ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how central government went about implementing its 'policy goal' of internalizing the environmental costs of the use, development, and protection of natural and physical resources, and the main 'policy instruments' for doing: system change, mandate, inducements and capacity-building. It assesses the Government's commitment to resourcing environmental agencies to ensure that their actions led to the successful implementation of the environmental mandate in local government. The chapter examines the financial resources provided by central government over the past decade to the Ministry for the Environment and Department of Conservation to facilitate plan-making. The devolution policies of the Labour Government had already met resistance from the increasingly powerful liberal democrats within its ranks when the National Party won power in the elections of late 1990. Governance in the 1990s was driven by the efficiency principles of managerialism and principal-agent contractual arrangements, accompanied by cost-cutting.
