Mike Moore has a opinion piece in today's New Zealand Herald, again calling for a constitutional convention.

We've received a number of messages regarding a flag-burning protest by "republicans" today, reported tonight by TVNZ. Firstly, the "Republican Party" has nothing to do with the Republican Movement; we are a separate organisation.

Colin James makes an excellent point in his Waitangi Day column (not online yet):

Today is a day drenched in symbols -- for those who go looking for them. For most it is just Saturday. We don't think enough of our "national" day to make it a weekday holiday.

For some reason, the media expects the Republican Movement to put forward names for who our first head of state in a republic should be. The decision isn't up to us - although it is interesting that when the question is asked of the general public, they usually name Governors-General and, to a lesser extent, former politicians.

The Listener's Pamela Stirling continues her bizarre attempts at defending the monarchy in this week's edition.

The most important factor working in favour of the survival of the monarchy in New Zealand is the general public's apathy towards it, and any proposals for change. In the afterglow of Prince William's tour, Dr Paul Moon, The Waikato Times, Chris Trotter and numerous other commentators have broadly expressed this sentiment as "why bother with a republic?". The other caveats are "the monarchy is popular" or "nothing will change". There's also the wider claim that there's no republic debate whatsoever (as Ali Ikram sort of claimed), something that also serves proponents of the status quo. This appears to be the strategy of Monarchy New Zealand - don't engage in the debate, claim no-one's interested, while vociferously trying to rebuild the monarchy's flagging, inactive support base.

On the surface, "why bother?" seems compelling. Questions such as: what's the urgency? what's the point? what's the need? kill off any rational discussion. The upside is that the argument "it ain't broke, don't fix it" has been sidelined from the public discourse - although Jim Hopkins and Garth George tried to make the claim, most people see through their thin rhetoric and red herrings. The downside is that it's a difficult to refute, because it's not an argument or a refined piece of rhetoric - it's simply an abrogation; a way of shutting down a discussion the proponent would rather not have.