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Home >> Australia & Pacific Australia & New Zealand Race Relations in New Zealand Chris Ford - 4/24/2006 New Zealand is widely considered to have the best race relations in the world. Yet, 2004 has been the year of race politics in the country. That epithet has been challenged in the past six months to devastating effect. The right-wing National Party opposition, under the new leadership of former central bank governor Don Brash, has indulged in some populist 'wedge' politics as a means of shoring up his party's and the centre-right's poll numbers. Prior to January they had been falling and it seemed inevitable that a centre-left Labour-led government would win the next general election in 2005. Test New Zealand's Stranger Than Fiction Governing Arrangements Chris Ford - 10/26/2005 New Zealand's general election outcome on September 17 was the closest in over a decade and has resulted in some of the most constitutionally bizarre governing arrangements seen in the nation's post-war history. |