England is in the middle of a giant monarchical wankfest at the moment. Given its utter irrelevance to modern Aotearoa, the media today asked Prime Minister Chris Hipkins whether he would be offering us a referendum on a republic. And when he said "no", they rightly took him to task on it.
Like every other recent Labour Prime Minister, Hipkins claims to be a republican. And like all the rest, he's completely unwilling to do anything about it. What he fails to understand is that when you say you support something (like action on climate change), people eventually expect you to deliver. And if you consistently refuse to, then people might just begin to doubt the sincerity of what you claim to believe in, and vote accordingly.
This isn't to say that we should be rushing into a referendum - we need a lot of public consultation on what we want to change, whether a "twink republic" is enough (or enough to be getting on with), or whether we want to make other changes too. But Hipkins is refusing to even start that process, refusing to even have the conversation. And that makes him, in practical terms, a monarchist, a supporter of the rotten, foreign, inbred status quo. If you want something better, something modern, something alighned with Aotearoa's values, then don't vote for him.
