In my recent Insight column, I outlined the case for Australia remaining a constitutional monarchy. The same arguments, by extension, apply to New Zealand.
As for the arguments against becoming a republic, well, they are many — but few are better than Republicans themselves. (By which I mean the antipodean activists, not the American party, of course.) The Australian Republican Movement is headed by Malcolm Turnbull and Peter FitzSimons… well, need I say more?
Then there are the truly odious, vulturine rantings of the Greens, whose first reactions to the death of Queen Elizabeth II was to virtually dance on her grave before she is even in it. One and all, the Greens took to social media to berate the late monarch as a bloodthirsty “coloniser”, and declare that the most appropriate way to commemorate her death was to cast the monarchy into Marx’s dustbin of history.
In a rare display, even Jacinda Ardern conducted herself with more restraint.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday that her government will not be pursuing any moves toward changing New Zealand to a republic following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Of course, like her Tweedledee-twin across the Tasman, “Each-Way Albo”, Ardern is less acting with statesman-like respect than simply playing grubby politics.
Ardern admitted she thought New Zealand would eventually become a republic, and it would probably happen within her lifetime, but that there were more pressing issues for her government to contend with.
And that’s the simple fact of it: both Ardern and Anthony Albanese are itching to push the republic barrow, but they’re smart enough to realise what a politically suicidal move it would be, right now. With the Queen not even laid to rest, chasing a republic referendum would make them look like the opportunistic vultures they are.
More importantly, both are in too much other doo-doo to risk it. Albanese has his work cut out enough, with his divisive “Indigenous Voice” referendum. Trying to push a republic referendum at the same time would make “Mr 32%” look shifty and greedy. Ardern is in enough hot water with Three Waters and He Puapua already widely seen as undermining New Zealand’s democracy.
But trying to foist a republic would also throw a primed grenade into the minefield of Waitangi politics.
New Zealand is in a fairly unique position, to do with the structure of its founding Treaty of Waitangi. The treaty, signed in 1840, was an agreement between the British Crown and a large number of Maori chiefs. Today the treaty is widely accepted to be a constitutional document that establishes and guides the relationship between the Crown and Maori.
A republic would erase one of the two parties to the Treaty. What happens then?
Some legal academics state that the treaty would be unaffected by New Zealand becoming a republic, as the new head of state would inherit the Crown’s responsibilities.
Others argue the many different facets of the Crown currently at work in the treaty reconciliation processes would be potentially difficult to replicate, and replacing the Crown would have to mean designing a constitutional process that gives that relationship its appropriate central place. New Zealand would need a new language of statehood to differentiate between the state, nation, community and the government of the day.
Spectator Australia
Given successive governments’ and powerful Iwi’s recent history of generously “re-interpreting” the Treaty to fundamentally alter New Zealand’s democratic institutions and impose what looks little different to apartheid, a great many voters would be chary of suddenly having to negotiate an entirely new agreement.
Because they will have no doubt who negotiations will favour.
And it won’t be ordinary Kiwis.
