Events
- 22 January: State funeral for Sir Edmund Hillary
- 5 April: A huge propane explosion at a coolstore in Tamahere kills firefighter senior station officer Derek Lovell, and seriously injures seven others.
- 5 June: A newly redesigned flag for the Governor General of New Zealand is flown for the first time at Government House, Auckland.
- 1 July: Rail transport network is renationalised as KiwiRail
- 11 July: Police Sergeant Derek Wootton (52) is struck and killed by a vehicle fleeing police, while laying road spikes at Titahi Bay.
- 1 August: Crown entities Land Transport New Zealand and Transit New Zealand merge to form the NZ Transport Agency
- 16 August: Dunedin Public Hospital is put in lockdown for a week after approximately 170 staff and patients fall ill to a norovirus outbreak, resulting in 2,300 appointments and procedures being delayed.
- 5 September: Fonterra advise Prime Minister Helen Clark of the 2008 baby milk scandal.
- 11 September: Undercover police Sergeant Don Wilkinson (47) is fatally shot in Mangere, after being discovered attempting to secretly fix a tracking device to a car.
- 8 November: John Key and the New Zealand National Party win the General Election. John Key is able to form a Government and in Helen Clark's speech she resigns as leader of the New Zealand Labour Party
- 9 November: Michael Cullen resigns as deputy leader of the Labour Party.
- 19 November: John Key is sworn in as Prime Minister
- 27 November: 2008 Air New Zealand A320 test flight crash. Air New Zealand A320 Airbus crashes into the Mediterranean during a test flight, killing five New Zealand and two German air crew.
Read more about this topic: 2008 In New Zealand
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“On the most profitable lie, the course of events presently lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness invites frankness, puts the parties on a convenient footing, and makes their business a friendship.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence. The most exact calculator has no prescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk the very next moment. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church, some Schelling or Cousin, I have died to all use of these new events that are born out of prolific time into multitude of life every hour. I am as bankrupt to whom brilliant opportunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and given the key to another to keep.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)