Constitutional change comes usually from national crises - a revolution, a war of independence, a coup d'etat or civil disorder that cannot be repaired without a thorough renegotiation of the relationships of people and power. Change was never likely to start with a conference such as that which took place in Wellington at the weekend.
It was by any definition a fizzer. If there was a groundswell anywhere for a reassessment of our constitution, it was confined to specialised legal and academic circles. And it will not be heard again for a good while.
That is not to say the issues canvassed inconclusively at the weekend are going to go away, merely that they will remain unresolved until the public at large feels a need to address them. Issues of how we are governed, how our rights are defined and protected, of the institutions and symbols of national unity and continuity, are questions that can only be answered by the voice of the people - when they are ready.
Take the monarchy, for example. Its star might be fading in opinion polls but it is still preferred to a republic by most New Zealanders. Australians might decide differently, if they were offered an elected presidency rather than the proposal put to them last year. Should Australia become a republic, New Zealand might be ready to reconsider that aspect of its constitution.
Not that we would necessarily follow the same course. Australia and most other Commonweath members long ago ceased appealing to the Privy Council over the heads of their own courts. Yet this country still lines up with Caribbean microstates, and a very few others, for the final rulings of British lords. In the end it might be the lords who discourage our deference; the Privy Council has begun to send some questions back to the Court of Appeal in the belief they are better answered by indigenous judges.
The removal of the Privy Council from the apex of our legal system is one constitutional change with widespread support. But not quite enough. Among lawyers and business leaders there are those who believe it still makes good sense to tap the best of British jurisprudence. And the New Zealand Maori Council, as a matter of policy, will not happily see the Privy Council taken out of our legal system unless all other constitutional questions are resolved.
All other constitutional questions mean, for the Maori Council, an equal partnership for Maori and Pakeha in the governing of the country. It advocates arrangements, largely adopted by the Anglican Church in this country, under which Maori would have their own house of representatives on a par with the general assembly, and legislation would need to pass both houses.
The proposition is an affront to the foundations of democracy, offending principles of electoral equality that have been hard-won over the centuries and will not be compromised.
New Zealanders will simply never sanction a system in which perhaps 15 per cent of the population can veto the decisions of 85 per cent, or accept any general breach of the principle of one-man-one-vote (which was extended to women in this country before others). Reasonable Maori know that. But why broach a new constitutional settlement when conferences such as that held last weekend cannot bring themselves to confront the limits of ethnic autonomy in a liberal democracy?
No wonder it got nowhere.
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