Empire.^13 Already New Zealand was building what would become quite an
exceptional track record of domestic constitutional change.^14 For all practical
purposes, on 1 January 1877, New Zealand became a coherent nation—as a
unitary state—whereas the Australian colonies were clearly a part of a separate
inchoate whole. While New Zealand-resident neo-Britons might readily resettle
across the Tasman Sea, there was no appetite in New Zealand for government
from Australia. The year 1877 was to New Zealand what 1901 was to Australia.
Government further matured in 1890 with the election of the Liberal Party,
otherwise known as Liberal–Labour, on account of a strengthening trade
union movement becoming one of the party’s key stakeholders. The decade
came to be known for‘radical’land and labour reforms,^15 piloted by John
McKenzie and William Pember Reeves respectively. Reeves drew much of his
labour legislation from Charles Kingston’s compulsory arbitration proposals
for South Australia (Mein Smith 2009, p. 301).‘State experimentation’meant
an unusually high extent of departure from classical hands-off orthodoxy.
New settlement lands acquired as part of the Liberal government’s land
reforms coincided withfinancial crisis in Australia. North Island frontier
lands attracted settlers from the South Island, directly and indirectly (via in
particular Victoria). Further, infrastructure projects and industry attracted
many young male immigrants from Australia. This cohort of Australians
would feature prominently in New Zealand’s 1935–49 reformist Labour gov-
ernment. Sinclair ([1959] 2001, p. 278) suggests that Australian radicals were
particularly attracted to New Zealand in the years immediately after Australian
Federation, believing the Australian Constitution had created too many
points through which radical policy might be snuffed out.
15.3 The Presbyterian Connection
There is a significant Scottish dimension to New Zealand settlement and
immigration. Scots, mostly of one or other variation of the Presbyterian
(^13) The legislation was passedfifty-two to seventeen in July 1875, during Daniel Pollen’s
premiership, while Vogel was in England, 14 ‘detained by ill health’(Morrell 1933, p. 116).
New Zealand, with surprising ease, and under conservative administrations, dispensed with
the provinces (1876); the Legislative Council, an appointed second chamber modelled loosely on
the British House of Lords (in 1950); and the British‘first-past-the-post’electoral system (1993). It
switched the‘federal’capital from Auckland to much smaller but centrally located Wellington in
- New Zealand was thefirst national polity to grant women the vote (1893), and was thefirst
colonized nation to grant the vote to indigenous men. Indeed,‘Maˉori men achieved universal
suffrage 12 years before European men’, in 1867, after four special Maˉori seats were created to
ensure Maˉori representation in the colonial parliament (Ballantyne 2009, p. 116). Today there are
seven Ma 15 ˉori seats.
Including graduated landtaxes. The Liberals were influenced by the land nationalization writings
of John Stuart Mill and Alfred Russel Wallace (Coleman 1987, p. 31; Sinclair [1959] 2001, p. 180).
Australia and New Zealand