Wednesday, December 06, 2017



Time for a republic

During his 33 years in Parliament Peter Dunne was a strong supporter of a New Zealand republic. Now, he's used his pseudo-valedictory speech at VUW's post-election conference to renew that call:

Former United Future leader Peter Dunne has challenged the millennial generation in Parliament to "seize the moment" and begin a process to turn New Zealand into a republic.

"I strongly believe that the time has well passed for us to have severed the umbilical cord to grandmother England," he told a conference at Parliament today.

"We should be an independent republic within the Commonwealth, like India or South Africa and the majority of other Commonwealth nations.

"It is not just my Irish heritage or my sense of pride and confidence in our country in what it can do that is why I am so staunchly in the belief that we can do so much better than continue to bend our knee to a hereditary monarch on the other side of the world.

"We have consistently shown over the last 30 years or so that we can produce many quality New Zealanders to serve as our Governor-General.

"There is no reason why we cannot do likewise with a non-executive president in that role and frankly the time for change is well overdue."


He is absolutely right. While Britain colonised us, there is no reason now why we should continue to be ruled by a foreign monarch on the other side of the world. Instead, we should complete the repatriation of our constitution, ditch the monarch, and have our own president. Given how little the monarch actually does, the change will be almost entirely symbolic. But symbols matter, and the symbolism of the monarch - especially a foreign monarchy with a history of genocide and murder - is utterly inconsistent with the values of modern Aotearoa. We should change that symbol, and the sooner we do it, the better.