Something Thoughtful

  Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.

                         

                                                     REPUBLIC ANYONE?

I am writing this brief think-piece on the weekend that a man of German lineage and of no outstanding skills has been crowned King of England. I have, a number of times on this blog, vented my opinions on British monarchy and its relevance to New Zealand (see, for example, the posting Goodbye Queenie ). I don’t wish once again to rake over in detail my objections – they are based mainly on the lunacy of having as our official head-of-state somebody who lives on the other side of the world and who has no hand in how our laws are framed here. In the UK itself there is a rising percentage of people who lean to republicanism, but for the moment the majority still favour a monarchy and they are welcome to it if that is what they want. As far as I can see, the main functions of royalty in Britain now are (a.) to attract tourists’ money by means of pageantry (Royal coronations and weddings, trooping the colours, changing of the guard etc.) (b) to provide gossip for the tabloids, social media, “women’s” magazines etc. and (c) to make anodyne speeches (written for them, of course) in times of stress, or in opening utilities, schools, hospitals etc. On the whole, monarchy in Britain is harmless, though there is the problem of royal privilege allowing members of “the Firm” to avoid the legal consequences of their actions (Prince Andrew is allowed to pay off a woman whom he had allegedly violated with 20,000,000 pounds taken from public taxation) and there is the reality of royalty still holding, rent free, huge estates for their personal profit.

But what about New Zealand? We still have a Governor-General who supposedly represents the British monarch, though for half-a-century now all Governors-General have been New Zealand-born. The G.-G. more-or-less does some of the things the British monarch and his tribe do in the UK. The G.-G signs off laws that have been passed by our unicameral parliament, but this is a mere formality – a G.-G. has never blocked a law from being passed (there would be a huge uproar if he or she did). The process is merely a matter of giving some formality to what has already been written as law. And the G.-G. does the soothing business of making speeches, opening buildings, and bestowing awards and medals on people who have been nominated by a committee.  

I am not ridiculing this function (somebody has to do it) but it would be easy to replace the G.-G. with a president on the Irish lines – that is, a president who does not have executive power to make or guide policy but who acts as head-of-state for formal ceremonies etc. (It is understood that policy is made by the parliamentary majority). This emphatically does NOT mean a president on American or some other republics’ lines – not somebody whose election is a very expensive and contested matter. More than once, I have heard royalists argue that having a monarch is cheap compared with having an elected president whose election is a very expensive and contested matter. But there are many varieties of republic. I am envisaging for New Zealand a republic in which a president is appointed by a bi-partisan panel [or multi-partisan panel, given that more than two parties are represented in our parliament] and who is clearly not an appointee who has previously been involved in politics. In other words a person as “neutral” on political matters as it is possible to be. Ideally, such an appointee would fulfil the role of president for a limited term and would have to have been endorsed by at least three-quarters of the appointing panel.

By the way, the British monarchy does NOT come cheap. It costs the public purse many millions each year in unpaid taxes and unearned revenue – not to mention over-long lists of members of the extended royal tribe who are paid handsomely by royal pensions, even if they undertake none of the duties that the monarch’s immediate family undertake. Even some royalists are pondering whether the monarchy should be “scaled down”.

The main problem blocking New Zealand’s becoming a republic is, of course, the Treaty of Waitangi and the widespread Maori concept of it – that is, its being seen as a direct contract between the British monarch and the Maori people. As you may have read in my review of Bain Attwood’s A Bloody Difficult Subject, the treaty is best regarded as a “necessary myth”, that is, something that was historically nothing like the way it is now interpreted but which is useful in helping settle and amend Maori grievances. What people mistakenly believe are the rights bestowed by the treaty are in fact rights bestowed by recent legislation made in New Zealand. Even so, this could be a stumbling block on the way to New Zealand’s becoming a republic.