The Dominion Post supports the Head of State Referenda Bill
The Dominion Post endorses the Head of State Referenda Bill in today's editorial:
Like it or not, however, the decision to abandon the Privy Council will not be reversed. So is the country ready to take the next step on the road to becoming a republic, with a president instead of the vice-regal pair? New Zealanders will soon have another opportunity to have their say.
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The attempts to draw a correlation between appeals to the British Privy Council and republicanism are bizarre, and require a dose of revisionism mixed with nationalism in order to at least sound credible. The insinuation is that the end of pleas to the Privy Council marked the removal of a tool used by the British monarch to wield colonial power over New Zealand, further suggesting that so long as New Zealand's queen the same person as Britain’s queen, New Zealand will be denied full sovereignty, and only with the removal from the country of monarchy all-together will New Zealanders ever be free.
Putting aside the fact that New Zealand could be equally sovereign with someone else as monarch, the whole premise rests on deliberate ignorance of the Statute of Westminster and its ramifications. The petitions to the British Privy Council were maintained after 1947 by the free choice of New Zealand's government, as is the current personal union relationship New Zealand has with the Untied Kingdom and 15 other countries. The end of the former in no way signifies a move towards either independence or a republic, let alone both combined into one; the Supreme Court of New Zealand is the Queen of New Zealand's court, and it is distinct and independent of any British institution, regardless of the Queen of New Zealand and Queen of the United Kingdom being the same individual. If I'm wrong, and that is not the case, somebody had better tell the British that they live in a colony of New Zealand!
Well said.
The monarchy in NZ was at one of its heights of popularity and acceptance (across all strata) under the Windsors in the 1940's-50's a large period of which was after the adoption of the Statute of Westminster, arguably the biggest act of separation between The United Kingdom and New Zealand. Indeed acts of separation may well boost the appeal of the monarchy in the public estimation, as a symbol constancy in a changing world , as a link to NZ's own history and as a current symbolic link to the UK.
If the NZ parliament considers it to be a matter we should approach now, monarchists should welcome a referendum as an opportunity for the NZ voters to endorse our independent parliamenary constitutional monarchy.
If the NZ parliament considers it to be a matter we should approach now, monarchists should welcome a referendum as an opportunity for the NZ voters to endorse our independent parliamenary constitutional monarchy.
Sure - I've said as much here before that a republic referendum now would be the best thing for the monarchy, given our levels of support. But that doesn't mean we won't try.
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