The country has the distinction of being the only one outside the U.S. to hold multiple America’s Cup races, but lost the cup in 2003 to a Swiss team (with a New Zealander skipper). New Zealand hosted the last two competitions for international yacht racing’s top prize, the America’s Cup (2000 and 2003), by virtue of being the home of the winning team in 1995 and 2000. British colonists brought a legal, political, and economic system that has flourished, along with the English system of agriculture that has transformed the landscape.
Economy
New Zealand administers the South Pacific island group of Tokelau and claims a section of the Antarctic continent. The capital city is Wellington and the largest urban area Auckland; both are located on the North Island. New Zealand is a remote land—one of the last sizable territories suitable for habitation to be populated and settled—and lies more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) southeast of Australia, its nearest neighbour.
It is the sole home, for example, of the long-beaked, flightless kiwi, the ubiquitous nickname for New Zealanders. Niue and the Cook Islands are self-governing states in free association with New Zealand. New Zealand is ranked 5th in the International Cricket Council Men’s Test betista casino login Team Rankings 2025 with a rating of 100. The All Blacks, the national rugby union team, are the most successful in the history of international rugby.
Science and technology
New Zealand has a highly varied terrain with mountain ranges and hill country dominating the landscape. What type of government does New Zealand have? What is the population of New Zealand? Immigration from other areas—Asia, Africa, and eastern Europe—has also made a mark, and New Zealand culture today reflects these many influences. New Zealand also has a unique array of vegetation and animal life, much of which developed during the country’s prolonged isolation.
Almost all general elections between 1853 and 1993 were held under the first-past-the-post voting system. Cabinet, formed by ministers and led by the prime minister, is the highest policy-making body in government and responsible for deciding significant government actions. If no majority is formed, a minority government can be formed if support from other parties during confidence and supply votes is assured. The House of Representatives is democratically elected, and a government is formed from the party or coalition with the majority of seats. The New Zealand Parliament holds legislative power and consists of the king and the House of Representatives.
- New Zealand is involved in the Pacific Islands Forum, the Pacific Community, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum (including the East Asia Summit).
- In the year to June 2018, dairy products accounted for 17.7% ($14.1 billion) of total exports, and the country’s largest company, Fonterra, controls almost one-third of the international dairy trade.
- While the demonym for a New Zealand citizen is New Zealander, the informal “Kiwi” is commonly used both internationally and by locals.
- Some Māori later migrated to the Chatham Islands, where they developed their distinct Moriori culture; a later 1835 invasion by Māori iwi resulted in the massacre and virtual extinction of the Moriori.
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New Zealand nationality law treats all parts of the realm equally, so most people born in New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau, and the Ross Dependency are New Zealand citizens.n 8 Because of financial pressures and the desire to consolidate railways, education, land sales, and other policies, government was centralised and the provinces were abolished in 1876. According to the Ministry of Justice, Māori are overrepresented, comprising 45% of New Zealanders convicted of crimes and 53% of those imprisoned, while only being 16.5% of the population. As of 2023,update the country is ranked second in the strength of its democratic institutions, and third in government transparency and lack of corruption. The supremacy of parliament over the Crown and other government institutions was established in England by the Bill of Rights 1689 and has been ratified as law in New Zealand.
New Zealand has an adult literacy rate of 99%, and over half of the population aged 15 to 29 hold a tertiary qualification. Hindus are the second largest religious minority, forming the 2.9% of population, followed by Muslims on 1.5%. Christians are the single largest religious group, forming 32.3% of the population, compared to 36.5% in 2018. New Zealand Sign Language was reported to be understood by 22,986 people (0.5%); it became one of New Zealand’s official languages in 2006. New Zealand achieved a record net migration gain of 135,500 people in the year ended October 2023. In the 2023 census, 28.8% of people counted were not born in New Zealand, up from 27.4% in the 2018 census.
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He named that area Murderers’ Bay, and called the country Staten Landt. DNA mapping of their Maori descendants indicates links to the indigenous people of Taiwan. The relative proximity of New Zealand to Antarctica has made South Island a gateway of sorts for scientific expeditions and tourist excursions to the icebound continent. Over 75 percent of the forest cover has been burnt or felled, and the land converted into pasture. It also has a diverse range of birds, including the flightless moa (now extinct) and the kiwi, the kakapo, and the takahē, all of which are endangered. Evergreens such as the giant kauri and southern beech dominate the forests.
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- What type of government does New Zealand have?
- The country owes its varied topography, and perhaps even its emergence above the waves, to the dynamic boundary it straddles between the Pacific and Indo-Australian Plates.
- As of 2017update, the United Nations International Telecommunication Union ranks New Zealand 13th in the development of information and communications infrastructure.
- In 1769 the British explorer Captain James Cook became the first European to set foot on and map New Zealand.
- The Māori population declined to around 40% of its pre-contact level during the 19th century; introduced diseases were the major factor.
In 1978 the New Zealand Film Commission started assisting local film-makers, and many films attained a world audience, some receiving international acknowledgement. New Zealand music has been influenced by blues, jazz, country, rock and roll and hip hop, with many of these genres given a unique New Zealand interpretation. Europeans brought English fashion etiquette to New Zealand, and until the 1950s most people dressed up for social occasions.
