Provincial Divergencies

PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL DISTRICTS

by McLintock, Alexander Hare

Foundation of System

The New Zealand Constitution Act of 1852 established a quasi-federal system of government and provided for the division of the country into six provinces – Auckland, New Plymouth, Wellington, Nelson, Canterbury, and Otago. Elective Superintendents and Provincial Councils were made responsible for local government of their areas, but provincial legislation could be repealed by the General Assembly which also had power to create new provinces or alter the boundaries of existing ones. In 1858 the province of New Plymouth was renamed Taranaki, and between 1858 and 1873 four new provinces were created – Hawke's Bay, Marlborough, Southland, and Westland. Provincial organisation disappeared under the Abolition of the Provinces Act of 1875.

The boundaries of the original six provinces, defined by Governor Sir George Grey early in 1853, were drawn as far away as possible from existing areas of European settlement. They followed rivers or were straight lines across unmapped or unexplored country, as in the case of the southern boundary of Auckland Province which followed the thirty-ninth parallel of latitude. Despite their often arbitrary nature these boundaries caused little inconvenience, as close settlement rarely occurred along them prior to the abolition of the provinces. Only in the lower Grey River, on the South Island West Coast, did a provincial boundary separate closely settled areas and divide the hinterland of a substantial town.

The Constitution Act conferred on the Provincial Councils full legislative powers, apart from certain defined fields including justice, customs, postal services, and the disposal of Crown lands. Although the then Secretary of State for Colonies, Sir John Pakington, held that the Provincial Councils would have the role of mere municipalities, the provinces vigorously asserted their powers and, in 1856, through the strength of provincial representation in the General Assembly, they acquired the right to dispose of Crown lands. The provinces thus became the effective agents of development within their areas, being responsible for surveys, land legislation, immigration, public works and harbours, education and hospitals. Small-scale local works were progressively delegated to boroughs and road boards, which came to form a “third tier” of governmental units within the provincial and national structure.

Disintegrating Factors

Provincialism was a product of the colonisation of New Zealand by widely dispersed British communities. Separatist feeling was rationalised by pointing to the diverse schemes of colonisation or the independent interests and varied origins of the settlements. The “off-centre” location of Auckland as the national capital and the lack of easy communication between the settlements would have made centralised administration difficult in the 1850s. Although influential settlers opposed the establishment of six “vestry parliaments” for a white population of some 30,000, the prevailing political sentiment in New Zealand was provincial, at least during the 1850s. The introduction of regular steamer services between the provinces by 1860 and the advent of the electric telegraph in 1862 weakened the case for provincial government. Had the settlement of New Zealand been delayed until the 1860s it is questionable whether a provincial structure of government would have been thought necessary.

The strength of provincial sentiment tended to diminish outwards from the early settled heart of each province. Settlers in outlying districts complained that they received little share of provincial expenditure and, in some provinces, outlying runholders were concerned at the growing influence of small-farmer and urban radicalism on the provincial councils. In 1858 the General Assembly secured passage of the New Provinces Act, which made it remarkably easy for a disaffected outlying district to be erected into a new province simply by Order in Council and without reference to the General Assembly or the provincial council concerned. The qualifications for candidature as a new province were trivial – a European population of not less than 1,000 in a district of more than half a million but less than 3 million acres, and a petition signed by at least 150 registered electors. An amended New Provinces Act of 1865 increased the minimum population of any new province and required a special Act of the Legislature. The disaffected district would thus have to put its case to the General Assembly. Whatever the intention, the effect of these Acts was to discredit the provincial system of government by the proliferation of small and financially weak provinces.

Three sparsely settled pastoral districts achieved provincial status under the 1858 Act – Hawke's Bay in 1858, Marlborough in 1859, and Southland in 1861. That proportion of Canterbury to the west of the main divide was separated to form the County of Westland in 1868. As an experiment in a less cumbersome form of local government, the County was given only the administrative function of a province and legislative powers resided in the General Assembly. In 1870 Southland was reincorporated in the Province of Otago and, in 1873, Westland was accorded full provincial status. At various times the General Assembly received petitions seeking the creation of new provinces or counties from areas in North Auckland, Gisborne, North Otago, Wanganui, the Buller district, South Canterbury, and parts of Marlborough, while several petitions sought revision of the boundary between Nelson and Westland.

Provincial Divergencies

It is not surprising that contrasts developed between the provinces in legislation and administrative practices. There were divergent and voluminous sets of regulations for the sale of Crown lands. Auckland was unique in offering free, 40-acre grants to fare-paying immigrants and in setting aside reserves for “group settlements” of immigrants. While most provinces sold Crown lands at the fixed price of 10s. per acre, it was £2 per acre in Canterbury, a legacy of the “high price” theories of the Canterbury Association founders. In Nelson all lands were sold at periodical auctions to the highest bidder, and in Otago, where land was sold at 10s., £2 worth of cultivation and improvements per acre had to be made within four years of purchase. Otago alone had a system of deferred payment for land purchases. There were varying methods and standards of land survey, and divided administration meant that there was no accurate system of triangulation to which land-title surveys could be adjusted.

