Open Journal Systems at the Victoria University of Wellington Library
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Woodhouse Heresies
Get PDFThe radical principles behind the 1967 Woodhouse Report were eclipsed by shifting political styles—and gradually abandoned as heretical. We can now turn to Sir Owen's own notion, that "the apparent heresies of one generation become the orthodoxies of the next", to explore how core Woodhouse heresies might themselves perform this transition: providing fresh support for a generation grappling with headline challenges of climate change and pandemic control
Is Land Really Unique?: Revisiting Specific Performance as the Default Remedy for Land Sale Contracts in New Zealand
Get PDFThe argument put forth in this article is that land sale contracts, unless proven to possess unique characteristics, are not inherently different from other types of contracts. The article proposes a shift from treating specific performance as the default remedy for enforcing land sale contracts. Instead, the remedy of specific performance should be considered applicable only in exceptional situations, as is the case for contracts generally. The article also addresses the nature of damages in lieu of specific performance and suggests a reconsideration of how that remedy applies to land sale contracts. 
Call for Papers. Addressing Capability Challenges in Public Management
Get PDFPolicy Quarterly is pleased to announce a call for papers for a special issue entitled ‘Addressing Capability Challenges in Public Management’. The New Zealand public sector faces challenges that are common internationally: rising demand, limited resources, and growing complexity in a more volatile, challenging and uncertain world, as well as polarisation in broader society. It also has some unique characteristics, including the contested role of the Treaty of Waitangi, a reset after a post-Covid 19-induced spending boom and a recent change in government
Fiscal Accountability to te Tiriti o Waitangi: mechanisms and measures
Get PDFThis article investigates possible models for strengthening fiscal accountability to te Tiriti o Waitangi. We utilise the spheres of influence framework set out by Matike Mai Aotearoa (2016), with a rangatiratanga sphere, a kāwanatanga sphere and a relational sphere. We outline tax-like practices in the rangatiratanga sphere and how the kāwanatanga sphere resources itself. We then explore expectations and protocols for accountability within the respective spheres, before proposing three possible models to strengthen fiscal accountability in line with te Tiriti o Waitangi. These models include a Māori tax commissioner, a Waitangi Tribunal kaupapa inquiry into or including fiscal authority, and an independent Māori tax authority
Creating Flood Disasters: New Zealand’s oscillating history
No full textUsing a three-part framework to evaluate choices for adjusting to floods in New Zealand, factors influencing floodplain policies and practices since 1950 are identified. Each change came after severe regional flooding. Early emphasis was on enlarging channels and raising stopbanks, and on post-disaster relief. These responses enhanced urban floodplain development, and disasters when systems failed. Periodically, attempts to improve land use planning and building management, including requirements for flood hazard maps, met stiff resistance from developers, property owners and growth-oriented local politicians, resulting in changed legislation. Policy and practice thereby oscillated several times in response to prescriptive/coercive and devolved/co-operative mandates. Underpinning all has been poor understanding of flood frequency statements on the part of at-risk people
Innovation in Christchurch Church Architecture
Get PDFSeveral church buildings erected in Christchurch in the 1960s signalled significant departures in the city's established traditions of church architecture. They included three Roman Catholic parish churches – St Matthew's Bryndwr, Our Lady of Victories, Sockburn, and St Anne's, Woolston. This paper focuses on the most innovative and striking of these three churches, Our Lady of Victories, Sockburn. It sets the building in the broader context of post-war church architecture in Christchurch. Innovation in Christchurch church architecture had begun in the 1950s with a number of brick churches, but significant departures from established church building forms did not occur until the 1960s. Our Lady of Victories reflected with particular drama the impact on church architecture of the changes in Roman Catholic liturgy associated with the Second Vatican Council. The paper describes the process through which the radically new design emerged, paying particular attention to the interaction between the architect, C.R. Thomas, and the new Roman Catholic Bishop of Christchurch, Brian Ashby. The paper also sets the design of the church in the context of New Zealand, and international, architectural trends in the late 1950s and 1960s
How do we know ourselves? : Recent surveys of the Aotearoa New Zealand science workforce
Get PDFIt is vital that discussions of the future of our research and science system are grounded in understanding of both how it functions now, and how it has changed over time. This article serves as an overview of available information about the Aotearoa New Zealand research and science workforce, considering surveys and workforce analyses published in the last thirty years. It illustrates the need for more systemic data capture in the future to support in-depth analyses over time of the scientific workforce and the trajectories of graduates of our university system into and out of that workforce. Such data and subsequent analysis will allow better allocation of resources, better design of education and training, better understanding of the science and research landscape, and informed appraisal of the career paths that emerge from PhD study in the sciences
Te Pā: A wellbeing initiative on a major roading construction project.
