To us all, greetings
Republican Movement Patron Keri Hulme, in an open letter to all New Zealanders, says we need to korero about how our islands should venture into the new millennium -- "but there is no doubt in my mind that the best way we can head into the future is as a republic"
To all of us — greetings:
Monarchy is a hadit idea.
At the turn of the century Richard Seddon trumpeted,
"One Empire, one language, one people."
That concept, intrinsically flawed, never took hold, but the soggy remnants persist.
Aotearoa-New Zealand has two official languages, and we glory in a diversity of peoples
here but we are still, symbolically, a Dominion of the British Crown; the Queen of New
Zealand is an English woman.
I am a New Zealander born & bred (as they say -- I’ve always thought it should
be the other way around). On one ancestral line, I can count 23 generations of ancestors;
on another, 3, and on the 3rd, 1 (I am talking of tipuna born here.) Over my 52
years, I have found us to be -- let us be generous and bighearted in our estimations of
ourselves! -- willing to look at all sides of a question, fairminded -- and pragmatic.
Humans have learned a lot over the past 10 decades. We know a little (but hugely more
than we did before) about how our brains are constructed, and work. We know that we have a
propensity to engage in hierarchies. We also know, now, that most of the hierarchies we
have constructed in the past are -- in their essence -- ludicrous.
Monarchy is a hadit idea, past its time of usefulness.
People, it is time for us to acknowledge we have grown beyond, way beyond, the idea we
are the children of The Great White Mother -- or that "Home" is somewhere
"over there".
Home is here: we are not a juvenile nation. We have grown way past the time when
authorities overseas dictated which way we should go.
There is much to discuss, to talk to one another about how our islands should venture
into the 2000s. We need to korero about history & laws & relationships &
future paths. But there is no doubt in my mind that the best way we can head into
the future is as a republic -- maybe some entirely new form of republic that no other
nation has invented before (we are truly good at innovation!) --
kia kaha, kia manawanui,
kia ora tatou katoa!
naku noa
Keri Hulme
