Dominion of Newfoundland
Newfoundland was a British dominion from 1907 to 1949. The dominion, situated in northeastern North America along the Atlantic coast, comprised the island of Newfoundland as well as Labrador on the continental mainland. Before attaining dominion status, Newfoundland was a British colony, self-governing from 1855. Newfoundland was one of the original "dominions" within the meaning of the Statute of Westminster of 1931 and accordingly enjoyed a constitutional status equivalent to the other dominions at the time. In 1934, Newfoundland became the only dominion to give up its self-governing status, ending 79 years of self-government; this episode came about due to a crisis in Newfoundland's public finances in 1932. Newfoundland had accumulated a significant amount of debt by building a railway across the island and by raising its own regiment for the First World War. In November 1932 the government warned that Newfoundland would default on payments on the public debt; the British government established the Newfoundland Royal Commission to inquire into and report on the position.
The Commission's report, published in October 1933, recommended that Newfoundland give up its system of self-government temporarily and allow the United Kingdom to administer the dominion through an appointed commission. The Newfoundland parliament accepted this recommendation and presented a petition to the King asking for the suspension of the constitution and the appointment of commissioners to administer the government until the country became self-supporting again. To enable compliance with this request, the United Kingdom Parliament passed the Newfoundland Act 1933, on 16 February 1934, the UK government appointed six commissioners, three from Newfoundland and three from the UK, with the Governor as chairman; the dominion would never become self-governing again. The system of a six-member Commission of Government continued to govern Newfoundland until it joined Canada in 1949 to become Canada's tenth province; the official name of the dominion was "Newfoundland" and not, as is sometimes reported, "Dominion of Newfoundland".
The distinction is apparent in many statutes, most notably the Statute of Westminster that listed the full name of each realm, including the "Dominion of New Zealand", the "Dominion of Canada", "Newfoundland". The Newfoundland Blue Ensign was used as the colonial flag from 1870 to 1904; the Newfoundland Red Ensign was used as the'de facto' national flag of the dominion until the legislature adopted the Union Flag on 15 May 1931. The anthem of the Dominion was the "Ode to Newfoundland", written by British colonial governor Sir Charles Cavendish Boyle in 1902 during his administration of Newfoundland, it was adopted as the dominion's anthem on 20 May 1904, until confederation with Canada in 1949. In 1980, the province of Newfoundland re-adopted the song as a provincial anthem, making Newfoundland and Labrador the only province in Canada to adopt a provincial anthem; the "Ode to Newfoundland" continues to be heard at public events in the province. In 1854 the British government established Newfoundland's responsible government.
In 1855, Philip Francis Little, a native of Prince Edward Island, won a parliamentary majority over Sir Hugh Hoyles and the Conservatives. Little formed the first administration from 1855 to 1858. Newfoundland rejected confederation with Canada in the 1869 general election. Prime Minister of Canada Sir John Thompson came close to negotiating Newfoundland's entry into confederation in 1892, it remained a colony until the 1907 Imperial Conference resolved to confer dominion status on all self-governing colonies in attendance. The annual holiday of Dominion Day was celebrated each 26 September to commemorate the occasion. Newfoundland's own regiment, the 1st Newfoundland Regiment, fought in the First World War. On 1 July 1916, the German Army wiped out most of that regiment at Beaumont Hamel on the first day on the Somme, inflicting 90 percent casualties, yet the regiment went on to serve with distinction in several subsequent battles, earning the prefix "Royal". Despite people's pride in the accomplishments of the regiment, Newfoundland's war debt and pension responsibility for the regiment and the cost of maintaining a trans-island railway led to increased and unsustainable government debt in the post-war era.
After the war, Newfoundland along with the other dominions sent a separate delegation to the Paris Peace Conference but, unlike the other dominions, Newfoundland neither signed the Treaty of Versailles in her own right nor sought separate membership in the League of Nations. In the 1920s, political scandals wracked the dominion. In 1923, the attorney general arrested Newfoundland's prime minister Sir Richard Squires on charges of corruption. Despite his release soon after on bail, the British-led Hollis Walker commission reviewed the scandal. Soon after, the Squires government fell. Squires returned to power in 1928 because of the unpopularity of his successors, the pro-business Walter Stanley Monroe and Frederick C. Alderdice, but found himself governing a country suffering from the Great Depression; the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council resolved Newfoundland's long-standing Labrador boundary dispute with Canada to the satisfaction of Newfoundland and against Canada with a ruling on 1 April 1927.