The southern and southwestern parts of the South Island have a cooler and cloudier climate, with around 1,400–1,600 hours. Oceania is a wider region encompassing the Australian continent, New Zealand, and various island countries in the Pacific Ocean that are not included in the seven-continent model. The plateau also hosts the country’s largest lake, Lake Taupō, nestled in the caldera of one of the world’s most active supervolcanoes. Fiordland’s steep mountains and deep fiords record the extensive ice age glaciation of this southwestern corner of the South Island.
Health New Zealand is charged with working alongside the Public Health Agency to manage the provision of healthcare services in New Zealand. Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora is the primary publicly funded healthcare system of New Zealand. As of 2023update, New Zealand allocated about 9.6 percent of its GDP to healthcare, slightly above the OECD average of 8.8 percent. The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment ranks New Zealand as the 28th best in the OECD for maths, 13th best for science, and 11th best for reading. In 2021, in the population aged 25–64, 13% had no formal qualification, 21% had a school qualification, 28% had a tertiary certificate or diploma, and 35% have a bachelor’s degree or higher. There are 13 school years and attending state (public) schools is free to New Zealand citizens and permanent residents from a person’s 5th birthday to the end of the calendar year following their 19th birthday.
Early in the 20th century, New Zealand was involved in world affairs, fighting in the First and Second World Wars and suffering through the Great Depression. The British government’s residual legislative powers were later removed by the Constitution Act 1986, and final rights of appeal to British courts were abolished in 2003. In 1907, at the request of the New Zealand Parliament, King Edward VII proclaimed New Zealand a Dominion within the British Empire, reflecting its self-governing status. In 1893, New Zealand was the first nation in the world to grant all women the right to vote and pioneered the adoption of compulsory arbitration between employers and unions in 1894. Following concerns that the South Island might form a separate colony, premier Alfred Domett moved a resolution to transfer the capital from Auckland to a locality near Cook Strait.
Land
Because of its far-flung outlying islands and long coastline, the country has extensive marine resources. Since 1937, the islands are uninhabited except for about six people at Raoul Island station. In 1830, mapmakers began to use “North” and “South” on their maps to distinguish the two largest islands, and by 1907, this was the accepted norm. Māori had several traditional names for the two main islands, including Te Ika-a-Māui (‘the fish of Māui’) for the North Island and Te Waipounamu (‘the waters of greenstone’) or Te Waka o Aoraki (‘the canoe of Aoraki’) for the South Island.
New Zealand has competitive international teams in rugby union, rugby league, netball, cricket, softball, and sailing. Māori participation in European sports was particularly evident in rugby, and the country’s team performs a haka, a traditional Māori challenge, before international matches. Horse racing is one of the most popular spectator sports in New Zealand and was part of the “rugby, racing, and beer” subculture during the 1960s. The highest-grossing New Zealand films are Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Boy, The World’s Fastest Indian, Whale Rider, Once Were Warriors, Tinā, Heavenly Creatures, What We Do in the Shadows and The Piano.
The early European settlers divided New Zealand into provinces, which had a degree of autonomy. One example of structural inequality in New Zealand can be seen in the criminal justice system. The New Zealand Human Rights Commission has asserted that there is strong, consistent evidence that structural discrimination is a real and ongoing socioeconomic issue. But this is untrue of local council elections; a historically low 36% of eligible New Zealanders voted in the 2022 local elections, compared with an already low 42% turnout in 2019. New Zealand ranks highly for civic participation in the political process, with 82% voter turnout during recent general elections, compared to an OECD average of 69%. New Zealand’s judiciary, headed by the chief justice, includes the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, the High Court, and subordinate courts.
The population, in slight excess of four million, is similar in size to Costa Rica’s. New Zealand’s total land area, nearly 270,000 km², is about the same as that of Colorado and somewhat smaller than the Philippines. The closest neighbors to the north are New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. It is separated from Australia to the northwest by the Tasman Sea, which is some 2,000 km across.
New Zealand art and craft has gradually achieved an international audience, with exhibitions in the Venice Biennale in 2001 and the “Paradise Now” exhibition in New York in 2004. Certain items of popular culture thought to be unique to New Zealand are called “Kiwiana”. In the 1960s, as tertiary education became more available, and cities expanded urban culture began to dominate, but rural imagery and themes are common in New Zealand’s art, literature and media. From the early 20th century until the late 1960s, Māori culture was suppressed by the attempted assimilation of Māori into British New Zealanders. More recently, American, Australian, Asian and other European cultures have exerted influence on New Zealand.
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In the mid-1980s New Zealand deregulated its agricultural sector by phasing out subsidies over a three-year period. Living standards in New Zealand fell behind those of Australia and Western Europe, and by 1982 New Zealand had the lowest per-capita income of all the developed nations surveyed by the World Bank. In 1973, New Zealand’s export market was reduced when the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community and other compounding factors, such as the 1973 oil and 1979 energy crises, led to a severe economic depression. High demand for agricultural products from the United Kingdom and the United States helped New Zealanders achieve higher living standards than both Australia and Western Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. The first shipment of refrigerated meat on the Dunedin in 1882 led to the establishment of meat and dairy exports to Britain, a trade which provided the basis for strong economic growth in New Zealand. Historically, extractive industries have contributed strongly to New Zealand’s economy, focusing at different times on sealing, whaling, flax, gold, kauri gum, and native timber.