Regulation
As at 30 June 2004, the makeup of retail outlets was stated in New Zealand Post's 2004 annual report as (minimum as per government regulations in brackets):
- PostShops (including franchised PostShops and TakeNote outlets): 323 (minimum 240)
- Post Centres: 698 (no minimum)
- Total: 1,021 (minimum 880)
The Lange government's Postal Services Act 1987 also reduced the monopoly of New Zealand Post to a limit of $1.75 and 500 grams. It was gradually reduced to 80 cents in December 1991 until the 1998 legislation took effect.
The Postal Services Act 1998, passed by a National-New Zealand First coalition government, repealed the 1987 Act. The new law provides for any person to become a registered postal operator by applying to the Ministry of Economic Development. Registration as a postal operator is compulsory for letters with postage less than 80 cents. Despite the Act, government regulation of the company still requires it to maintain certain minimum service levels, such as frequency of delivery.
New Zealand Post's exclusive right to be the 'sole operator' under the Act for the purposes of the Universal Postal Union expired on 1 April 2003. For practical purposes, this meant another postal operator could theoretically issue stamps identified simply as 'New Zealand' with UPU membership. At around the same time, New Zealand Post adopted a fern-shaped identifying mark on its postage stamps, to be used on the majority of its future issues.
Read more about this topic: New Zealand Post
Famous quotes containing the word regulation:
“Lots of white people think black people are stupid. They are stupid themselves for thinking so, but regulation will not make them smarter.”
—Stephen Carter (b. 1954)
“Nothing can be more real, or concern us more, than our own sentiments of pleasure and uneasiness; and if these be favourable to virtue and unfavourable to vice, no more can be requisite to the regulation of our conduct and behavior.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Nothing changes my twenty-six years in the military. I continue to love it and everything it stands for and everything I was able to accomplish in it. To put up a wall against the military because of one regulation would be doing the same thing that the regulation does in terms of negating people.”
—Margarethe Cammermeyer (b. 1942)