There is universal suffrage for those 18 years of age and older. In 1996 the country’s long-standing simple plurality (“first past the post”) system was replaced with the mixed member proportional (MMP) method, in which each voter has two votes, one for an electorate (district) candidate and one for a political party. A party’s representation in the legislature is proportional to the number of party votes it receives. The new system also enlarged the Parliament to 120 seats—71 elected (including 7 reserved for Māori) from the electorates and 49 from party lists.

While the MMP system has given a boost to small parties, the New Zealand National Party and the New Zealand Labour Party remain the country’s two major political players. They each have distinct foundations. National’s traditional support base is in rural and affluent urban districts and among those involved in business and management. Labour’s is in trade unions and the urban blue-collar workforce. Over time, however, both parties have broadened their electoral bases. Labour has gained the support of some areas of the business sector and has attracted more professionals, while the National Party has had some success among higher-paid workers in key small-town and provincial districts. Increasingly, ideological differentiation between the two parties has become complex, and intraparty differences in such areas as economic policy have often been greater than they have been between parties.

MMP has meant that governments are usually coalitions of one of the main parties with one or more of the smaller parties that hold seats in Parliament. In the early 21st century those included the Green Party, ACT New Zealand, New Zealand First, and the Māori Party.

In 1893, after a multidecade campaign by woman suffragists, New Zealand became the first country in the world to extend the vote to all its female citizens. It was not until 1919, however, that women could stand for election, and few women were elected to Parliament before the 1980s. The women’s movement of the 1970s and ’80s, however, led an increasing number of women to enter the mainstream political arena, and by the 21st century New Zealand had a notably high rate of female representation in national office. The country’s first female prime minister, National Party leader Jennifer Shipley, held office from 1997 to 1999. She was succeeded by Labour leader Helen Clark (1999–2008). Another woman, Jacinda Ardern, of the Labour Party, became prime minister in 2017.

Security

Participation in the military, called the New Zealand Defence Force, is voluntary, and individuals must be at least 17 years old to join. The country maintains a relatively small military force, with an army and a small naval fleet. Its defense expenditure as a percentage of the GDP is well below the world average. The military is deployed overseas mainly in peacekeeping forces. Law enforcement is the responsibility of the New Zealand Police, a cabinet-level department largely independent (with respect to law enforcement) of executive authority.

Health and welfare

New Zealand has one of the oldest social security systems in the world. Noncontributory old-age pensions paid for from government revenues were introduced in 1898. Pensions for widows and miners followed soon after, and child allowances were introduced in the 1920s. In 1938 the New Zealand government introduced what was then the most extensive system of pensions and welfare in the world, which included free hospital treatment, free pharmaceutical service, and heavily subsidized treatment by medical practitioners.

Since then the system has been eroded in some respects but greatly extended in others. Doctors’ fees, though still subsidized by the state, have become relatively high. Many people invest in private medical insurance and seek treatment in private hospitals instead of in public hospitals. There is still a universal pension system, called New Zealand Superannuation, in which all citizens over age 65 receive an income that is based on the average annual after-tax wage and adjusted annually for cost-of-living increases.

Other financial-support measures include tax credits for families and benefits for single parents, invalids, and the sick. Under the Accident Compensation Act of 1972, all persons suffering personal injury from any sort of accident, whether at work or not, can receive compensation for disability and loss of earnings, and they are covered by insurance for any medical or other treatment; in return they waive the right to sue for damages. The act led to the establishment of the government-run Accident Compensation Corporation, to which all New Zealanders must pay premiums and which handles claims. The cost of accident compensation is high, which leads to occasional political debate as to the best method of handling the risk of accident.

Housing

Home ownership has long been an ambition of most New Zealanders, but after reaching a high in the early 1990s—when nearly three-fourths of all households lived in owner-occupied domiciles—the rate of home ownership dropped steadily as housing costs rose. By the first decade of the 21st century, only about two-thirds of households owned their dwellings. State agencies provide limited financial assistance toward home purchases and renovation work, as well as subsidized rental accommodations for those on low incomes. The state also subsidizes pensioner accommodations through local authorities.

The housing stock in most towns and cities is made up primarily of single-family detached houses, reflecting a traditional housing preference for stand-alone family homes. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, however, concomitant with decreasing home ownership and increased urban sprawl, the trend was toward greater density in urban areas, an increased number of multifamily dwellings and apartment buildings in the larger cities, and smaller section (lot) sizes.

Education

Education in New Zealand is free between ages 5 and 19; it is compulsory between ages 6 and 16. In practice almost all children enter primary school at age five, although many of them have already begun their education in preschools, all of which are subsidized by the state. Education is administered by the Ministry of Education. Elected boards of trustees control all of the primary and secondary state schools. There are also more than 100 private primary and secondary schools, most of them run by the Roman Catholic Church or some other religious group. They may apply to receive state subsidies and must meet certain standards of teaching and accommodation. State primary schools are coeducational, but there are still many single-sex secondary schools. Most private secondary schools are single-sex.

Universities, polytechnics, and private training establishments make up the higher-education sector. There are eight universities—including the University of Otago, Dunedin (1869), the University of Canterbury (1873), the University of Auckland (1883), and Victoria University of Wellington (1899). There are some two dozen polytechnic institutes, among them Open Polytechnic, which provides certificate- and degree-level education via distance learning throughout New Zealand and in other countries.

Students pay partial tuition fees but can borrow the cost of these fees from the government, which also subsidizes tuition costs by direct grants to polytechnics and universities. The fees that institutions may charge students are limited by the government. Entry to the universities has traditionally been open, with admission based on school-leaving qualifications or, in the case of mature students, age. However, the rising cost of tertiary education, along with caps on tuition fees and government constraints on the number of students it will fund, has led to more-stringent admission requirements, especially for degree study.

Education has been strongly emphasized since the early years of the colony, and virtually the entire population is literate. A correspondence school caters to primary- and secondary-level students living in remote places, and various continuing education and adult education centres provide opportunities for lifelong education.