Category Archives: New Zealand

These came both at the APEC summit itself and at three state visits held immediately afterwards for the Chinese, South Korean and US presidents.

It is difficult to overstate the significance of these visits.

Jiang Zemin's visit was the first to New Zealand by a Chinese president.

His presence undoubtedly helped Wellington to forge closer ties with Beijing.

New Zealand was a strong supporter of China's bid to join the WTO, which was finally approved in 2001.

The growing ties culminated in the signing of a free trade agreement between China and New Zealand in 2008.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton's visit was the first by a sitting US President to New Zealand since Lyndon Johnson's brief visit to Wellington in 1966.

More broadly, APEC 1999 marked the beginnings of a more confident, free trade-focused pathway for New Zealand's foreign policy that continues to this day.

For Wellington, one of the biggest legacies of APEC 1999 was the agreement on the sidelines by Prime Minister Jenny Shipley and her Singaporean counterpart Goh Chok Tong to launch free trade negotiations between the two countries.

Talks began soon after APEC and an agreement was signed in 2000.

It was Singapore's very first bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) and only New Zealand's second, after a long-standing deal with Australia.

At the time, the negotiations seemed to be a way for New Zealand to hedge its bets.

Much of the APEC 1999 leaders' declaration focused on supporting the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations that were set to begin later that year.

Essentially, by testing the waters and taking the FTA route with Singapore, New Zealand was giving itself a back-up option a prudent move given later WTO failures.

APEC meetings continued to play a pivotal role in New Zealand's strategy.

At the 2002 APEC summit in Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore began talks with Chile to expand the agreement into a three-way deal.

Brunei, another APEC member, subsequently joined the agreement which became the P4.

In turn, the P4 became the genesis for what turned into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership or CPTPP.

Fast-forward to 2021 and the APEC story is very different.

A spirit of post-Cold War optimism and cooperation has long since dissipated.

The US-China tensions that were amicably resolved at APEC in 1999 seem minor by today's standards.

The virtual format for this year's meetings is also having an impact.

New Zealand took the decision to shift all APEC events online in June 2020.

Given the uncertainties over COVID-19 and the scale of APEC, this was the right decision.

It brings both opportunities and costs.

Around 1000 hours of virtual meetings have been held since the beginning of New Zealand's APEC year in December 2020.

These meetings included July's surprise extra APEC leaders' summit arranged at short-notice and focused on the COVID-19 response as well as many other events for ministers and officials.

Some useful outcomes have resulted from these, such as undertakings among APEC economies to speed up vaccine distribution by reducing tariff and other barriers for designated medical supplies such as syringes.

But the lack of in-person meetings means that it is difficult if not impossible for leaders to forge or develop any real rapport with one another.

Providing such a varied group of leaders with a venue to build relationships has always been APEC's strong suit.

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New Zealand's APEC moment is virtually here - Newshub

Cook Islands Tourism general manager Graeme West said the Cook Islands was very fortunate to have remained Covid-19 free so far. The Cook Island and NZ travel bubble will resume next year. Photo / 123rf

The Cook Islands government has announced two-way quarantine-free travel between New Zealand and the Cook Islands will resume in January 2022.

This announcement means the Cook Islands will be the only country that people in New Zealand can travel to and from for a holiday, without any quarantine or isolation from 14 January 2022.

However, some families will be unable to make the trip altogether: children under 12 are not permitted to travel until the New Zealand Government receives approval to vaccinate children aged 5 to 11.

Travellers will be required to take a Covid-19 test no more than 72 hours before departing and provide evidence of negative test results both on departure and arrival in New Zealand. No test will be required upon arrival in the Cook Islands.

New Zealanders will be able to travel from the main island of Rarotonga to the island of Aitutaki, with the only requirement being that travellers undergo a Rapid Antigen Test before boarding their flight to Aitutaki. A further test may be required on Aitutaki.

Cook Islands Tourism general manager Graeme West said the Cook Islands was very fortunate to have remained Covid-19 free so far.

He said the Cook Islands government had prioritised the health and wellbeing of its residents and visitors throughout the pandemic. More than 96 per cent of its eligible population are fully vaccinated.

