Honouring the Contract

Providing a vital background to some of the pressing issues in contemporary New Zealand politics, this novel perspective on the distinctive foundations of the country’s welfare state raises issues concerning modern-day concepts of citizenship as this welfare state comes under challenge. Government policy has been linked to this evolving social contract between wage earners and the state; With the contract’s genesis in the migration of wage earners from Britain in the 1840s, New Zealand beca...