Our framework: development of a NZ republic

In my last post, I introduced our draft policy statement.  This was something the Executive has developed, following agreement at our last AGM, and I'm now summarising it for the benefit of our blog readers. I'm doing so in two series of posts.  This is my first post of the first series summarising our framework for an NZ republic.

The framework section of our draft policy document is broken into four sub-sections.  I describe each in a separate blog post. My four posts will describe the relevant part of our framework before including, in italics, a description of why we've adopted this part. Here is the first of my framework posts.

1. The development of a republic.  
We believe New Zealand should only become a republic through a democratic process, the details of which I'll describe in my second series of posts.  If approved by voters, we call for the country to become a parliamentary republic.  Under it, we'd still have a Parliament that's responsible for writing our laws, including a Prime Minister who leads it.  Replacing our Monarch and Governor General, though, we'd have a non-executive Head of State who's powers don't involve writing law, but are largely limited to signing off the laws passed by our Parliament.

To become a parliamentary republic, our country has only to replace our Monarch and Governor-General with our own Head of State.  This makes it the republican model that's closest to what we have currently.  Under this system, our Head of State would be a figurehead for the country who's outside of normal parliamentary political processes: they would be better able to represent the country and its people than either the Prime Minister or the Governor General (under our current constitutional structure).

My second post on in my framework series can be read here.  The Movement has a page devoted to describing its policies, including the full draft policy statement, here.