"We were open for just three months from May to August this year until the current Delta outbreak in New Zealand meant that the border had to be closed. We are absolutely delighted that we can safely welcome fully vaccinated visitors from New Zealand back again very soon."

To assist with contact tracing in the Cook Islands, Travellers will be required to complete a Cook Islands contact form 72 hours before departing New Zealand and also use the Pacific nation's own app-based contact tracing system.

The travel corridor is exclusively open between New Zealand and the Cook Islands, and the Cook Islands maritime border will remain closed.

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The Cook Islands government said full details would become available on their tourism website over the next few weeks.

Follow this link:

Covid 19 Delta outbreak: Cook Islands, New Zealand travel bubble to resume in January - New Zealand Herald

Nothing says Kiwi summer like a giant ice cream.

But with countless dairies and parlours offering cones in every flavour under the sun, its easy to become frozen with indecision.

Thats why weve put together this list of our favourite ice cream spots. Whether youre after the wackiest flavours, the best plant-based alternatives, or the biggest scoops, here are some top shops to seek out on your travels.

READ MORE:* New Zealand's tiny towns with amazing treats* Our state pieways: New Zealand's best small town bakeries to stop at* Travel Bites: Lick your way through the countrys best ice cream at Duck Island

Supplied

For experimental ice cream flavours, you cant go past Duck Island.

Since launching in an old underwear factory in 2015, these Hamilton-based ice cream makers have become known for their Willy Wonka-like creativity when it comes to flavours, whether theyre taking inspiration from childhood favourites like fairy bread and lolly cake, or experimenting with unconventional ingredients and combinations think black sticky rice, and roasted white chocolate miso.

Price for a single scoop: $6

One to try: Toasted marshmallow

ANDY JACKSON/Stuff

Little Liberty Creamerys plant-based ice creams are so good youll think theyre the real deal.

If you want an ice cream without the belly ache, Little Liberty Creamery could have the frozen treat for you. This Taranaki scoop shop uses a special recipe consisting of cashew nuts, cacao butter and coconut milk, which becomes a base for beloved flavours like caramel swirl, double espresso, and raspberry ripple. Even the most diehard dairy fans have been tricked into thinking these ice creams are the real deal.

Price for a single scoop: $5

One to try: Almond Mocha

Supplied

Little Lato serves up traditional Italian-style gelato.

Little Lato founder Hannah Wood studied at the famed Carpigiani Gelato University in Bologna, Italy, before returning to Aotearoa to share her newfound skills with Kiwis so you can be assured this lato is legit. Whether you opt for a trusty favourite like salted butterscotch, or branch out on something a little more unexpected like massaman curry, youll find every cone filled with rich, velvety goodness. Its truly *Italian chef kiss*.

Price for a single scoop: $6

One to try: Speculoos

MARION VAN DIJK/Stuff

Toad Hall is a one-stop shop for delicious treats, including real fruit ice creams.

Theres something about being surrounded by orchards that just makes a real fruit ice cream taste better, which is why Motueka the fruit bowl of the Nelson Tasman region is the perfect destination for those craving a fruity hit. Toad Hall is a go-to spot, twirling ice creams (or frozen yoghurt) filled with every fruit you can think of, with berries sourced locally. Pop by for a quick cone, or make a leisurely afternoon out of it theres also a cafe, juicery, brewery and taproom on site.

Price for a single scoop: $5.50

One to try: Mixed berry

Supplied

Rush Munro's historic ice cream gardens in Hastings.

Slurp up some history on a visit to New Zealands oldest ice cream producer. To this day, the iconic Hawkes Bay ice cream makers use the same basic recipe pioneered by Rush Munro himself back in 1926. Flavours are dependable favourites hokey pokey, boysenberry, cookies & cream and made using the finest ingredients. They even have a pretty little garden area where you can enjoy them.

Price for a single scoop: $6.65

One to try: Maple & Walnut

DunedinNZ

Youll find Pattis & Cream parked up at St Clair Beach on the weekends.

Whatever the weather, most weekends youll find hardy Dunedinites queuing up for handmade ice creams from Pattis & Cream at St Clair Beach. While the retro Bedford truck might hark back to an old-school Mr Whippy experience, the flavours are anything but traditional think plum balsamic, olive oil, and pumpkin dulce de leche. If you miss the truck, you can head to their scoop shop in Mornington.

