Events
- 16 February: Mikhail Lermontov sinks in the Marlborough Sounds.
- 26 March: Jim Bolger replaces Jim McLay as leader of the National Party.
- 21 June: The Wanganui Herald publishes its last issue. The paper started in 1865 as The Evening Herald.
- 9 July: Parliament passes the Homosexual Law Reform Bill, 49 votes to 44.
- 8 August: The Homosexual Law Reform Act comes into force.
- 1 October: GST is introduced at a rate of 10%.
- 22 November: Pope John Paul II visits New Zealand for two days.
- December: The Royal Commission on the Electoral System produces a report recommending the adoption of a mixed member proportional electoral system.
- 13 December: The Constitution Act is passed, ending the right of the British Parliament to pass laws on behalf of New Zealand.
Read more about this topic: 1986 In New Zealand
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and joy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us; every experience had that degree of directness and absoluteness which joy and sadness still have in the mind of a child”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“That’s the great danger of sectarian opinions, they always accept the formulas of past events as useful for the measurement of future events and they never are, if you have high standards of accuracy.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)