Prior to 1867, the Quebec North Shore portion of the "Labrador coast" had shuttled back and forth between the colonies of Lower Canada and Newfoundland. Maps up to 1927 showed the coastal region with an undefined boundary; the Privy Council ruling established a boundary along the drainage div
Meeting
A meeting is when two or more people come together to discuss one or more topics in a formal or business setting, but meetings occur in a variety of other environments. Many various types of meetings exist. A meeting is a gathering of two or more people, convened for the purpose of achieving a common goal through verbal interaction, such as sharing information or reaching agreement. Meetings may occur face-to-face or as mediated by communications technology, such as a telephone conference call, a skyped conference call or a videoconference. One Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a meeting as "an act or process of coming together" - for example "as an assembly for a common purpose ". Meeting planners and other meeting professionals may use the term "meeting" to denote an event booked at a hotel, convention center or any other venue dedicated to such gatherings; the term "meeting" may refer to a lecture, conference, exhibition or trade show, training course, team-building session and kick-off event.
Common types of meeting include: Committee meeting, a coming-together of a defined subset of an organization Investigative meeting when conducting a pre-interview, exit interview or a meeting among the investigator and representative Kickoff meeting, the first meeting with a project team and the client of the project to discuss the role of each team-member Town hall meeting, an informal public gathering. Work meeting, which produces a product or intangible result such as a decision. Board meeting, a meeting of the board of directors of an organization Management meeting, a meeting among managers Staff meeting a meeting between a manager and those that report to that manager Team meeting, in project contexts - a meeting among colleagues working on various aspects of a team project. Other varieties include breakfast meetings off-site meetings, "stand-up meetings" where participants stand up to encourage brevity. Since a meeting can be held once or the meeting organizer has to determine the repetition and frequency of occurrence of the meeting: one-time， recurring meeting， or a series meeting such as a monthly "lunch and learn" event at a company, club or organization in which the placeholder is the same, but the agenda and topics to be covered vary.
In Russian, a "flying meeting" is a hastily-called brief meeting. Johansen, Robert. "Electronic Meetings: Technical Alternatives". ACM Digital Library. Retrieved October 1, 2018. Olson, Gary M.. "Small group design meetings: an analysis of collaboration". Human-Computer Interaction. 7: 347–374. Doi:10.1207/s15327051hci0704_1. ISSN 0737-0024. Retrieved October 1, 2018. Effective Meetings at Work. Taylor & Francis. 2007. ISBN 978-1-136-40844-1. Retrieved October 1, 2018. 112 pages
Governor General of Canada
The Governor General of Canada is the federal viceregal representative of the Canadian monarch Queen Elizabeth II. The person of the sovereign is shared both with the 15 other Commonwealth realms and the 10 provinces of Canada, but resides predominantly in her oldest and most populous realm, the United Kingdom; the Queen, on the advice of her Canadian prime minister, appoints a governor general to carry out most of her constitutional and ceremonial duties. The commission is for an unfixed period of time—known as serving at Her Majesty's pleasure—though five years is the normal convention. Beginning in 1959, it has been traditional to rotate between anglophone and francophone officeholders—although many recent governors general have been bilingual. Once in office, the governor general maintains direct contact with the Queen, wherever she may be at the time; the office began in the 16th and 17th centuries with the Crown-appointed governors of the French colony of Canada followed by the British governors of Canada in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Subsequently, the office is, along with the Crown, the oldest continuous institution in Canada. The present incarnation of the office emerged with Canadian Confederation and the passing of the British North America Act, 1867, which defines the role of the governor general as "carrying on the Government of Canada on behalf and in the Name of the Queen, by whatever Title he is designated". Although the post still represented the government of the United Kingdom, the office was Canadianized until, with the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931 and the establishment of a separate and uniquely Canadian monarchy, the governor general become the direct personal representative of the independently and uniquely Canadian sovereign, the monarch in his Canadian council. Throughout this process of increasing Canadian independence, the role of governor general took on additional responsibilities. For example, in 1904, the Militia Act granted permission for the governor general to use the title of Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian militia, in the name of the sovereign and actual Commander-in-Chief, in 1927 the first official international visit by a governor general was made.
