It can seem absurd, when you think about it, that our head of state is an elderly, unelected woman who lives in a Victorian palace in an old imperial city on the other side of the world.

Of course, the Queen has occupied the throne for nearly 60 years and has fulfilled her role as Queen with impeccable propriety.

Apart from the famous period in the fortnight after the death of Princess Diana when she so hopelessly misread public sentiment in Britain and round the world, I cannot recall her ever putting a foot wrong.

But that is not the point.

What does a modern King or Queen of England have to do remotely with us? Why should such a figure be our head of state?

United Future leader Peter Dunne has raised the republican issue again. He wants to move forward to establish ourselves as an independent republic, starting with a referendum before the next election.

A new survey finds people pretty evenly divided between maintaining the monarch and standing on our own with, presumably, our own president.

He says he is tired of politicians who mutter that it is inevitable we become a republic and then do nothing about it.

So, what should we do? It is a hard one. There are probably good reasons to swing either way.

It is a mysterious and ancient thing, kingship. Every culture in the world has made kings at some point. Many have got rid of them too. Even into our modern, rational era, kingship hangs around. Somehow it has lasted.

And even nations that have rejected kingship still bestow upon certain leaders and families a royal status.

In the United States, the President is in possession of kingly powers, a kingly apparatus, kingly protection, kingly motorcades and kingly mana.

The Americans for a long time imbued the Kennedy family with a kind of royal status. The Kennedy White House in the early 60s was known as Camelot, King Arthur's court, in which all was beautiful and young and pure.

The endorsement, or anointment, if you like, of Barack Obama by Ted Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy elevated Obama hugely, effectively placing an ermine robe upon his shoulders.

Of course, in the United States if you do not like the king, he can be got rid of every four years.

What I am saying is that no matter what system of government we have, we seem to appoint monarchs anyway, so it may not matter how we appoint our head of state. Yet it does of course.