Gold miners moving across provincial boundaries had to take out a new miner's right and become familiar with a new set of goldfield regulations. Early railway lines were built to three different gauges (Canterbury 5 ft 3 in., Southland 4 ft 8½ in., Otago 3 ft 6 in.), but in the Public Works Act of 1870 the Central Government fortunately asserted its powers and standardised the gauge for the whole country at 3 ft 6 in. Although the Provincial Councils were charged with the encouragement of education, only the South Island provinces of Nelson, Canterbury, and Otago made adequate provision for public schooling before the 1870s. In general, Canterbury and Otago were financially sound, and Nelson, although poor in resources, managed its finances prudently. Southland, of all the provinces, stood preeminent in financial dissipation, Marlborough in local factionalism.

Following the abolition of the provinces in 1876, several major consolidating Acts assimilated the mass of provincial legislation into the law of the colony. The most important were the Education Act of 1877, providing for “free, secular and compulsory” schooling, the Municipal Corporations Act and the Counties Act, both of 1876, providing for local government ment, and the Land Act of 1877, which brought the survey and disposal of land under control of the one Government Department.

By the later 1860s it was clear that the provincial system was a clumsy method of governing a small country. Steamships, telegraphs, and the removal of the national capital to Wellington in 1865 had reduced problems of communication. Most immigrants who had arrived after 1860 had little sympathy for the colonising theories of the founder groups of settlers of the forties and early fifties, and the mobility of population between the provinces had been given a great fillip by the gold rushes. Financially, most provinces had failed and, although Otago and Canterbury managed fairly well from their land-sale revenues, others could not maintain the normal machinery of government without grants from the Central Government. In 1867 the provinces lost the power to raise loans overseas, and the Central Government steadily absorbed many provincial government functions relating to the development of resources, notably railway construction and immigration. The inauguration of Vogel's public works policy in the 1870s brought “centralist” and “provincialist” interests into sharp conflict. When the provinces rejected Vogel's proposal to guarantee overseas loans by creating a Crown endowment of reserved lands adjacent to the new railway lines, it was clear that provincial powers were a handicap to national development. The Abolition Bill, introduced to the General Assembly by Atkinson in 1875, was carried on the third reading by 40 votes to 21, nearly all the opposition being provided by Auckland and Otago members.

Abolition of the Provinces

The Abolition of the Provinces Act became operative in November 1876 and the administration of many purely local matters was made the responsibility of elective borough and county councils. The Counties Bill of 1876 sought the merger of the 314 road boards into 39 counties, but parochial interests ensured that there were 63 counties by the time the Bill became law. The old provinces, or subdivisions of them, served as administrative areas for the education boards set up under the Education Act of 1877 and for the decentralised offices of several Government Departments, including that of Lands and Survey. But the progress of settlement made the old provinces unsuitable as units for land administration. The Land District boundaries have been altered from time to time and show several discrepancies from the provincial divisions.

Provincial Districts

The old provincial areas were accorded the legal status of provincial districts. These have never had administrative functions of any sort, but have been used for the publication of some statistical data since they retain unchanged the boundaries of the provinces abolished in 1876. They also correspond broadly to areas of community of interest and have sentimental and historical associations which have deepened rather than diminished through the years. For some time after 1876 provincialism remained a force in colonial politics, although in an obstructionist rather than positive manner. Southland Province had been merged with Otago in 1870 and was not created a provincial district. The Department of Statistics has for many years published data for the “Southland portion” of the Otago provincial district. This area comprises the four counties of Southland, Wallace, Fiord, and Stewart Island, and is considerably larger than the former Southland Province.

In abolishing the provinces the legislators of the 1870s ignored their geographical distinctiveness as possible administrative areas. Had the financial relationships between the provinces and the Central Government been more rationally defined, and had the provinces acquired fewer powers and defended them less stubbornly, there would have been less need to abolish them. A modification of the provincial areas could have provided a more effective basis for local government than did the subsequent proliferation of local bodies, such as counties, power boards, rabbit boards, catchment boards, and education boards with their frequently overlapping boundaries. M.MC.C.

  • New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, 1875
  • The Provincial System in New Zealand, Morrell, W. P. (1932)
  • Government in New Zealand, Webb, L. (1940)
  • Crown Colony Government in New Zealand, McLintock, A. H. (1958).

PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAL DISTRICTS 22-Apr-09 McLintock, Alexander Hare