Jonathan Milne considers the triggers and effects of republicanism in the New Zealand context.
Constitutional change in New Zealand -- the triggers and effects of republicanism
Jonathan Milne, Victoria University of Wellington, 1996
Part One
"New Zealanders have shown in recent times a taste for constitutional change. But to embark upon making New Zealand a republic now would be change for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time." -- Sir Geoffrey Palmer
PALMER is perceptive in noting the ease with which the issue of republicanism has slipped into the public consciousness in recent times. To many New Zealanders, a republic is now regarded as inevitable. But to republican advocates, the last decade's constitutional changes create an urgency about replacing the Queen as head of state.
In 1993, New Zealand became one of the few countries ever to change its electoral system by popular vote. The move to the Mixed Member Proportional voting system was a significant one, in a British Commonwealth member recognised as having retained a constitutional system very similar to the United Kingdom's. The next year, Prime Minister Jim Bolger attempted to capitalise on the mood for change by asking the public to consider severing New Zealand's ties with the British Crown.
Meanwhile a new and youthful Republican Movement of Aotearoa New Zealand was being set up in Wellington. Last year, historian Luke Trainor edited Republicanism in New Zealand, the first book on the topic.
Republicanism in New Zealand is no longer a latent issue. After smouldering in the undergrowth for many years, republicanism is starting to claim a higher profile in the political consciousness of New Zealand. It is the constitutional changes of the last ten years which have, to an extent, sparked this new discussion.
In the New Zealand context, 'constitution' does not have the simple meaning that it has in nations such as the United States. New Zealand does not have a founding document which sets in place its government. It does, however, have a body of rules "which constitutes, authorises, and controls the institutions of government and their interrelationships". These rules are based in statute law, in the Common Law of England and New Zealand, and in the slowly evolving constitutional conventions of Parliament and the Judicature. The difficulty of such a constitution (with a lower case 'c') is that it is very difficult to summarise and analyse coherently. Some of the constitutional conventions are scattered through an assortment of different documents -- the remainder survive only through collective memory. The Common Law is found in the judicial decisions and obiter of several centuries in several nations. A frequently overlooked aspect of the constitution found in the Common Law is royal prerogative. Royal prerogative is that collection of powers which are 'reserved' by the monarch. These powers are not created by statute, but may be overruled by it, meaning that the remnant of prerogative is slowly decreasing. What is comprised by that remnant, however, is subject to debate. The statute law component of the constitution is that which is easiest to pin down. Yet even that component, prior to 1986, was spread through dozens of statutes from the parliaments of England and New Zealand.
Geoffrey Palmer, then Attorney General and Minister of Justice, intended to secure many of New Zealand's vague or unwritten constitutional arrangements with the Constitution Act of 1986. The Antipodes, however, have lived up to their name by producing a result quite antipodean to Palmer's intention. The last decade has seen an almost unprecedented array of changes to New Zealand's constitutional structure. A number of these have impacted upon the breadth and nature of the republican debate.
The initial focus of this series of articles is upon the statutory relocations, codifications and changes to the New Zealand constitution embodied in the Constitution Act. It is not only the changes which impact upon the nature of the republican debate -- the confirmation of many existing constitutional arrangements is also significant. Reiteration of these encourages a new examination of how compatible the New Zealand parliamentary system is with an external head of state. The series continues from there to look at the change of electoral system in 1993, with the move away from the Westminster-based First Past the Post system to Mixed Member Proportional.
In the same year that New Zealanders voted for proportional representation in their Parliament, their parliamentary representatives instituted a right for citizens to initiate, by petition, a non-binding referendum upon any subject. Such a significant change to the decision-making process is seen as an opportunity by many republicans. The Citizens' Initiated Referendum may be, however, a two-edged sword which needs to be used wisely.
The New Zealand constitution is not only subject to change through the legislature -- it also evolves through decisions of the courts and, in recent years, the influence of Waitangi Tribunal recommendations upon the legislature and the judiciary. Reinterpretations of the 1835 Declaration of Independence and the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi have altered conceptions of sovereignty in New Zealand, fundamentally impacting upon any discussion of a New Zealand republic.
Finally, there will be a brief look at recent proposals to remove the right of appeal to the Privy Council. These proposals are perhaps as much a result of the last decade's changes, as they are an influence upon future republican directions.
Part two
WHILE recent constitutional changes have important effects upon the republican debate, they need to be seen in the context of other changes in New Zealand society, and in this country's position in the world. These changes are more evolutionary than are those to the constitution but, nonetheless, have in the last ten years become increasingly conspicuous. The opportunity is taken here to briefly look at three ways this situation has altered in the last decade.
The half-century since World War II has yielded a New Zealand population with gradually decreasing ties to Great Britain. Two or three generations have been born who know little about the Britain that some of their ancestors identified with. Increasingly, their popular culture has been taken from the United States of America, and to a lesser extent, Australia.
At the same time, New Zealand has depended less on Britain for trade, instead exporting more to Australia, Asia, and North America. This new direction was stimulated by Britain's move into the European Economic Community.
Author Maurice Gee perceives Britain as now being more committed, politically and economically, to Europe than to Australasia.
"It seems absurd to me that a country whose future is with Europe - and quite properly too, I would say - should then be supplying us with our head of state, somebody who is meant to be our representative to the world.... I get the impression that the group of people interested in seeing royalty is gradually getting smaller, and I have a very strong impression that it is so in the younger generation."