Price for a single scoop: $6

One to try: Donut Raspberry Ripple

John Kirk-Anderson/Stuff

Darfield Dairy owner Errol Barnes and his version of a single scoop.

Size matters when it comes to ice creams. And while many dairies offer multi-scoop monstrosities in an attempt to lure in ice cream lovers, Darfield Dairy in Canterbury knows the real generosity test comes down to the single scoop. They really have to be seen in person (ideally using a small child for scale) to be believed, but they're at least twice the size of other dairies. All flavours on offer come from the Kiwi brands Tip Top and Chateau when theyre that big, you want something tried and true.

Price for a single scoop: $5 (or $3 for a small one)

One to try: Gold Rush

Do you have a favourite ice cream shop? Email us at travel@stuff.co.nz or let us know in the comments.

The rest is here:

Where to find New Zealand's best ice creams - Stuff.co.nz

New Zealand continue their autumn campaign as they head to Rome on Saturday.

They take on Italy a week after dismantling a depleted Wales in Cardiff.

Here's everything you need to know about the match this weekend.

Italy welcome New Zealand to the Stadium Olimpico in Rome on Saturday, November 6. Kick-off is at 1pm UK time/2pm local time .

Italy v New Zealand is being shown exclusively on Amazon Prime Video. Coverage starts at 12.30pm.

New members can sign up for just 7.99 a month, and are eligible sign-up to a free 30-day trial.

While the streaming giant is behind a paywall, you can actually watch all the autumn rugby on Amazon for free if you time it right with a free trial. You can sign up for an Amazon Prime free trial here.

Coverage will also be available to live stream online or via Amazon Prime Video's app.

Read more: How to watch autumn rugby on Amazon Prime Video through your TV

Italy: Matteo Minozzi; Federico Mori, Juan Ignacio Brex, Marco Zanon, Monty Ioane; Paolo Garbisi, Stephen Varney; Danilo Fischetti, Gianmarco Lucchesi, Marco Riccioni, Marco Fuser, David Sisi, Sebastian Negri, Michele Lamaro (captain), Renato Giammariolo.

Replacements : Luca Bigi, Ivan Nemer, Pietro Ceccarelli, Niccolo Cannone, Federico Ruzza, Braam Steyn, Callum Braley, Carlo Canna.

New Zealand: Damian McKenzie; Sevu Reece, Braydon Ennor, Quinn Tupaea, George Bridge; Richie Mounga, Brad Weber; George Bower, Dane Coles, Tyrel Lomax, Tupou Vaai, Josh Lord, Luke Jacobson, Sam Cane (captain), Hoskins Sotutu.

Replacements : Asafo Aumua, Ethan de Groot, Ofa Tuungafasi, Samuel Whitelock, Shannon Frizell, Finlay Christie, David Havili, Jordie Barrett.

Link:

Italy v New Zealand kick-off time, TV channel, live stream info and team news - Wales Online

By RNZ

As a big portion of the country rolls up their sleeves for a second vaccination this weekend, 89 percent of eligible New Zealanders aged 12 and over have had their first dose and 78 percent are fully vaccinated.

Today's updated figures show 57 percent of Mori and 72 percent of Pacific people are fully dosed.

Of eligible Aucklanders, 83 percent have had their second injection, 68 percent in Northland, 76 percent in Waikato and 78 percent in Canterbury. Between the three DHBs in Auckland, Auckland DHB is sitting at 95 percent first doses.

After wastewater testing in Gisborne, Napier and Taranaki all found traces of the virus on Friday, the regions are hustling to raise vaccinations and encourage testing.

Mayor of Gisborne Rehette Stoltz said the detection of the virus in Gisborne and Napier wastewater samples is a concern.

There are no MIQ facilities, or known Covid-19 cases isolating, in either city.

Read more from the original source:

Coronavirus: New Zealand moves to 89 percent of Kiwis with first vaccine dose - Newshub

Forty years ago, on a remote rocky island in the Pacific, 800km east of New Zealand, a conservationist set out to bring the rarest bird in the world back from the brink of extinction.

