Dom Post on Republicanism

Today’s Dom Post editorial make my criticism of the royal no-show seem very restrained. Some extracts:

No one expected the Queen, an 81-year-old, to fly halfway around the world at short notice, but it was surely not beyond her gift to dispatch one of the skirt-chasing, dope-smoking minor royals to the Antipodes to personally represent her. Even better, her heir Prince Charles could have been torn from the grasp of his new wife to do honour to this country’s most famous citizen.

New Zealanders born since World War II tend to view Prince Charles as an irrelevance, which, to be fair, is much as he appears to view this country. What useful purpose is served by a man who spends his days opening church fairs and requires an army of flunkies to dress him and put toothpaste on his toothbrush?

But if the prince harbours ambitions of succeeding his mother as New Zealand’s head of state, he has missed a golden opportunity to change the way he is perceived. What better way to demonstrate his commitment to New Zealand than to drop whatever he was doing and fly halfway round the world to pay his respects to a man who brought glory to Britain as well as New Zealand?

… If the royal family wished to retain its constitutional role in New Zealand, it should have been represented in Auckland. More than anyone else, Sir Ed shaped the way we think of ourselves and the way the world thinks of us.

The fact the royals did not attend underlines yet again the tenuous nature of the links between New Zealand and the royal family. It is only a matter of time before the evolving nature of the relationship is formally recognised by New Zealand becoming a republic.

The Dom Post is of course right.  There are of course arguments both for and against keeping the British Monarch as our Head of State.  But by not turning up, they have weakened one of the arguments in favour of their retention.  To retain support they have to have a presence in NZ.  This has happened in the past with regular visits, Prince Edward teaching here etc.  But to miss this occasion was unwise – maybe the NZ Government failed to make clear how desirable attendance would be.

But if the role of the Head of State becomes reduced to merely rubberstamping the PM’s nomination for Governor-General every five years, then more and more people will say what are the advantages to NZ from this arrangement.