Prime Minister of New Zealand ministerial power; in 1912 Thomas Mackenzie was the last prime minister to lose power through an unsuccessful confidence motion in the House of Representatives. One change brought about by the First World War was direct participation in governing the British Empire. Previously, New Zealand prime ministers had attended occasional colonial and imperial conferences, but they otherwise communicated with London through the governor (a position then appointed by the British government). In 1917, however, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George offered the New Zealand prime minister a seat in the Imperial War Cabinet, the British Empire's wartime coordinating body. In 1919,
Acting prime minister to an outgoing Prime Minister following an electoral defeat, and who by convention does not implement new policies or an interim Prime Minister who is appointed to perform a similar role to a caretaker Prime Minister, but who is typically not a Prime Minister at the time of being appointed. Within a Commonwealth nation, the office of Acting Prime Minister, like that of Prime Minister is found only in convention, and is not legislated. The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, or an equivalent ministry, drafts, reviews and publishes any formal conventions (though these are expressly non binding in a