In 1947, King George VI issued letters patent allowing the viceroy to carry out all of the monarch's powers on his or her behalf. As a result, the day-to-day duties of the monarch are carried out by the governor general, although, as a matter of law, the governor general is not in the same constitutional position as the sovereign. In accordance with the Constitution Act, 1982, any constitutional amendment that affects the Crown, including the office of the Governor General, requires the unanimous consent of each provincial legislature as well as the federal parliament; the current governor general is Julie Payette, who has served since 2 October 2017. The Government of Canada spells the title governor general without a hyphen; the Canadian media still use the governor-general spelling. As governor is the noun in the title, it is pluralized. Moreover, both terms are capitalized; the position of governor general is mandated by both the Constitution Act, 1867 and the letters patent issued in 1947 by King George VI.
As such, on the recommendation of his or her Canadian prime minister, the Canadian monarch appoints the governor general by commission issued under the royal sign-manual and Great Seal of Canada. That individual is, from until being sworn-in, referred to as the governor general-designate. Besides the administration of the oaths of office, there is no set formula for the swearing-in of a governor general-designate. Though there may therefore be variations to the following, the appointee will travel to Ottawa, there receiving an official welcome and taking up residence at 7 Rideau Gate, will begin preparations for their upcoming role, meeting with various high level officials to ensure a smooth transition between governors general; the sovereign will hold an audience with the appointee and will at that time induct both the governor general-designate and his or her spouse into the Order of Canada as Companions, as well as appointing the former as a Commander of both the Order of Military Merit and the Order of Merit of the Police Forces.
The incumbent will serve for at least five years, though this is only a developed convention, the governor general still technically acts at Her Majesty's pleasure. The prime minister may therefore recommend to the Queen that the viceroy remain in her service for a longer period of time, sometimes upwards of more than seven years. A governor general may resign, two have died in office. In such a circumstance, or if the governor general leaves the country for longer than one month, the Chief Justice of Canada serves as Administrator of the Government and exercises all powers of the governor general. In a speech on the subject of confederation, made in 1866 to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, John A. Macdonald said of the planned governor: "We place no restriction on Her Majesty's prerogative in the selection of her representative... The sovereign has unrestricted freedom of choice... We leave that to Her Majes
National Government (United Kingdom)
In the United Kingdom, National Government is an abstract concept of a coalition of some or all major political parties. In a historical sense it refers to the governments of Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, which held office during the Great Depression from 1931 until 1940; the all-party coalitions of Herbert Henry Asquith and David Lloyd George in the First World War and of Winston Churchill in the Second World War were sometimes referred to as National Governments at the time, but are now more called Coalition Governments. The term "National Government" was chosen to dissociate itself from negative connotations of the earlier Coalitions. Churchill's brief 1945 "Caretaker Government" called itself a National Government and in terms of party composition was similar to the 1931–1940 entity; the Wall Street Crash heralded the global Great Depression and Britain was hit, although not as badly as most countries. The government was trying to achieve several different, contradictory objectives: trying to maintain Britain's economic position by maintaining the pound on the gold standard, balancing the budget, providing assistance and relief to tackle unemployment.
The gold standard meant that British prices were higher than its competitors, so the all-important export industries did poorly. In 1931 the situation deteriorated and there was much fear that the budget was unbalanced, borne out by the independent May Report which triggered a confidence crisis and a run on the pound; the Labour government agreed in principle to make changes in taxation and to cut expenditure to balance the budget and restore confidence. However the Cabinet could not agree on the two options available: either introduce tariffs or make 20% cuts in unemployment benefit. In the end, MacDonald and Snowden drafted a proposal that would cut benefits by 10%; this was rejected by the Trade Unions, however. When a final vote was taken, the Cabinet was split 11-9 with a minority, including many political heavyweights such as Arthur Henderson and George Lansbury, threatening to resign rather than agree; the unworkable split, on 24 August 1931, made the government resign. The financial crisis grew worse and decisive government action was needed as the leaders of both the Conservative and Liberal Parties met with King George V, MacDonald, at first to discuss support for the measures to be taken but to discuss the shape of the next government.