Don Merton, wearing a check shirt and shorts, climbed 200 metres up the rockface of Little Mangere Island, part of the Chatham Islands (Rkohu in the indigenous Moriori language and Wharekauri in Mori), and laid a soft netted trap for the black robin, also known as kakaruia and karure a tiny endemic bird that lives up to its name, with black plumage, black eyes and a little pointy black beak. Once captured, he gently placed the bird inside a wooden box, strapped it to his back, descended the cliff and jumped on a boat to the neighbouring island Mangere, a larger, more verdant habitat.

The arrival of pests and settler-colonial farming practices had devastated the robins population in the Chathams. By 1976 there were just seven left, living in a tiny patch of bush on windswept Little Mangere.

Of those, one breeding pair remained: Old Blue, the matriarch, and Old Yellow. Merton came up with an idea to save the species a high-risk decision where failure could expedite its extinction but success could secure its survival.

With few other options, and time running out, Merton threw the dice. The team began collecting their eggs and putting them into other birds nests to be raised. After some trial and error, the little tomtit proved to be the best foster parent. On and on the volunteers, conservationists and scientists worked and the population has now reached about 280 birds across both Mangere and Hokorereoro/Rangatira Islands all descendants of Old Blue and Old Yellow.

Around 40 native New Zealand birds have become extinct since humans arrived in the country 1,000 years ago. With no natural predators, the birds did not develop the same defences as their international cousins, and the introduction of pests devastated their populations. Not only are birds crucial for the ecostystem but they have enormous cultural significance to indigenous peoples.

The robin project has been lauded globally as a conservation success story. And for good reason, on Hokorereoro/Rangatira Island one of two of the robins habitats the birds are flourishing.

But the work is not yet complete. Back on Mangere, conservationists are noticing a troubling trend there are just 30 birds on the island, and the numbers are decreasing.

The projects lead at the Department of Conservation (DOC) Tertia Thurley first volunteered on black robin projects in 1986 and worked directly with Merton. But watching the population decline again in one habitat is a real concern, Thurley says.

Were not getting many juveniles, and there have been more males than females, but because were not monitoring them through the breeding season, we dont know why that is.

Thurley feels a sense of urgency has been lost about the robins survival, that perhaps it has become a victim of its own success story.

That [urgency] sort of died off once the birds became well established on both the islands, which I guess is fair enough. Its only just recently that weve been raising alarm bells around the Mangere population. They still are a vulnerable species.

But this is about to change, with the first team deployed a few weeks ago to begin more intensive monitoring of the birds.

Katelyn Whittaker-Prendeville was part of that first cohort. She has just arrived back on mainland Chatham Islands after a three-week stint on Mangere, a big rock with a lot of bush on it, where the bird life makes it come alive.

At night, its so noisy, its like they are having a party that we didnt get invited to, she laughs.

For that period, she and a workmate spent time recording robin population numbers for the pre-breeding season census.

We only found nine females. Its such a small population, such a small gene-pool and they are in-bred already.

Whittaker-Prendeville is the first DOC intern on the island who is also from the local Mori iwi (tribe), Ngti Mutunga.

I feel so privileged The black robin comes from here, its like our wee gift, our taonga (treasure).

There are two indigenous populations represented in the Chathams the original Moriori settlers, who arrived in the islands 600 to 1,000 years ago, and the more recent Mori iwi, Ngti Mutunga.

Ngti Mutunga o Wharekauri Iwi Trust, which employs Whittaker-Prendeville, said having connection to indigenous knowledge and involvement was crucial for the robins survival.

[Indigenous people] may not have a PhD from university, but they can read the signs, they understand the seasons, the impact of the environment and the changes in the environment. You cannot beat local knowledge, the trusts Gail Amaru says.

Recently, the DOC held a consultation with iwi and imi (Moriori tribe) to discuss the black robin recovery programme.

Hokotehi Moriori Trust, which represents Moriori people, has a heavy focus on innovation and conservation. Its cultural projects manager, Susan Thorpe,said the recent consultation process was done extremely well, and no idea was considered too crazy.

She says a huge amount of collaboration has occurred with research institutes, universities and DOC, but when it comes to the survival of the robin, it is now time to take some risks, just as Merton did 40 years ago.

They used brave, pioneering, methodology and were not doing enough of that these days, with too much reporting and not enough doing.

