Book Launch: Shaping Aotearoa/New Zealand by Colin James

Join Unity Books and political journalist Colin James as he launches his most recent book, Shaping Aotearoa/New Zealand: The Revolutionaries Who Reworked a Nation and its Culture.

About the book:
In the late 1980s, New Zealand underwent a ‘quiet revolution’ – quiet only in that it didn’t involve guns and physical violence. It was a revolution of values. A remnant colony shucked off its deference to empire, opened its economy, liberalised its society and mores and set course towards a self-defining bi-cultural Aotearoa/New Zealand. This was an adventure into ‘new territory’. Who drove this revolution? What drove their restless urge for change? What New Zealand did these upstarts inherit? What did they do when they supplanted their elders? What Aotearoa/New Zealand did they leave behind and what of the future? This book explores answers to these questions.

About the author:
Colin James was a political journalist from 1969 to 2019 (except for four years in London in the mid-1970s and political columnist of the year in 2003). He wrote weekly columns in a number of newspapers over those decades until December 2017 and then a few articles until May 2019.

He edited National Business Review from January 1983 to December 1986. He was associated with the Institute of Policy Studies then the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies at Victoria University of Wellington from 1995 to 2020. He has written nine books: Shaping Aotearoa/New Zealand. The revolutionaries who reworked a nation and its culture, early 2026, a 50-year political, cultural, social and economic history, 1967-2017; Unquiet Time. Aotearoa/New Zealand in a fast-changing world, 2017; National at 80. Turbulence to Stability, 2017, a history of the National party; New Territory. The transformation of New Zealand 1984-92, 1992, charting the period of radical change 1984-92; The Quiet Revolution. Turbulence and Transition in contemporary New Zealand, 1986, describing the lead-up to and the early period of, the 1984-92 radical changes; and The Making of a New Zealand Prime Minister, 1973, on the rise to power of the third Labour government, and three books backgrounding the lead-up to the 1987, 1990 and 1993 elections. Other publications include several editions of an election guide for journalists in the early period of proportional representation, six books or monographs for the Institute of Policy Studies, including editing Building the Constitution, 2000 and The tie that binds. The relationship between ministers and chief executives, 2002 and chapters in a number of books.

He has contributed to many papers, seminars, conferences and symposiums across New Zealand, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States and has held several university fellowships, including JD Stout Research Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington in 1991 and inaugural New Zealand Fellow at the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies at Melbourne University in 1993.

He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Victoria University in 2008 and was made a Companion of the Order of New Zealand (CNZM) in 2023.

He is a past chair of Motu Economic and Public Policy Research. He is a fellow of the Institute of Public Administration and a life member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery and E Tu Union. Until 2020 he made presentations on the strategic political, policy and political-economy environment to companies, industry associations, government departments and other groups and from 1990 to 2013 was managing director of The Hugo Group, a forecasting panel with a membership of more than 100 medium to large corporates.