The Liberal experiment
The world’s first organised party government breaks up the great estates, gives women the vote, and builds arbitration and pensions. Overseas observers call it the social laboratory of the world. None of it extends to Māori land policy, where purchase continues.
10 events under way between 1890 and 1911
The Liberals take power
New Zealand’s first modern political party began 21 years in government, with reforms that led many to see the country as ‘the social laboratory of the world’.
Te Kotahitanga — the Māori Parliament
Te Kotahitanga o Te Tiriti o Waitangi
A Māori parliament met from 1892 to 1902, seeking authority over Māori land and people under the Treaty of Waitangi and petitioning Parliament for recognition.
Waipatu, Hawke’s BayWomen win the vote
New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world where women could vote in national elections. Kate Sheppard’s 1893 petitions held nearly 32,000 signatures.
ChristchurchOld-age pensions introduced
One of the first state pensions anywhere — means-tested, character-tested, and closed to Chinese and other Asian residents.
New Zealand troops sent to the South African War
The first overseas war New Zealand fought as a country: about 6,500 men and 8,000 horses, and some 230 deaths.
New Zealand declines to join Australia
A royal commission weighed federation with the new Commonwealth of Australia and recommended against it. The Australian constitution still leaves the door open.
Tohunga Suppression Act
An Act making it an offence to practise as a tohunga, aimed at healers who claimed supernatural powers and at prophets such as Rua Kēnana.
New Zealand becomes a Dominion
The colony was renamed a Dominion — a change of title that Prime Minister Joseph Ward wanted for its prestige, and which altered almost nothing legally.
WellingtonThe North Island Main Trunk line is completed
Prime Minister Joseph Ward drove the last spike at Manganuioteao, formally opening the railway between Auckland and Wellington.
ManganuioteaoErnest Rutherford wins the Nobel Prize
Born at Spring Grove near Brightwater and raised partly on a family farm, Ernest Rutherford won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, then discovered the atomic nucleus and split the atom.
Brightwater, Nelson