MacDonald had wished to tender his resignation but was told to re-consider by the King on the grounds that the majority of opposition MPs and the country at large supported the cuts proposed by the May Report if the Labour Party and the Trade Unions led by Ernest Bevin did not. MacDonald duly changed his mind during the night and met with the Conservative and Liberal MPs the following morning. On 24 August, MacDonald agreed and formed a National Government composed of men from all parties with the specific aim of balancing the Budget and restoring confidence; the new cabinet had four Labourites who stood with MacDonald, plus four Conservatives and two Liberals. Labour unions were opposed and the Labour Party repudiated the new National government, it made Henderson the leader of the main Labour party. Henderson led it into the general election on 27 October against the three-party National coalition, it was a disaster for Labour, reduced to a small minority of 52. MacDonald won the largest landslide in British political history.
The Government was applauded by most, but the Labour Party were left in a state of confusion with the loss of several of their most prominent figures, MacDonald, Philip Snowden and James Henry Thomas did little to explain themselves, with the result that the Labour Party soon swung against the government. This was in part because of the Trade Unions' decision to oppose all forms of cuts proposed by MacDonald and Snowden in response to the May Report, which had concluded the UK government needed to curb government expenditure to reduce the budget deficit amid the fallout from the Great Depression that began in 1929; the May Report in particular recommended to MacDonald that his Labour government cut unemployment benefit by 20%. The Trade Unions that represented a large proportion of the Labour party's base refused to support any cuts to benefits or wages except to "the salaries of Ministers". Efforts to bring public expenditure cuts produced further problems, including a mutiny in the Royal Navy over pay cuts, with the result that the pound sterling came under renewed pressure, the government was forced to take the radical step of taking the pound off the gold standard altogether.
Debate broke out about further steps to tackle the economic problems. At the same time the Labour Party expelled all of its members who supported the National Government, including MacDonald; the majority of the Cabinet came to believe that a protective tariff was necessary to support British industry and provide revenue and that a general election should be fought to secure a mandate but this was anathema to the Liberal Party. The Liberals' acting leader and Home Secretary, Sir Herbert Samuel, fought in Cabinet against an election but found the Liberal Party dividing in several directions over the course of action. One group, under Sir John Simon emerged as the Liberal Nationals, was prepared to accept the tariff and expressed willingness to take the place of the main Liberals in the government; the party's official leader, David Lloyd George was incapacitated at this time but called for the Liberals to abandon the government altogether and stand independently in
Australia
Australia the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area; the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea and East Timor to the north. The population of 25 million is urbanised and concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, its largest city is Sydney; the country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians for about 60,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, it is documented. After the European exploration of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, who named it New Holland, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788, a date which became Australia's national day; the population grew in subsequent decades, by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored and an additional five self-governing crown colonies established.
On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, comprising six states and ten territories. Being the oldest and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils, Australia has a landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometres. A megadiverse country, its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east and mountain ranges in the south-east. A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s, its population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, remains among the lowest in the world. Australia generates its income from various sources including mining-related exports, telecommunications and manufacturing. Indigenous Australian rock art is the oldest and richest in the world, dating as far back as 60,000 years and spread across hundreds of thousands of sites. Australia is a developed country, with the world's 14th-largest economy.
It has a high-income economy, with the world's tenth-highest per capita income. It is a regional power, has the world's 13th-highest military expenditure. Australia has the world's ninth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 26% of the population. Having the third-highest human development index and the eighth-highest ranked democracy globally, the country ranks in quality of life, education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights, with all its major cities faring well in global comparative livability surveys. Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Pacific Islands Forum and the ASEAN Plus Six mechanism; the name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis, a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times. When Europeans first began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, the name Terra Australis was applied to the new territories.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as "New Holland", a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts; the name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who said it was "more agreeable to the ear, an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth". The first time that Australia appears to have been used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst. In December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office. In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known by that name; the first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office. Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz" and "the Land Down Under". Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", "the Wide Brown Land".
