There's a major conference on Reconstituting the Constitution [PDF] happening in Wellington today, and I've just been watching the Dean Knight v Michael Cullen "debate" over becoming a republic via the conference live webcast. That's a "debate" because Cullen, previously a monarchist, has become a convert to soft republicanism - meaning it was more an agreement.
Cullen's views were interesting. He argued that there were two major barriers to change. The first, of course, was the trap of inevitability, which has seen successive Prime Ministers declare a republic to be "inevitable" and so do absolutely nothing to bring it about. Lesson: if we want a republic, we need to actually make it happen, not just sit there smug and self satisfied that history is on our side. The second big problem is the desire of some for greater change, with proposals for a "final settlement" for the Treaty, an upper house, an entrenched Bill of Rights, a US-style executive presidency and so-forth. This bogs down the conversation, and so we end up with no change at all. Cullen things that we need to separate these ideas from the question of republicanism, and debate them separately on their own merits - and he's right. Moving to a republic does not require us to address any of these issues (not even the Treaty), and so we should leave them for another day (perhaps earlier, perhaps later).
As for a way forward, Cullen's proposal is remarkably similar to Knight's: elect the next Governor-General by a motion in the House, solidify that procedure in legislation, and provide for them to become head of state de jure rather than just de facto on the death of the incumbent monarch. He thinks that offering change on this pattern, which is symbolic, but not practically different from current arrangements, and in the future, not right now, is most likely to win over the support of the New Zealand people.
As for the Treaty, he stressed that it is a living document, and that there's a danger of "freezing" its contents. So he proposes an "avoidance of doubt" clause stating that the obligations of the NZ government under the Treaty continue, without specifying what they are. Its a good solution, which recognises the ongoing relevance of the Treaty without seeking to limit it; more pragmatically, it recognises that the Treaty is an argument we are still having, and will likely still be having in a hundred years, no matter what legislation Parliament passes purporting to define, limit, or extinguish it. This won't satisfy the rednecks, who want the Treaty (and Maori) to just go away, but it reflects the practical reality - as we're seeing over the foreshore and seabed, they can legislate all they like, but if Maori are unhappy it will simply be relitigated in whatever fora are available (currently: the electoral system) until it is changed. And exactly the same would happen to any "final solution settlement" clause in republican legislation - it would turn out to be rather less final than its instigators believed.
The task now is to make this happen. And the first step to doing so is for an MP to advance, as a Member's Bill, legislation for the Governor-General to be elected by Parliament. Any takers?
