In 1994, then-Prime Minister Jim Bolger said he believed New Zealand could cut ties with the British monarchy, and become a republic by the year 2000.
Although he succeeded in ending the awarding of British Honours in New Zealand in 1996, and firmly advocated replacing the Privy Council as the country’s highest appellate Court—successfully executed by the subsequent Clark Government—17 years later Mrs Windsor remains the symbolic head of state.
Writing in the 1940s, the foundation Professor of Political Science at Victoria, Leslie Lipson observed of New Zealand’s political culture: “abstractions, theories, ideals—these are of little account or interest unless they can be immediately applied. Utility is the national yardstick.” The cultural pragmatism Lipson recognised endures, and goes a long way towards explaining why Bolger’s push for full and final independence remains unfulfilled. The question persists: Why, when New Zealand is already a de-facto republic, do we need to officially cut ties with the monarchy?
With the Government having initiated a review of our constitution, it is with deference to the aforementioned cultural reality that I advocate the prospect of a ‘soft’ republic.
The soft republic approach would see New Zealand’s system of government move to a parliamentary republic, with the current hereditary head-of-state replaced with a New Zealander chosen by New Zealanders, whether by direct election, or the more likely option of parliamentary appointment. Under the parliamentary republic model, this new head-of-state would retain the same powers, functions and responsibilities of the current Governor-General, but would symbolically reflect New Zealand, rather than Mother England.
As Victoria University law lecturer, Dean Knight argues, under this system we would have a head-of-state who retains the valued ceremonial and community functions of the current Governor-General, but would better represent and reflect the values of multi-cultural Aotearoa, and that’s the crux of the argument.
“The Royal Family do not represent us. They represent something different, and whether they be pop-stars, or champions of goodness, they lack the essential Kiwiness. While the office of the Governor-General has evolved to manifest many of these Kiwi values, there is a limit to which it can continue to evolve when it is a subordinate role anchored abroad in London.”
Often submitted as an obstacle to achieving full independence by way of its essence as an agreement between iwi and hapu on one side and Queen Victoria on the other, the Treaty of Waitangi need not be an insurmountable hurdle. As it stands, the New Zealand Executive has long assumed responsibility for meeting Treaty obligations (to varying degrees, of course). Essentially, a soft republic would retain the status quo, with the transition to a republic, initiated largely independent of wider constitutional reform.
Of course, an optimistic—or less-soft—view of the potential surrounding republicanism, is that it would allow, and facilitate a wider debate resolving the future role and place of the Treaty. This, as part of, and along side, the codification of New Zealand’s Constitution, would be a more ambitious approach to be sure, but an approach that would benefit the nation as a whole.
Assuredly, advocates of republicanism are unlikely to be beneficiaries of the current constitutional review. Bill English, while accepting that the panel will review the republican debate, has explicitly stated that the Government “is not advancing the prospect of a republic.” This is hardly surprising when the current Prime Minister seems to hold an unusual affinity for the monarchy, working to strengthen the old symbolic ties to the extent that he reintroduced knighthoods to the New Zealand Honours system.
However, the republican question is shrouded in inevitability—something even Mr Key will admit, even if he’s happy to leave it for the Sixth Labour Government to address. As Victoria’s Dr. Jon Johansson argues, “It’s a natural rite of passage that our history has inexorably been leading us towards.
“Britain, the old ‘Mother Country’ (for fewer and fewer of us), abandoned us several decades ago, to better put its own house in order (or at least to pursue its own perceived self-interest, which didn’t include providing continued guaranteed access for our protein-based products), so it is time we simply acknowledged this reality and did the same.”