The latter two both derive from Dorothea Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country". Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun around 65,000 to 70,000 years ago, with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now Southeast Asia; these first inhabitants were the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continual civilisations on earth. At the time of first European contact, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers with complex economies and societies. Recent archaeological finds suggest. Indigenous Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime; the Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas. The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited s
Stanley Bruce
Stanley Melbourne Bruce, 1st Viscount Bruce of Melbourne, was the eighth Prime Minister of Australia, in office from 1923 to 1929. He made wide-ranging reforms and mounted a comprehensive nation-building program in government, but his controversial handling of industrial relations led to a dramatic defeat at the polls in 1929. Bruce pursued a long and influential diplomatic career as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and chairman of the Food and Agriculture Organization. Born into a wealthy Melbourne family, Bruce studied at the University of Cambridge and spent his early life tending to the importing and exporting business of his late father, he served on the front lines of the Gallipoli Campaign in World War I and returned to Australia wounded in 1917, becoming a spokesperson for government recruitment efforts. He gained the attention of the Nationalist Party and Prime Minister Billy Hughes, who encouraged a political career, he was elected to parliament in 1918, becoming treasurer in 1921 and prime minister in 1923, at the head of a coalition with the Country Party.
In office Bruce pursued an diverse agenda. He comprehensively overhauled federal government administration and oversaw its transfer to the new capital city of Canberra, he implemented various reforms to the Australian federal system to strengthen the role of the Commonwealth, helped develop the forerunners of the Australian Federal Police and the CSIRO. Bruce's "men and markets" scheme was an ambitious attempt to expand Australia's population and economic potential through massive government investment and closer ties with Great Britain and the rest of the British Empire. However, his endeavours to overhaul Australia's industrial relations system brought his government into frequent conflict with the labour movement, his radical proposal to abolish Commonwealth arbitration in 1929 prompted members of his own party to cross the floor to defeat the government. In the resounding loss at the subsequent election the prime minister lost his own seat, an event unprecedented in Australia and one that would not occur again until 2007.
Although he returned to parliament in 1931, Bruce's service in the Lyons Government was brief. Instead he pursued an international career, accepting appointment as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom in 1933. Bruce became an influential figure in British government circles and at the League of Nations, emerging as a tireless advocate for international cooperation on economic and social problems those facing the developing world. Passionate on improving global nutrition, Bruce was one of the key figures in the establishment of the Food and Agriculture Organization, serving as the first chairman of its governing council, he was the first Australian to sit in the House of Lords, as well as the first Chancellor of the Australian National University. Although his diplomatic career went unnoticed in Australia, he continued throughout his life in London to vociferously advocate for Australian interests and asked that his remains be returned to Canberra when he died in 1967. Stanley Melbourne Bruce was born on 15 April 1883 in St Kilda, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne, was the youngest of five children.
His father, John Munro Bruce, was of Ulster Scottish descent and had emigrated from Ireland to Australia in 1858 at the age of 18. His mother, Mary Ann Henderson, was Irish and had married her cousin John after emigrating to Australia in 1872 at the age of 24. John Bruce became a talented businessman with "a flair for buying and selling", which would secure him a partnership in an established Melbourne importing firm that in 1868 became known as Paterson and Bruce; as his wealth grew, John Bruce became influential in colonial Victoria's political life. An avid golfer, he was one of the founders of the Royal Melbourne Golf Club, he was prominent in the liberal protectionist political movement within the state and an early supporter of future prime minister Alfred Deakin. John Bruce's success ensured that Stanley Bruce, his sister Mary and his brothers Ernest and Robert were born into affluence. Shortly after Stanley Bruce's birth the family relocated to the stately Wombalano manor, built by John Bruce, in Toorak.
However, John Bruce was an aloof and remote figure in the lives of his children, as his son Stanley recounted. Despite their family's Presbyterian back-ground, Stanley Bruce was sent to Melbourne Church of England Grammar School and subsequently Stanley Bruce would come to identify principally as Anglican. Bruce was an average student but active in the sporting life of the school and captain of its football team, of the school itself in 1901. Today, the school honours him with his own house, Bruce House, the colours of which are magenta and white; the house's mascot is a lion. The economic depression of the 1880s and 1890s hit the Bruce family fortunes hard. John Bruce lost much of his fortune in the Victorian bank collapse of 1894 and incurred large debts to buy out his partners in the importing business in 1897; the family suffered a great deal more tragedy over the coming decades. Stanley's brother William committed suicide in 1899, shortly after seeking treatment for mental illness. Just two years John Bruce took his own life during a business trip to Paris.
