Terms and conditions
1. Acceptable use
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) welcomes your comments on our blogs. However the decision to publish comments received via this site is at MFAT’s discretion. Comments are not automatically published but are checked first before publishing. We will not edit your comments. However, comments that do not follow the acceptable use guidelines outlined below will not be published.
The purpose of the acceptable use guidelines is to ensure that this is a forum where people are able to contribute their views without exposure to abuse or offensive or otherwise inappropriate content. By submitting a comment to this site you agree to abide by the acceptable use guidelines.
If you have questions about our acceptable use policy or about the checking of comments, please contact us.
1.1 Conduct
Your comment should be relevant to the issues being discussed. Please keep your comments short as we will not publish items longer than 1000 words.
You must provide your name when submitting a comment. Protect your personal privacy and that of others by not including personal information or contact details of either yourself or of others in the body of your comment.
You must represent your own views and not impersonate or falsely represent any other person.
No reference should be made to the personality of other participants nor should attacks be made on an individual’s character. Do not use obscene or offensive language. Do not be abusive, harass or threaten others. Do not make comments that are prohibited by anti-discrimination law.
Do not post material that infringes the intellectual property rights of others.
No advertising or promotion is allowed except where it is for an event, publication or similar item that has direct relevance to the subject of discussion.
Comments which include one or more links to websites will only be accepted where they share knowledge directly related to the topic of discussion. They will not be published if they have been included to promote commercial interests.
This is a Government website and comments made for party political purposes will not be published.
1.2 Legal liability
You are legally responsible for what you write. By submitting a comment you undertake to indemnify the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade against any liability arising from breach of confidentiality or copyright, or any obscene, defamatory, seditious, blasphemous or other actionable statement you may make.
2. Privacy
2.1 Site visits
When you visit this website some data about the visit will be recorded on the server logs. We use this information to produce web statistics to help us improve the content and navigation of the website. The information that gets collected is:
- server addresses
- top level domain names (for example .com, .govt, .nz, .uk etc)
- the date and time of visit to the site, and
- the pages accessed and documents downloaded.
We do not use this information to identify personal details about our site visitors.
2.2 Cookies
Cookies are only used on this site to maintain session state, not to store user information.
2.3 Blog comments
When submitting a comment to this blog you will be required to enter your name. Your name will be stored and published with the comment you have submitted.
When submitting a comment to this blog you will be required to enter an email address. Your email address will be stored with the comment you have submitted, but will not be displayed or shared for any purpose.
If you do not provide a name and email address your comment will not be published.
3. Disclaimer
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade makes every effort to ensure that the information published on this website is accurate. However MFAT cannot accept any liability for the accuracy of information published by the authors. Nor does MFAT accept any liability for loss or damage (including consequential loss or damage), however caused, which may be incurred by any person or organisation from reliance on or use of information on this site.
If you believe any information on the website is inaccurate please let us know.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade cannot accept any responsibility for any loss, disruption or damage to your data or your computer system which may occur while using material from the MFAT website.
3.1 Links to other websites
Links to other websites are provided for the benefit of our site users. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is not responsible for the content on the sites we link to and does not endorse any commercial organisations.
4. Copyright
All content on this website is subject to Crown copyright except where stated below. For permission to reproduce all or part of the content published under the name of the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade please contact:
Email: pdo@mfat.govt.nz
Phone: +64 4 439 8000
Fax: +64 4 439 8511
Certain images on the site have been reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright holders. We have credited the owner of the image on the appropriate page on the site.
5. Accessibility
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is committed to providing users with an accessible website. Please see the accessibility section for the ways in which we have made our site accessible to as many users as practical.
