✨ Historical Commemoration
2092 NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE 15 JUNE 1990
A MESSAGE FROM THE SECRETARY
Dear Subscribers and Users
It is with pleasure that this Department recognises 150 years of the gazetting of official Government information in New Zealand.
The first Government communications to be gazetted appeared in the New Zealand Advertiser and Bay of Islands Gazette on 15 June 1840. This edition contained an announcement "that all communications from this Government inserted in the New Zealand Advertiser and Bay of Islands Gazette are to be deemed official."
The need to publish official Government notices and proclamations to inform the public and keep an official record was apparent from the outset of Government in New Zealand. As an interim measure the first of Governor Hobson’s notices and proclamations, including the Treaty of Waitangi, were printed on the Church Missionary Society press by William Colenso. It became necessary however, to make other arrangements for the printing of Government notices with the growth of Hobson’s administration and the need to relieve the Church Missionary Society of what had become an onerous task. The New Zealand Advertiser and Bay of Islands Gazette took over the job and a gazette format was adopted which has remained largely unaltered to this day.
The gazetting of notices in The New Zealand Advertiser and Bay of Islands Gazette only lasted a few months as the paper was suspended after its editor became increasingly critical of Hobson’s administration and refused to publish Government notices. Other arrangements were made temporarily to gazette information with first Colenso and then Eager, the former publisher of the New Zealand Advertiser. In July 1841 the Government signed a contract with the Auckland Newspaper and General Printing Co, and the New Zealand Government Gazette No. 1 was published on 7 July 1841. This publication was the first edition of what we now know as the present New Zealand Gazette.
In line with New Zealand’s 150th birthday celebrations I think it is fitting to commemorate 150 years of the Department’s role in gazetting Government notices by this special edition which features some of the first notices to appear in the New Zealand Advertiser and Bay of Islands Gazette. In effect this Gazette was the forerunner to today’s New Zealand Gazette.
I am pleased to be associated with the New Zealand Gazette in this very special year for all New Zealanders.
Yours faithfully
![Signature]
P.W. BOAG
Secretary for Internal Affairs
PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY OF DEPARTMENT OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS:
V. R. WARD, GOVERNMENT PRINTER, WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND—1990
ISSN 0111-5650
Free issue
PDF embedding disabled (Crown copyright)
View this page online at:
VUW Te Waharoa —
NZ Gazette 1990, No 97
NZLII —
NZ Gazette 1990, No 97
✨ LLM interpretation of page content
📰 Message from the Secretary Commemorating 150 Years of the New Zealand Gazette
📰 NZ GazetteHistorical Commemoration, New Zealand Gazette, 150th Anniversary, Government Notices, Treaty of Waitangi
- P. W. Boag, Author of the message
- P.W. BOAG, Secretary for Internal Affairs
- V. R. WARD, Government Printer