His sister Mary endured a long illness before succumbing in 1908, his mother died too in 1912. Bruce's beloved brother Ernest shot himself in 1919, suffering from physical and mental injuries sustained during his military service in Wo
New Zealand
New Zealand is a sovereign island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses—the North Island, the South Island —and around 600 smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 2,000 kilometres east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and 1,000 kilometres south of the Pacific island areas of New Caledonia and Tonga; because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans. During its long period of isolation, New Zealand developed a distinct biodiversity of animal and plant life; the country's varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks, such as the Southern Alps, owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington. Sometime between 1250 and 1300, Polynesians settled in the islands that were named New Zealand and developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight New Zealand. In 1840, representatives of the United Kingdom and Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, which declared British sovereignty over the islands.
In 1841, New Zealand became a colony within the British Empire and in 1907 it became a dominion. Today, the majority of New Zealand's population of 4.9 million is of European descent. Reflecting this, New Zealand's culture is derived from Māori and early British settlers, with recent broadening arising from increased immigration; the official languages are English, Māori, NZ Sign Language, with English being dominant. A developed country, New Zealand ranks in international comparisons of national performance, such as quality of life, education, protection of civil liberties, economic freedom. New Zealand underwent major economic changes during the 1980s, which transformed it from a protectionist to a liberalised free-trade economy; the service sector dominates the national economy, followed by the industrial sector, agriculture. Nationally, legislative authority is vested in an elected, unicameral Parliament, while executive political power is exercised by the Cabinet, led by the prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
Queen Elizabeth II is the country's monarch and is represented by a governor-general Dame Patsy Reddy. In addition, New Zealand is organised into 11 regional councils and 67 territorial authorities for local government purposes; the Realm of New Zealand includes Tokelau. New Zealand is a member of the United Nations, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, ASEAN Plus Six, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Pacific Community and the Pacific Islands Forum. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sighted New Zealand in 1642 and named it Staten Land "in honour of the States General", he wrote, "it is possible that this land joins to the Staten Land but it is uncertain", referring to a landmass of the same name at the southern tip of South America, discovered by Jacob Le Maire in 1616. In 1645, Dutch cartographers renamed the land Nova Zeelandia after the Dutch province of Zeeland. British explorer James Cook subsequently anglicised the name to New Zealand. Aotearoa is the current Māori name for New Zealand.
It is unknown whether Māori had a name for the whole country before the arrival of Europeans, with Aotearoa referring to just the North Island. Māori had several traditional names for the two main islands, including Te Ika-a-Māui for the North Island and Te Waipounamu or Te Waka o Aoraki for the South Island. Early European maps labelled the islands North and South. In 1830, maps began to use North and South to distinguish the two largest islands and by 1907 this was the accepted norm; the New Zealand Geographic Board discovered in 2009 that the names of the North Island and South Island had never been formalised, names and alternative names were formalised in 2013. This set the names as North Island or Te Ika-a-Māui, South Island or Te Waipounamu. For each island, either its English or Māori name can be used. New Zealand was one of the last major landmasses settled by humans. Radiocarbon dating, evidence of deforestation and mitochondrial DNA variability within Māori populations suggest New Zealand was first settled by Eastern Polynesians between 1250 and 1300, concluding a long series of voyages through the southern Pacific islands.
Over the centuries that followed, these settlers developed a distinct culture now known as Māori. The population was divided into iwi and hapū who would sometimes cooperate, sometimes compete and sometimes fight against each other. At some point a group of Māori migrated to Rēkohu, now known as the Chatham Islands, where they developed their distinct Moriori culture; the Moriori population was all but wiped out between 1835 and 1862 because of Taranaki Māori invasion and enslavement in the 1830s, although European diseases contributed. In 1862 only 101 survived, the last known full-blooded Moriori died in 1933; the first Europeans known to have reached New Zeala
Canada