We feel that these birds need to move off a nature reserve into wider bigger habitats, for their own well being.

Read more:

Once a global conservation success story, New Zealands black robin in trouble again - The Guardian

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "New Zealand Gift Card and Incentive Card Market, Q2 2021 Update - Intelligence and Future Growth Dynamics (Databook) - Market Size and Forecast (2016-2025) - " report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

According to the Q2 2021 Global Gift Card Survey, gift card industry in the country is expected to grow by 0.0% on annual basis to reach US$ 876.1 million in 2021.

This report provides a detailed data centric analysis of gift cards and corporate incentive cards market along with consumer behaviour and retail spend dynamics in New Zealand. With over 200 KPIs at country level, this report provides comprehensive understanding of gift and incentive card market dynamics.

Gift card market in 2020 was driven a wide range of factors, which supported growth across retail and corporate segments. The primary factors included growth of ecommerce, increased adoption to incentivize employees working remotely, digital gifting, and initiatives undertaken by government, hospitality, and travel industries to revive growth. Though the gift card market was impacted due to COVID-19, the market is expected to bounce back in the coming quarters, especially in H1 2021.

Gift card industry in New Zealand has done well to withstand the impact of economic slowdown along with negative business and consumer sentiment due to disruption caused by Covid-19 outbreak.

Despite near-term challenges in 2021, medium to long term growth story of gift cards in New Zealand remains strong. The gift card industry in New Zealand is expected to grow steadily in H1 2021 and record a strong growth in H2 2021.

The growth momentum is expected to continue to grow over the forecast period, recording a CAGR of 6.9% during 2021-2025. The gift card market in the country will increase from US$ 803.4 million in 2020 to reach US$ 1143.0 million by 2025.

Scope

Key Retailers Covered Include:

Total Spend on Gifts in New Zealand

Gift Card Market Size by KPIs across Consumer Segments in New Zealand

Gift Card Market Size by Consumer Segment in New Zealand

Digital Gift Card Market Size in New Zealand

Gift Card Market Size by Retail Consumer in New Zealand

Gift Card Spend by Consumer Behavior and Demographics in New Zealand

Gift Card Market Size by Corporate Consumer in New Zealand

Gift Spend by Product Categories (Split by Retail and Corporate Consumers) in New Zealand

Gift Card Spend by Retail Sector (Split by Retail and Corporate Consumers) in New Zealand

Gift Card Spend by Distribution Channel (Split by Retail and Corporate Consumers) in New Zealand

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/rzf9xf

See original here:

New Zealand Gift Card and Incentive Card Market Report, Q2 2021 Update - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Business Wire

A person with Covid-19 who was self-isolating alone in their Auckland home has been found dead and investigations are under way to determine if the virus was the cause.

The 40-year-old man tested positive for Covid-19 on 24 October and had been isolating in Manukau, a south Auckland suburb. He was found by a family member who visited on Wednesday.

It is the third death of a person with Covid-19 in the current Delta outbreak, and New Zealands 29th since the pandemic began. There are now 3,871 cases in the community outbreak, with 139 reported on Thursday. Of those, 136 were in Auckland, two in Waikato and one in Northland.

The cause of the 40-year-olds death was unknown and the coroner would determine whether it was due to the virus, the Ministry of Health said in a statement on Wednesday night.

Speaking to RNZ on Thursday, the director general of health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, said there was no indication at this stage the person had required any extra support, but that a formal investigation was under way.

At this stage we dont have any more information but we do have a very formal investigation protocol that we initiated to look and see what might have happened from a health perspective and will work with police.

A daily check-in, usually via email, is standard procedure for those isolating at home, followed up with a phone call if there is no reply.

Meanwhile, government ministers are at odds over how and when Aucklanders will be allowed to travel outside the citys boundary during summer.

The city, which is at the heart of New Zealands Delta outbreak and is in its third month of lockdown, is surrounded by a strict border. The government has signalled that the border will only reopen once every district health board in the country reaches a 90% vaccination rate for their region. And while Auckland is on track to reach that goal by Christmas, modelling shows that other areas may not get there until mid-January, if at all.

Earlier in the week prime minister Jacinda Ardern indicated that the government was setting up a border control system that will allow vaccinated Aucklanders who test negative to the virus to leave the region for Christmas and summer.

