As promised, here's my response to Matt Showering's letter to the editor of Investigate Magazine:
Dear Ian,
RE: ABSOLUTELY FASCINATED
Matt Showering (Vox populi, July 2008) demonstrates a good understanding of New Zealand's constitutional development, yet makes a number of assertions in favour of the monarchy which belie constitutional reality. Mr Showering is correct insofar as his analysis of your argument in Absolute Power (that the government is illegal) goes; however his defence of the monarchy against your second claim, that the Governor-General is not an effective check on the Prime Minister, is weak.
Mr Showering's response to the Governor-General’s ineffectiveness is due to "public apathy". Yet there were plenty of protests against the Electoral Finance Act, one example cited as an abuse of power. Despite petitions to the Governor-General and a High Court challenge to the Bill, the Governor-General had no scope to exercise a refusal of Royal assent to the Bill. His hands were tied by 400 years of constitutional convention, and the fact that the Prime Minister can advise the Queen to remove Her Majesty's representative from office immediately. This was the reason why Sir John Kerr fired Gough Whitlam in 1975 – he had to act before Whitlam could have him removed.
In contrast, most republics grant their presidents the ability to refuse to sign Bills into law, send them to the judiciary or to a national referendum. Mr Showering argues that a president in a parliamentary-style republic lacks the “historical grounding” of a monarch and “cannot serve the people in a non-partisan fashion as a monarch". This is incorrect – a historical grounding was not required when the President of Iceland refused to sign a controversial media law and instead send it to a referendum, nor was it required when the President of Germany referred a Bill back to parliament, nor has it been required when the President of Ireland has referred Bills to the Irish Supreme Court.
As for the argument that the Queen is non-partisan, this is not disputed. The Queen never intervenes in Commonwealth realms, even in times of constitutional crises – coups in Sierra Leone, Grenada, Fiji and the Solomon Islands prove this. What can be disputed is whether the Governor-General is non-partisan; furthermore, whether the non-partisanship is actually a good thing. The Governor-General is appointed on the whim of the Prime Minister of the day – they almost inevitably have something to do with the ruling party (Sir Keith Holyoake, Sir Paul Reeves and Dame Cath Tizard are the most obvious examples, others have more subtle links). If supporters of the monarchy claim that the Governor-General is non-partisan, they cannot logically also say the Governor-General is a check on the Prime Minister. Any intervention in partisan issues will make the Governor-General a partisan figure, as happened in Australia.
Mr Showering's final assertion, that removing the Crown will require that New Zealand creates a written constitution, is nonsense. A written constitution is not legally required for a republic - the State of Israel, also a parliamentary republic, does not have one. Yet Mr Showering implies a republic leading to a written constitution is a bad thing.
A republic would create a head of state that could act in times of constitutional crises. A head of state that is better able to act in times of crises works as a much better restraint on the power of the executive - the Prime Minister and Cabinet. The Republican Movement believes that the move to a republic in New Zealand should be accompanied by a serious look at the sort of checks and balances other parliamentary republics have. That would be a vast improvement on the status quo, and an excellent reason for a republic.
Regards
Lewis Holden
Chair, Republican Movement
Dear Mr Holden
Greetings from the author of the Investigate letter. Apologies for the fact that it has taken me so long to respond, but thanks to a minor communication breakdown between me and Ian Wishart, I have only just been made aware of the fact that my letter was published and has generated some response. Allow me, therefore, to clarify a few of my points.
Firstly, when I refer to 'public apathy' I am not suggesting that the public didn't care about the EFA: I was well aware of the protest marches and followed The New Zealand Herald's coverage of the controversy very closely. What I am getting at is the fact that surely the New Zealand public knew what they were in for when they voted Clark in for a third term - you have not challenged my assertion that "Clark's corrupt public service meddling and social engineering programmes were well-known and well-established" by this stage; and I'm sorry, but it is basic first grade common sense that if you give politicians an inch, they will take a country mile. We can look to Britain for an even more compelling, current example of this: Gordon Brown has just succeeded in forcing ratification of the corrupt, anti-democratic EU Lisbon Treaty through Parliament without a public mandate, and is now going out of his way to help the unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels finalise the Treaty illegally after its legitimacy was sent on a one-way ticket to hell by the brave patriots of Ireland. As far as I am concerned, Brown is guilty of high treason - never mind constitutional railroading; surely, therefore, this was more than adequate cause for the Queen to confound centuries of constitutional tradition by withholding the Royal Assent, sacking Brown and ordering the Armed Forces to arrest him if he refused to go quietly? Actually, no it wasn't: for the fact remains that although, before the 2005 British General Election, then-Premier Tony Blair promised a referendum on the officially short-lived European Constitution (of which the Lisbon Treaty is a copy in all but name), Blair had already destroyed any trace of credibility he may’ve had as an honest or accountable leader by doctoring evidence of WMDs to justify the illegal & mass-murderous invasion of Iraq; the people took to the streets in their millions to protest, yet still they voted him back in, despite also knowing full well that Brown would take over mid-term and would continue the Blair mantra! The Queen's constitutional responsibility is to protect democracy, and the people had three times elected that anti-libertarian, dictatorial enemy of British Sovereignty and his uninspired lapdog! That’s what the people wanted – Her Majesty had to abide by their wishes. Sound familiar to New Zealanders? It should do. Let us hope for your country's sake that National are elected and make good their promise to repeal the EFA. Sadly, it is almost certainly too late for David Cameron’s Conservatives to save Britain.
Secondly, you use the 1975 Australian Constitutional Crisis as a demonstration of how weak the Governor-General's position is - yet in that crisis Kerr succeeded in sacking the government without any need for military intervention and without even consulting the Queen (though you are correct in your interpretation of why he couldn't dither on this)! How, then, can you argue that there is no scope for the GG to exercise Reserve Power with the proper democratic ground to do so, ground which - as I have just explained - Satyanand lacked in relation to the EFA?
Thirdly, when I say that a ceremonial president cannot serve the people in the same non-partisan fashion as a king or queen, I do not mean partisan in the sense of the ability to withhold assent or refer controversial legislation & policies to the courts or to referendum - I am referring to the head of state's performance of service to the community, to charity and diplomacy: a government-appointed president will by definition be a political crony whose lack of neutrality hinders their ability to perform these duties in an impartial fashion; while a democratically-elected one - even if not representing a political party - does have an electorate to impress, which constitutes a political motive. Furthermore, a monarch has their whole family to assist them in their duties and has usually been trained for their role from a young age; while our last king, George VI, arguably did an amazing job in the toughest of circumstances despite having had kingship thrust upon him unexpectedly.
Finally, I did not assert that a written constitution is legally required for a republic, nor did I suggest that New Zealand would need such a document if it abolished the monarchy; what I meant was that if the nation did this then it would - in Wishart's analogy - be pulling the plug on its ultimate power source, i.e. the Crown, and would therefore need a clear public mandate in the form of a comprehensive referendum as well as a snap election in order to continue governing legally.
Regards,
Matt Showering