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    Imperial bonds and public debt management in New Zealand between the wars : an analytic study of public policy subject files : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts in Politics at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2002) Boyce, Simon A
    This thesis examines the role of New Zealand's public borrowing in the London money market, between 1925 and 1939. The study focuses on the issue of long term government stock as 'trustee securities', with the trustee status indicating that the conditions of the 1900 Colonial Stock Act were being observed. Public and private trusts in Britain could invest in New Zealand government securities, knowing that the securities were 'gilt-edged', and had the lowest possible risk. The gilt-edged nature of colonial stock was only attained by agreeing to three conditions imposed by the British Government, which permitted British bondholders to secure their investment through a court order, in the event of default on loan repayments. The conditions also included the right of reservation on the colony's Parliament, or a 'power of disallowance', which meant that the British Parliament could force changes to a colony's own legislation. The constitutional aspects of the Colonial Stock Act were significant in the 1930s, as the passing of the Statute of Westminster for New Zealand would mean the option of borrowing in London would be altered. The economic significance of the Colonial Stock Act emerged in 1932 when New Zealand faced loan default in London, and an inability to transfer funds to pay interest. The Bank of England had lent sterling exchange in London, and the trading banks also provided cash in New Zealand. The problems with exchange emphasised the weakness in the system of public finance. Though there was a strict form of accounting maintained by the Audit Office, public works programmes had to be re-funded from annual London loans, as the Treasury found it increasingly difficult to maintain cash balances for spending programmes and debt commitments in London. When exchange rates were devalued the fiscal problem worsened, even with the central bank that had been promoted by Treasury. The Reserve Bank's role in local banking situations did not ease the management of the sterling exchange reserves needed for debt repayment. New Zealand once again faced default under the Colonial Stock Act in 1939. The thesis indicates how this was avoided, due to the imperial political underpinning the interests of London bondholders. Imperial bonds helped ensure national solvency and domestic public works programmes continued. But at the same time as a national currency was secured, the altered banking system also had implications for debt management, ending the elaborate system of statutory accounts.
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    State practice and rural smallholder production : late-colonialism and the agrarian doctrine in Papua New Guinea, 1942-1969 : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Development Studies at Massey University
    (Massey University, 1999) Wright, Huntley Lloyd Rayne
    This study shows why and how late-colonial state practice in Papua New Guinea became synonymous with the development of a centrally regulated scheme of rural household production. It is suggested that the origins of the scheme lie not in its supposed pre-adaptiveness to previously existing ('non-capitalist') social relations, nor in its external, 'subsidising' effect on capital accumulation. Rather, its origins lie in the changing politico-economic realities of post-Second World War global capitalism and the corresponding shift to social trusteeship which, in transmitting metropolitan ideas on 'full employment' to the colonies, sought to reconcile indigenous welfare with expanded rural commodity production. Key objects of analysis include the late-colonial state, the household labour process and the agrarian doctrine of development. It is argued that a serious weakness in much of the literature on Papua New Guinea is the tendency to conflate the distinction between immanent and intentional development, so that the negative dimension implicit in the latter is excluded from discussion. Whereas the immanent implies an unintentional process, unfolding outside the regulatory capacity of the colonial state, the intentional refers to the conscious application of state power to ameliorate the negative consequences explicit in the former - poverty and the emergence of a relative surplus population. The present study seeks to recapture the negative dimension of the late-colonial intent to develop in Papua New Guinea. It is argued that the post-war ascendancy of household production is given in the formation of an agrarian doctrine which, in positing the middle peasant as a developmental ideal, sought to use state policy to check landlessness by recasting the capital-labour relation in agriculture. The intent was to regenerate the 'old' within a welfarist agenda defined in opposition to the "landless proletariat". Securing this process was a fundamental shift in the relationship between the colonial state and international capital. In the period 1919-1939 the movement of capital was essentially spontaneous, albeit subject to regulatory controls on land and labour. However, for the period under consideration the "order of intervention was reversed". Reflecting a major increase in power and capacity, the colonial state "assembled capital" to be superintended as part of the Administration's plan for expanding indigenous commodity production. It is in this recasting of late-colonial state practice that the dominance of household production is situated.