On Wednesday, the Covid-19 response minister, Chris Hipkins, told RNZ the government was considering giving Aucklanders an allocated time slot to leave the region over the summer holidays.

Hipkins said the measure would reduce the risk of traffic queues at the boundary checkpoints, as vaccination certificates are checked.

We havent made that decision yet. Its an option. Were just working through what the practical options are to ensure that we dont end up with people spending days sitting in their cars.

What Im foreshadowing is that we are considering whether there are practical ways of helping to manage it.

But deputy prime minister Grant Robertson on Thursday squashed that idea.

I cant see that - it wouldnt be very practical. But we do have to find a way through in the event that we still have a boundary there, he told RNZ.

So well work our way through it but what were saying to Aucklanders [is] get vaccinated, the rest of the country get vaccinated. That will make travel a lot easier because there wont be boundaries in that environment.

More:

New Zealand: Covid-positive person dies alone at home during isolation - The Guardian

AUCKLAND, New Zealand The candidates didnt know they were running. The winner received no prize. And, at least by appearance, the champion appeared to be ineligible to compete.

The race was for New Zealands Bird of the Year, an annual competition that gives New Zealanders an opportunity to rank their favorite birds from the countrys 200-odd native species and raises awareness of their ecological plight.

But this year, a long-tailed bat, one of New Zealands two native land mammals, flew away with the top prize, contest organizers said on Monday.

The audacity of the bat, known as pekapeka-tou-roa, led some on social media to call the competition a farce and rail about a stolen election. But other voters applauded the victory.

Real steal yo girl/take yo job energy, said one Aucklander in a post on Twitter.

Another user saw the upset as a potential source of inspiration, writing: If pekapeka tou roa can win Bird of the Year despite not being a bird then you can ask out your crush, anything is possible.

Bird of the Year, a two-week campaign run by the conservation charity Forest and Bird, is conducted like New Zealands electoral system through an instant-runoff system. The competition has a long history of ballot stuffing, rigged polls and even rumors of Russian interference. Last year, a hacker slipped more than 1,500 fake votes into an election database, sending one flightless bird to the top.

But this years result was the subject of no such skulduggery, organizers said. They had included New Zealands two native bat species among the avian contenders for the first time to help raise awareness.

Laura Keown, a spokeswoman for the contest, said: Because of New Zealands lack of mammals, Bat of the Year was going to be a very boring competition. It just felt like a nice opportunity to highlight this critically endangered native species and bring them from the darkness into the light.

The countrys two bat species face many of the same difficulties as more famous creatures such as the kiwi, which won the bird competition in 2009. The land mammals are at risk from pests like rats, cats and possums, as well as from the destruction of their forest habitats and climate change. The population is declining by about 5 percent a year.

For a long time, a bat led the bird contest by quite a lot, Ms. Keown told reporters last week. The lesser short-tailed bat was the only other contender giving the long-tailed bat a run for its money with voters. Behind them was a kakapo a large, flightless parrot which was last years champion.

Perhaps drawn by the lure of the cute, fuzzy faces of New Zealands native bats, nearly 57,000 voters around the world weighed in for this years online competition the most in the contests 16-year history.

I like to think that its because Kiwis just love their native bat so much, and they just really reveled in this chance to get to vote for the bat especially for New Zealands highest honor, the Bird of the Year, Ms. Keown said.

Most New Zealanders have never seen the shy, nocturnal mammal, which is roughly the length of a thumb and able to flit from tree to tree at top speeds of more than 35 miles an hour.

They dont really interact with people at all, said Kerry Borkin, a bat ecologist at New Zealands Department of Conservation. Because of that, theres so much that were still learning about bats, which actually makes them really exciting.

Once bats have been pushed out of an area, it is exceptionally difficult to bring them back, Dr. Borkin said. We need to keep those trees that we have already and plant more so that there are more in the future for the bats to use.

Ms. Keown could not confirm whether bats would make another appearance in next years competition.

Bird of the Year is no stranger to controversy, Ill say that, said Ms. Keown. We always ruffle some feathers.

Visit link:

New Zealand Held a Bird Contest. A Bat Won. - The New York Times

Aotearoa New Zealand has come a long way in the past few years in its efforts to engage with its history in a more upfront and honest manner. For those of us who have campaigned for such a change, this is not before time.

