New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the southwestern Pacific, lying east of Australia across the Tasman Sea. Besides the North Island and the South Island it has over 700 smaller islands, with a land area of 268,000 km² (103,500 sq mi). Wellington is the capital, and English, Māori and New Zealand Sign Language are the official languages.

Polynesian voyagers settled the islands between about 1280 and 1350 and developed Māori culture, making them the last large habitable land reached by people. Abel Tasman sighted the coast in 1642, and James Cook landed and charted it in 1769. British representatives and Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, and a colony followed in 1841. In 1893 the country gave all women the vote, before any other, and it introduced a minimum wage in 1894. Dominion status came in 1907, and in 1947 the Statute of Westminster ended any British power to pass laws for it.

New Zealand keeps the British monarch as head of state, represented by a governor-general, while a single-chamber parliament, elected by mixed-member proportional voting since 1996, chooses the government under a prime minister. Tokelau, the Cook Islands, Niue and the Ross Dependency in Antarctica are linked to it. Reforms of the 1980s opened a protected economy to free trade. Services lead, and dairy is the largest export, with Fonterra as the biggest company, followed by meat, timber, fruit and wine.

The Southern Alps run the length of the South Island up to Aoraki / Mount Cook, while the Taupō Volcanic Zone shapes the North Island. With no mammalian predators, birds such as the kiwi and kākāpō lost the ability to fly. Mountaineer Edmund Hillary was first on the summit of Mount Everest, and Ernest Rutherford is remembered for splitting the atom. The Lord of the Rings films were shot here. Rugby union is the national sport, and the All Blacks have won the Rugby World Cup three times.