The Gisborne Herald ran a online poll with an unsurprising result, given the poll was self-selecting and specifically mentioned the Queen and the jubilee.
What’s really interesting though is the responses they had to the poll. They’re a parade of the most common monarchy myths. Here’s our responses to them:
“What advantage does anyone think becoming a republic brings”
There are numerous advantages, but the most obvious (and practical) is that we would have a head of state of our own - someone who, as many people have articulated, is actually able to represent New Zealand as head of state overseas. We don’t have that now. We’ve outlined the many other reasons (and advantages) of change here.
“If you think it would remove the British from this island you are so very wrong.”
We hear these sorts of comments often, and they’re very odd, but point to what we suspect is an underlying motivation for many people - the idea that without the monarchy, we don’t have any historic links to Britain, the need to cling on to those links. That goes to our confidence as a country in ourselves.
“The best a politician can aspire to is First Minister to the Crown.”
This is an interesting one - it seems to be a popular line in Canada of all places. By “First Minister to the Crown” the commenter probably means “Prime Minister” which is not accurate - the best a politician could aspire to is, of course, Governor-General, which has happened with a number of politicians in New Zealand over the years (think Tizard or Holyoake). That doesn’t meant that either did a bad job of course.
This antipathy towards politicians and the political process is popular, of course. Sadly it featured very strongly in Australia’s 1999 republic referendum (e.g. “Vote No to the politician’s republic”) hence the reason why it’s a popular line for the pro-monarchy camp to use. In truth, monarchy makes politicians powerful, by providing them with a petticoat to cover for their actions.
The Crown represents all of us, not a politician.
This is a straight-up myth. It’s a contortion of republican philosophy (i.e. government by consent of the governed) onto the monarchy. The Crown doesn’t “represent” all of us - in a legal sense, “the Crown” is just the name of the government. And sure, in our representative democracy the ministers of the crown are *meant* to represent us, but the Crown does not. That’s not how constitutional monarchy evolved. The Royals represent nothing but inherited political privilege for a small wealthy family.
Do you think by leaving the Commonwealth we will be better off?
Ah yes, this classic one. It’s completely incorrect of course - the majority of members of the Commonwealth today are republics. This myth is repeated so often we’ve created our own page on it.