This newfound willingness to move beyond a rose-tinted approach to the nations past in which anything uncomfortable or considered to reflect poorly on the Pkeh (European) majority is shunned and ignored has taken considerable effort and is still very much a work in progress.

Confronting the often bloody and brutal realities of colonial dispossession of Mori has come as a shock for many non-Mori New Zealanders brought up to believe that they lived in a country with the greatest race relations in the world. A more robust and truthful understanding of that history is to a large degree dependent on the education system. And while there is good news on this front, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the campaign has been a long and at times difficult one.

In September 2019 prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced that New Zealand history would be taught in all schools from 2022. It felt like a momentous decision given abundant evidence that most students left school having had little or no exposure to the history of their own country. Generations of New Zealanders had grown up without even a basic awareness of pivotal moments in the nations past, unable to understand how events like the nineteenth-century New Zealand Wars and subsequent land confiscations resonated today in myriad ways, including in the often dire socio-economic statistics of Mori communities around the country.

The prime ministers announcement followed a campaign begun five years earlier by a group of students from torohanga College, a small rural secondary school in the King Country, about 20 minutes drive from where some of the bloodiest and most brutal battles of the 1863-64 Waikato War took place. After visiting some of these sites on a 2014 school trip, the students returned to class dismayed not to have learned any of this history before. They vowed to take action, successfully petitioning for a national day of commemoration now marked on 28 October for the victims of the New Zealand Wars and for this history to be taught in all schools.

Naturally, attention turned to that petition when it came to understanding the background to the September 2019 decision, which followed a long period of opposition to compulsory teaching of New Zealand history on the part of politicians and education officials. But as it turns out, there was a now little-known earlier plea for New Zealand history to be taught, again led by a school student.

In 1992 Arlana Delamere was in her final year of secondary school at Green Bay High School in Auckland. Students opting to take history as part of the seventh form (now year 13) syllabus were offered two choices: Tudor and Stuart England or 19th-century New Zealand. Except in many cases the decision had already been made for them by their schools, which offered a choice of English history or nothing.

Arlanas father, and future Cabinet minister, Tuariki John Delamere, was working in Wellington as a negotiations manager at the Treaty of Waitangi Policy Unit when he received a phone call from his upset daughter.

She was in her last year of high school in Auckland. And she wants to study New Zealand history and found out she couldnt, she could only study British history, and she was pretty incensed about it. She thought this is bullshit.

Tuariki readily agreed. He persuaded Arlana that they should lodge a claim with the Waitangi Tribunal, the body tasked with deciding on whether the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi has been breached, in her name.

The history syllabus claim was filed in April 1992. It states that the history of Aotearoa is a taonga [treasure] under the terms of the Treaty of Waitangi and that its teaching must be given priority over the teaching of the history of any other country.

Arlana further added that it is my right as a person of Mori descent, as indeed I believe it is the right of all students in Aotearoa, to have the option of being taught the history of Aotearoa as the primary focus of the history syllabus rather than the history of another country.

The failure to teach this, it was noted, had led to feelings of whakam (shame or embarrassment) among Mori at the bottom of the socio-economic rung, the victims of widespread hostility directed at them by non-Mori who had no understanding of the history of Aotearoa.

Nearly thirty years later the Waitangi Tribunal has still to consider the claim, though she and her father both say that hasnt stopped the Crown from trying to say that it has been settled as part of wider tribal claims.

Referring to the prime ministers 2019 announcement, Arlana says I love it. I think to end racism, to help broken people today, you have got to learn the history. Youve got to have all the facts in front of you.

Tuariki agrees, describing the move as hugely transformative. But he adds that if things turn out badly with the implementation of the new Aotearoa New Zealand histories curriculum, Arlanas Treaty claim is still there, ahead of its time and now hugely relevant, even after being ignored and forgotten for all those years.

A lot is riding on the success of this new curriculum and its delivery. The 1992 claim serves as yet another reminder that meaningful social change often does not happen overnight and that the early advocates for transformation can sometimes be overlooked when it does finally come about.

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New Zealands children will all soon study the countrys brutal history its not before time - The Guardian