Te Ara’s new section ‘Government and Nation’ was launched by His Excellency Lt Gen The Rt Hon Sir Jerry Mateparae, governor general, before an appreciative audience of 200 at Parliament on Wednesday night.
The project has been overseen for the past two-and-a-half years by Stephen Levine and Nigel Roberts, distinguished political scientists from Victoria University of Wellington. Contributors include a former prime minister, a former Supreme Court judge, a former clerk of the House of Representatives, and a score of political scientists, historians and Māori academics from the country’s top universities.
The result is an impressive collection of 98 entries, about 250,000 words and more than 2,000 images on our government, our legal system, New Zealand and the world, elections, the Treaty, war, our education system and our nationhood and identity.
Of particular interest to us is the section on New Zealand’s constitution. We have now added a link to the sections on the purpose of a constitution and on the components of New Zealand’s constitution to our website for constitutional review project: www.empowernz.org.