Get PDFPurpose. Due to the significant challenges to employee wellbeing in the construction industry, a major roading project in New Zealand implemented a wellbeing programme based on holistic health frameworks. A description, rationale and outline of the wellbeing programme are presented. An independent evaluation of the wellbeing programme took place in 2023.
Design. Data from interviews, a focus group, surveys, and the OnLocation app were analysed to examine participants’ perspectives on the programme, and to establish whether the programme was effective and how it could be improved.
Findings. The majority of staff reported that they had experienced enhanced wellbeing since joining the project, and spoke positively about the programme. A small number of participants felt the project still had elements of the ‘old’ construction culture including a focus on productivity over people, but most felt the wellbeing programme had made substantial progress toward changing the construction culture. Suggested improvements included a perceived need for more resources, for members of the wellbeing team to be present onsite more often, and more training for onsite managers in workplace wellbeing.
Originality. A holistic approach to wellbeing has rarely been taken in the construction industry. This project was based on indigenous New Zealand Māori perspectives on wellbeing. Evaluation showed that it was positively valued by both Māori and non-Māori participants. This indicates that, although some details are specific to New Zealand, the model itself, its supporting framework and approach can be generalised to other contexts. 
Property Rights versus Environment? A critique of the coalition government’s approach to the reform of the Resource Management Act
Get PDFThe coalition government in New Zealand intends to repeal the Resource Management Act 1991 and replace it with new legislation ‘based on the enjoyment of private property rights, while ensuring good environmental outcomes’. This article considers the real possibility that the government is intending to place a theory of absolute private property rights at the centre of the new system. It argues that any policy that assumes private property rights should confer absolute rights on owners is a mischaracterisation of those rights and the law of private property. Making policy on a myth of absolute property rights is unlikely to result in good environmental outcomes
"The sort of design sophistication we were all in need of," Ernst Plischke’s design for Paul’s Book Arcade (1949), Hamilton
No full textIn 1949 a remarkable interior design for a Hamilton bookshop by Ernst Plischke was, according to the client, "the sort of design sophistication we were all in need of." Paul's Book Arcade played a pivotal role in Hamilton social circles in the 1940s, with the owner David Blackwood Paul (aka Blackwood) and his wife Janet Wilkinson, forming their own "centre of human enlightenment." The Blackwood group of friends included painter Margot Phillips, who like Plischke, was a European refugee, painter, critic, and a writer for The Listener, Geoff Fairburn and his wife Jean (also an artist), as well as writer Alexander Gaskell Pickard.
Paul's Book Arcade was established in Hamilton in 1901 by Blackwood's father William Henry Paul. In 1933, Blackwood took over the management of the bookshop, reportedly as the result of a disagreement with his father, who by then was a powerful community leader. Paul's local services were a more pressing concern, and so Blackwood inherited what was a "modest emporium" with the atmosphere of a general store. Blackwood would later transform Paul's Book Arcade to such an extent that in 1949 the visiting English publisher Sir Stanley Unwin numbered the bookshop among the fourteen best in the world, and one of the two best in New Zealand. So successful was the bookshop that in 1955 a further two stores were opened, each in Auckland. The first was located on Shortland Street, and the second on High Street, also designed by Plischke.
The Blackwood social circle would have a lasting and far‐reaching influence on the mid‐century architecture of Hamilton. Connections with local artists and groups such as the Waikato Society of Arts, allowed a seamless flow of European‐inspired modernist ideals to inform Hamilton's new architecture, interior design, and cultural landscape. The first built manifestation of this movement was the 1949 interior design for Paul's Book Arcade by Austrian architect Ernst Plischke. This presentation will look at the relation between Blackwood and Plischke, the architect's design for the Book Arcade, and how the Blackwood's informed design sensibilities would influence Hamilton's modernist landscape for years afterwards
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