New Zealand

Why New Zealand works

New Zealand is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, made up of the North Island (Te Ika-a-Māui), the South Island (Te Waipounamu) and more than 700 smaller islands, lying east of Australia across the Tasman Sea. The country stretches over 1,600 kilometres along its main axis with about 15,000 kilometres of coastline, and its sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps, owe much to ongoing tectonic uplift and volcanic activity. Wellington is the capital, while Auckland is the largest city, and the two main islands are separated by Cook Strait, just 22 kilometres wide at its narrowest point.

Polynesian voyagers began settling New Zealand in ocean-going waka sometime between about 1280 and 1350, developing the distinctive Māori culture that followed; Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight the islands in 1642, and British explorer Captain James Cook was the first European to land and map them, in 1769. In 1840, representatives of the United Kingdom and Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, opening the way for British sovereignty and the founding of the Colony of New Zealand in 1841; the country became a dominion in 1907 and went on to gain full statutory independence.

Fiordland, in the country's southwest, holds Milford Sound, known in Māori as Piopiotahi, a fiord carved by glaciation over millions of years that runs 15 kilometres inland from the Tasman Sea between rock faces rising 1,200 metres or more; among its peaks are The Elephant, at 1,517 metres, said to resemble an elephant's head, and The Lion, shaped like a crouching animal at 1,302 metres. Two permanent waterfalls, Lady Bowen Falls and Stirling Falls, drop into the fiord year-round, joined by numerous temporary falls after heavy rain, and the sound sits within both Fiordland National Park and the wider Te Wahipounamu World Heritage area.

New Zealand's climate is predominantly temperate maritime, with mean annual temperatures ranging from about 10 degrees Celsius in the south to 16 degrees in the north, though conditions vary sharply by region, from the very wet West Coast of the South Island to the semi-arid Mackenzie Basin and Central Otago. Some 80 million years of geographic isolation have shaped New Zealand's biodiversity: around 82 percent of its native vascular plant species, nearly 1,944 species across 65 genera, are found nowhere else, a legacy of the country's long separation that also produced its many distinctive bird species.

New Zealand is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary democracy built on an uncodified constitution; King Charles III is head of state, represented locally by a governor-general who acts on the advice of the prime minister, and the House of Representatives, elected democratically, forms government from whichever party or coalition holds a majority of seats. This same constitutional framework, inherited in large part from Britain's Bill of Rights 1689, underpins a country whose institutions and culture still reflect the twin heritage of Māori tradition and British settlement that has shaped New Zealand since the nineteenth century.

• New Zealand — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Milford Sound — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text adapted from the linked articles under CC BY-SA 4.0; edited for length.

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