those told by government officials and representatives and those that emerge from the messy landscape of everyday life and grassroots multicultural movements. The key aim of this thesis is to stage a conversation between these different narrative terrains and shine a light on the disjunctive moments between government narratives about cultural diversity and the experiences, needs and aspirations of people who live multicultural lives and who engage in grassroots activism.  In analysing the evidence, this thesis reveals the complex ways in which people that live multicultural lives experience cultural belonging, and documents how they deploy strategic and creative techniques to navigate government-based forms of multiculturalism. My findings suggest that stories told from those who are a part of Aotearoa’s culturally diverse communities pose challenges to the official and government led image of New Zealand as a harmonious, tolerant and welcoming nation. By applying a narrative approach to the exploration of information distributed by the government, I demonstrate how this kind of information is discursively constructed and contributes to a larger storytelling project in which state information works to craft a particular image of the nation.  In the conversation that is staged throughout the thesis, it is argued that the government appears to support a weak version of multiculturalism, which only allows a tokenistic inclusion of ethnic minorities. The kind of multiculturalism which is aspired to from the ground – that is, by the everyday diversity experts and grassroots activists I interviewed during fieldwork – imagines a stronger version of multiculturalism. This version includes more radical forms of inclusion such as ethnic minorities being involved in decision making processes and being fairly represented in governing/public spaces, such as government agencies, local councils, school boards, law enforcement, legal institutions, and so on. Overall, this thesis contributes site specific and narrative-informed knowledge about the meaning of multiculturalism in New Zealand. It illustrates some of the factors that the government and policy makers need to be mindful of when they approach a multicultural population and matters of governance. It also exemplifies the kind of conversation topics and issues that are important and necessary to address in a multicultural settler society, when reflecting on how we understand and express the histories of cultural diversity and aspirations for a multicultural future.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sasha Francis

<p>How are we to live? How do we sustain our emotional commitment to utopia? Answering these questions necessarily calls for a reconceptualisation of subjectivity and sociality, in order to overcome the depoliticisation, resignation and despair captured by the neoliberal subject. Drawing together qualitative and theoretical research under Ruth Levitas’ framework for the ‘imaginary reconstitution of society’ – Utopia as Method – I argue utopia is the otherwise that we navigate, create and learn of, together, through every moment. Where the neoliberal subject signals a collapse of subjectivity that contributes to the depoliticisation and resignation of our contemporary times, I offer an alternative account of subjectivity through Gillian Rose and Ernst Bloch. In an original theoretical encounter, I connect Rose’s concepts of reason and ‘inaugurated mourning’ with Bloch’s concepts ‘the darkness of the lived moment’ and the ‘not-yet,’ towards imagining subjectivity differently. Further, through six conversations with seven activist-philosophers from Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington) – Jen Margaret, Jo Randerson, Thomas LaHood, Richard D. Bartlett, Benjamin Johnson, Cally O’Neill and Kassie Hartendorp – I make visible already-existing emancipatory practices and subjectivities from within radical Aotearoa (New Zealand,) from which we can learn and locally ground our imaginings. Combining the conversations held with the activist-philosophers with the alternative account of subjectivity developed, I move outwards – from the individual and the particular to the collective – to specifically name five key modes of radical everyday practice: embodiment, not knowing, trust, care, and imagining. Understood as an articulation of docta spes, or a praxis of educated hope, these five modes capture a sense of everyday sociality imagined otherwise, as well as articulate a collaborative, sustainable and localised account of the emotionally demanding pedagogical pursuit towards the realisation and experience of utopia. An answer to the first question – how are we to live? – is thus processually found within the second question – how do we sustain our emotional commitment to utopia?</p>


2005 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Polly Parker

AbstractPacific peoples hold a unique place as an ethnic community within Aotearoa-New Zealand. The largest immigrant minority population in New Zealand brings a different culture to that of the dominant Pakeha (European). One implication is the need for acculturation into New Zealand society. Leadership, when characterised here as a process through which Pacific elders model the “Pacific way” to guide their youth, is critical to manage the tension between maintaining traditional ways and integrating into a dominant culture different from the people's own. This paper reports an empirical study conducted with Pacific professionals working in the public sector of New Zealand. Recognised for their potential to influence Pacific peoples, the participants were sponsored by the ministries of Health and Pacific Island Affairs to attend a three-day leadership development course that included a careers component. The scarcely researched links among leadership, careers and social cultural issues are explored. Intelligent career theory is introduced and the processes associated with eliciting subjective and inter-subjective career data are explained The results reflect the interdependence of motivation, skills and knowledge, and relationships, which together strongly influence the career and leadership behaviour of Pacific peoples to enhance the outcomes for Pacific peoples in New Zealand. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.


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