Peter Hamilton wrote yesterday in an opinion piece an important observation:

In Britain, the Queen is accorded great respect. The British prime minister briefs her personally each week on the affairs of state, she regularly receives state papers and is kept fully informed of key issues affecting the country. Simply put, the Queen is “in the know”.
In New Zealand, that does not happen. The prime minister does not regularly brief the governor-general, and the governor-general does not see state papers (other than the bills of Parliament she is expected to sign into law, or the speech she is expected to deliver on behalf of the Queen when Parliament is opened). She is pretty much left in the dark.

Peter is well positioned to comment on these issues, having hosted governors-general in his appointments as New Zealand’s ambassador to Germany and high commissioner to Singapore.

Peter’s column restates that it is the constitutional duty of ministers to keep Governors-General informed, something stated on the Governor-General’s website and in the Cabinet Manual. We know that historically this hasn’t happened - former Governor-General Sir Paul Reeves famously publicly stated:

"I had a little sense of being left alone and felt that I needed to be taken into the loop more, or be taken seriously."

A number of other more recent governors-general have made similar observations.

We often hear how “dangerous” it would be for there to be a prime minister, leading the largest party (or group of parties) in our democratically elected parliament, and a head of state, either elected by parliament with a supermajority or directly.

Prime Minister David Lange and Sir Paul Reeves in 1985. Image from the National Library.

In fact, the ability of our head of state, independent of the Queen, to demand they are kept informed of government decisions. We know from other parliamentary democracies that follow the Westminster tradition that this happens regularly. This is a subtle, but clear benefit of change.