While the generations that remember World War II still feel a certain loyalty to Britain and the monarchy, their offspring are less interested. As on many other issues, opinions have changed across the generations -- there are few issues with regard to which grand-children share their elders' political opinions.
In 1975, a survey conducted by Stephen Levine and Alan Robinson showed clearly a diminishing generational support for the British Crown as New Zealand's Head of State. They asked whether people agreed with the statement that "New Zealand should no longer have the Queen as Head of State". Of those with an opinion on the issue, only 12.2% of those aged over 74 years agreed. At the other end of the age scale, 39.3% of those aged 18-20 years agreed with the statement.
In 1993 the generational cohorts had all moved on eighteen years. By this point, a Levine and Nigel Roberts survey, while only showing 42.8% support for a republic from those under 21 years who held an opinion, also showed that over half of those in their thirties were republican. Even in the over-74 age group, a quarter of the respondents who took a position opted for republicanism.
A disillusioned Bruce Jesson suggests that it is possible to characterise the republican of the 1990s. No longer, he believes, is it the left-wing radical, as it was in his era: "I would argue that a new type of New Zealander has evolved that I would term the 'Young Right' ... I would imagine these people to be potentially republican because they are non-sentimental and adaptable and because they are confronted in their global contacts with the problem of their own nationality. New Zealand's British institutions must appear quaint and even eccentric in the modern global context."
It is unclear whether Jesson's portrayal is based more upon his knowledge of the 'Young Right', or upon his view of the current batch of republicans. Certainly though, he supports the contention that it is the younger generations who support a more distinct New Zealand.
It is apparent that the growing levels of support for republicanism with each new generational cohort must give a New Zealand republic a certain inevitability, even without an increase in the level of republican support within each cohort. It is in the last ten years that this change has started to become more manifest.
As New Zealanders' identification with the United Kingdom has decreased, they have, to a certain extent, started to find a greater affinity to the United States and Australia. The American troops who were stationed in New Zealand during World War II are regarded as having protected the nation from the Japanese, at a time when Britain was unwilling to help. In 1952, the ANZUS Treaty was signed between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. The alliance recognised the nations' mutual security interests, and the shared responsibility they were willing to take in defending those interests.
New Zealanders perceived ANZUS as a guarantee of military protection from the large American superpower. However, at the same time, they became increasingly uncomfortable with the visits from American warships carrying nuclear weapons.
Norman Kirk's Third Labour Government proposed to the United Nations that a nuclear-weapons free zone be created in the Pacific, and in December 1975 the General Assembly passed a resolution to establish the zone.
The next year, Labour printed off 120,000 pamphlets, announcing that "Fact: Labour wants to make New Zealand INDEPENDENT -- Labour will not kow-tow to any country's nuclear bullying, or give up our independence to shelter under another country's 'nuclear umbrella'."
Following David Lange's introduction of a ban on visits by vessels carrying nuclear weapons and visits by nuclear-powered vessels, relations with the United States started to deteriorate and ANZUS became less operable.
Henry S Albinski argues that it "should be remembered that New Zealand has remained more British and traditional than Australia and less historically and otherwise connected to the United States". He portrays the breakdown in relations with the United States as a shift in emphasis back to Great Britain.
However, this argument is difficult to sustain when one considers that the Labour Party had also opposed offering any support to Britain in the Falklands crisis. Indeed, in the early 1980s the New Zealand Labour Party suggested that New Zealand withdraw from all alliances with nuclear powers, in an attempt to turn back the arms race.
In fact, the anti-nuclear policy was increasingly seen as a statement of New Zealand's independence as a nation. New Zealand was moving away from relationships in which it was dependent on powers like Great Britain and the United States, and was arguably moving towards more inter-dependent relationships with nations in the same geographical region. Both the Fourth Labour Government and the current National Government have altered their foreign policy objectives, now paying more attention to the South Pacific and Southeast Asia. Albinski admits that "an overidentification with the United States could compromise this objective".
Ray Galvin argued in 1984 that there were a number of negative aspects to ANZUS. He published Living Without ANZUS after the election of Lange's Labour Government, but prior to the implementation of the nuclear-free policy.
"As a nation we do not have much confidence in our identity. We do not see ourselves as a self-sufficient entity with our own culture (or unique mix of cultures) and our own special moral and spiritual values to offer the world. The seeds of a great cultural and social identity are present among us, but for various reasons have not yet been able to mature.... And because we do not see ourselves as a complete nation, a real, unique nation, we cling fast to our alliances to make us feel secure. But this only perpetuates the problem."
The move out of the ANZUS comfort-zone, and into a more tenuous security relationship with the United States, has slowly gained widespread support throughout the New Zealand electorate. The anti-nuclear policy has been disseminated across the Parliamentary political spectrum as a result.
Many New Zealanders express pride in their new-found independence in foreign policy, and their recognition in the world. Lange suggests that New Zealand has not so much been out-of-step with the rest of the world, as it has been ahead of its time -- a platitude, but one that many New Zealanders would be happy to accept.
The move away from Britain, clearly discernible in younger generations' attitudes to that nation, has not ultimately been accompanied by a move into the security fold of another large power. The decrease of the United States' control over ANZUS demonstrates this clearly. Instead, New Zealand has opted to stake a claim for its own distinct voice, so expressing its perception of itself as a sovereign nation.
New Zealand is starting to find a 'greater confidence', the lack of which Galvin bemoaned in 1984. As the nation is more willing to make decisions in foreign policy which are its own, and as it is more willing to get rid of inherited institutions like the First Past the Post electoral system and the Privy Council, so also it may apparently be willing to consider republicanism.
