Liberal Party

Events In History

22 September 1906

Domestic workers call for 68-hour week

At a meeting in Wellington, Marianne Tasker and supporters established a domestic workers’ union, hoping to use the Liberal government’s Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act to force employers to improve pay and conditions. Central to their demands was a 68-hour working week. Read more...
1 November 1898

Old-age Pensions Act becomes law

A world first, the act gave a small means-tested pension to elderly men and women with few assets who were ‘of good moral character’ and were leading a ‘sober and reputable life’. It was one of the major achievements of Richard Seddon’s Liberal government. Read more...
27 April 1893

Death of Premier John Ballance

Ballance was the first Liberal premier. He laid the foundation for a government that was widely seen as making New Zealand ‘the social laboratory of the world’. Read more...
5 December 1890

First 'one man one vote' election

New Zealand’s electoral law had been changed so that no one could vote in more than one general electoral district. This ended the long-standing practice of ‘plural voting’ by those who owned property in more than one electorate. Read more...

Celebrated on the fourth Monday in October, Labour Day commemorates the struggle for an eight-hour working day, a right that carpenter Samuel Parnell had famously fought for in 1840. Our first Labour Day was held on 28 October 1890, and it has been a statutory public holiday since 1900.
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Page 1 - Labour DayCelebrated on the fourth Monday in October, Labour Day commemorates the struggle for an eight-hour working day, a right that carpenter Samuel Parnell had famously fought for in

In the period between the first European landings and the First World War, Aotearoa New Zealand was transformed from an exclusively Māori world into one in which Pākehā dominated numerically, politically, socially and economically.
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Page 1 - History of New Zealand, 1769-1914 In the period between the first European landings and the First World War, Aotearoa New Zealand was transformed from an exclusively Māori world into one in which Pākehā

New Zealand's first state house was formally opened on 18 September 1937. But the government has provided rental housing for New Zealanders for more than a century. Explore the history of this country's various state housing schemes and their contribution to the New Zealand way of life.
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Page 8 – Outside the mainstream
Many of us associate the beginning of state housing with the hipped-roof cottages built by the first Labour government of the 1930s and '40s. But the origin of state housing

New Zealand has had a governor or (from 1917) a governor-general since 1840. The work of these men and women has reflected the constitutional and political history of New Zealand in many ways.

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Page 4 - Responsible governmentFrom the 1840s settlers demanded a say in government. Governor George Grey suspended an overly elaborate constitution in 1846, but the New Zealand Constitution Act 1852 gave male

Temperance was one of the most divisive social issues in late-19th and early-20th century New Zealand. Social reformers who argued that alcohol fuelled poverty, ill health, crime and immorality nearly achieved national prohibition in a series of hotly contested referendums.
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Page 2 - BeginningsDawn of the New Zealand temperance movement,

Ballance, John
John Ballance, who led the Liberals to power in 1890, was called ‘the rainmaker’ by voters relieved to see the return of prosperity.
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Seddon, Richard John
Richard Seddon’s nickname, ‘King Dick’, says it all. Our longest-serving and most famous leader not only led the government, he was it, many argued. For 13 years he completely dominated politics.
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Hall-Jones, William
Although William Hall-Jones merely warmed the seat while Richard Seddon’s designated successor, Sir Joseph Ward, returned from Europe, he was the first leader to enter office as prime minister, not premier.
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Ward, Joseph George
Sir Joseph Ward, New Zealand’s political Lazarus, led governments nearly a quarter of a century apart.
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Mackenzie, Thomas Noble
The Liberals were already yesterday’s men when they made Thomas Mackenzie Sir Joseph Ward’s successor after needing the speaker’s casting vote to win a confidence vote.
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Reeves, William Pember
The series of labour acts for which William Pember Reeves was responsible gave New Zealand the most extensive system of labour regulations in the world at the turn of the twentieth century.
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McKenzie, John
McKenzie's early memory of evicted crofters shaped his whole life's philosophy and his land-reform work in the Liberal government of the 1890s.
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Main image: William Pember Reeves

The series of labour acts for which William Pember Reeves was responsible gave New Zealand the most extensive system of labour regulations in the world at the beginning of the 20th century.