The English Revolution: In 1649, Oliver Cromwell famously decided to "Cut off the King's head with the Crown upon it" . The English Commonwealth, which replaced the monarchy, was a parliamentary republic, constituted in a fashion remarkably similar to our own. We have yet to cut off the Queen's head, but that's only because there's no real need to. Unlike Charles I, Elizabeth II wields no power. If she, or her Vice-Regal representative, the Governor General, ever attempted to interfere in our democratic politics, however, New Zealand's decorative royal figurehead would be gone - probably by lunchtime.
IS MITCH HARRIS RIGHT? Is New Zealand, for all intents and
purposes, already a republic? Are all the monarchical appurtenances of our
unwritten constitution nothing more than an entertaining illusion, as the
veteran broadcaster insists? Full of pomp and ceremony, certainly. But in a
nation where the people, as embodied by Parliament, are indisputably sovereign,
of no relevance whatsoever to the way in which New Zealanders actually govern
themselves.
Harris’ heretical opinions, broadcast on Tuesday night’s (29
March 2016) Waatea – Fifth Estate, cast the outcome of the flag
referendum, and the earlier, almost totally ignored deliberations of the
Constitutional Review Panel, in a new and very interesting light. Stripped of
its talkback host’s bravado, Harris’s thesis asserts that over the course of
the last 176 years New Zealanders have, with a minimum of fuss, fashioned one
of the purest and least constrained democratic regimes on Earth.
What’s more, says Harris, we’ve done it surreptitiously. The
Prime Minister may proudly proclaim himself a fan of Constitutional Monarchy,
but he, like most New Zealanders, would bridle at the slightest suggestion that
the legislature he dominates is anything other than absolutely sovereign. The
idea that an unelected judiciary might one day possess the power to strike down
legislation passed by the House of Representatives would strike him as a
dangerous and undemocratic extension of judicial power. New Zealand is, and
must continue to be, governed by those in command of a parliamentary majority –
and nobody else.
You’ve got to go back a long way in the history of the
English-speaking peoples to find a constitutional set-up like New Zealand’s.
All the way back to the conclusion of the English Revolution, in fact, and the
establishment in 1649 of the “English Commonwealth” – the world’s first
parliamentary republic. Having cut off the King’s head with, in Oliver
Cromwell’s memorable phrase, “the Crown upon it”, and dissolved the House of
Lords, England was now governed by a 14-member Council of State, answerable (at
least in theory) to the House of Commons. This latter body, representing the
common people of England, was deemed to be the repository of “all just power”
in the state. It was a principle destined to endure long after the English
Commonwealth succumbed to Cromwell’s dictatorial “Protectorate”.
New Zealand, too, is governed by a council of state – The
Cabinet – drawn from and answerable to the elected representatives of the
people. Our own equivalent of the House of Lords, the Crown-appointed
Legislative Council, was abolished with barely a murmur by the first National
Party government, led by Sid Holland, in 1950.
For all practical political purposes, therefore, our
unwritten constitution makes Parliament the supreme organ of power in the
state. It passes the laws, makes appropriations of money for the administration
of the state, and, if moved to do so, can bring down any government at any time
simply by withdrawing its support from the Prime Minister and his or her
Cabinet. The only other example of a unicameral parliament operating without
the restraint of a written constitution is the State of Israel.
But what about the Queen? I hear you say. Legally and
constitutionally Elizabeth II is Sovereign in Right of the Realm of New
Zealand, and her Vice-Regal Representative is the Governor General. Quite true.
But Harris’s point – and I agree with it – is that all this monarchical mummery
is just a grand distraction from the realities of political power in New
Zealand.
The only way the Queen could hope to influence events in New
Zealand would be if she allowed herself to be drawn into a plot to topple a
democratically elected government – as happened in the infamous conspiracy to
bring down the Australian Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, and his beleaguered
Labor Government, in 1975. The only thing that saved the Queen and her Governor
General, Sir John Kerr, on that occasion was the fact that the interim regime
installed to replace the “dismissed” government went on to win the obligatory
general election. Had Whitlam’s Labor Party been returned to office, Australia
would, today, be a republic of 40 years standing.
What the “Dismissal” did demonstrate, however, was that
royal and/or vice-regal interference in the democratic political process,
unbuttressed by the electorate’s ex post facto validation, can only end
in constitutional tears. Her Majesty was extremely fortunate that a majority of
the Australian people concluded, notwithstanding the machinations of vice-regal
ratbags, that Whitlam’s government wasn’t worth reinstating. The
important lesson to take away being that the political decision was theirs
– not hers – to make.
It is to be hoped that both Charles and William Windsor have
absorbed this lesson, and that in the event of a New Zealand Governor General
asking the Palace to support his or her plan to dismiss a government (or, more
likely, refuse to appoint a government that the “business community” doesn’t
like) the correct constitutional response is to immediately ask the New Zealand
politician commanding a majority in the House of Representatives to advise him
to dismiss the incumbent Governor General and propose a new one.
Because any other course of action: any attempt to
circumvent the will of the New Zealand people; any reassertion of the royal
“prerogatives” destroyed by Oliver Cromwell in 1649; will instantly see the
monarchy’s gloriously retro decorativeness brought to an abrupt and permanent
end. The Queen and the Governor General are like the diminutive Bride and Groom
on the top of the Wedding Cake: sentimental favourites – but you wouldn’t
expect them to impart serious marital advice.
Some would say it’s a typically Kiwi solution to the fraught
business of defining the exact nature of the New Zealand state. A republic
presided over by a queen may cause the political scientists to tear out their
hair in bewilderment, but, as Mitch Harris might say, “we know what we mean”, and
somehow, like a Taranaki gate, it works.
What our royal republic appears to represent, and what it
actually stands for, would appear to be, like the flag we just voted to keep,
two very different things.
This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Thursday, 31 March 2016.
