At the residence of newly minted Governor-General Dame Cindy Kiro, Amanda Saxton discovers a woman for and of our times.
The first member of the new Governor-General's family I meet is Lucy. An 8-month-old schnauzer-pug with the run of Wellington's Government House, Lucy barrels into Blundell Room offering madcap kisses to visitors. She's sweet juxtaposition to stately surrounds: sky-blue carpet, paintings by Don Binney, Peter McIntyre and Karl Maughan; and a sky-high ceiling with a cornice of plaster pomegranates.
It's a Tuesday and Dame Alcyion Cynthia (Cindy) Kiro, 63, had been sworn in as New Zealand's first wahine Māori Governor-General five days earlier. Now she's in the entrance hall, draped in a feathered korowai, posing for photos with her pug, Pebbles. All around her, armorial bearings represent governors-general of yore. Sir Anand Satyanand's has elephants, Sir Keith Holyoake's a bull and ram, Viscount Cobham's – for some reason – has mermen. Sir Jerry Mateparae's coat of arms features his pet cat, Boots. Dame Catherine Tizard's has a cat, too, holding a camellia. I wouldn't be surprised if a dog appears in Kiro's at the end of her five-year term.
"Lucy! You're not allowed to hunt the cloak," growls Kiro's husband, Dr Richard Davies. The little dog is wary of all those feathers. I ask Davies, 62, whether there've been any issues around the chewing of gifts from visiting dignitaries. Plenty are on offer in the main hallway alone. "Gold Canoe, Colombia"; "Silver Dish with Acorn on Lid, Turkey"; "Sword in Case, Oman"; "Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Wedding Cake in a Box", for starters, all neatly labelled and the right size for dog jaws.
"No, so far so good," says Davies. "It's more about teaching them to wee in the right place."
Kiro, Davies and the dogs had moved into their flash new digs – an apartment within Government House – a week earlier. Boxes are still being unpacked. "It's been full-on," she admits, looking a little weary. Her new job is to act on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II, whom she met via Zoom two days before her swearing-in ceremony. So far it's involved two investitures, the recalling of diplomats, a dinner party, and journalist after journalist asking the same insipid questions.
For example: "What role, if any, should the British monarch play in New Zealand today?" Our Prime Minister is a republican, after all, and many Kiwis feel we're ready to go it alone. Barbados is actually dropping the Queen as head of state this month. Existential examination of the Crown is not within her remit as Governor-General, says Kiro. New Zealand is currently a constitutional monarchy and "any decision about whatever constitutional arrangements we have is entirely for the public of New Zealand".
Kiro's Māori grandmother, raised in Waitangi, drilled into her from a young age that Te Tiriti, between Queen Victoria and Māori chiefs on behalf of iwi, deserved respect. Kiro, who is of Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Kahu and British descent, says she'll represent the current monarch "with pride and to the best of my ability" so long as it's proper.
In her Zoom meeting with that Queen, shared on social media by the royal family, the monarch appeared the giddier of the two. "Ah! There you are," she beamed, as Kiro popped up on what one imagines was a royal computer screen.
"Here I am, Your Majesty," Kiroy replied, in her usual measured tone.
"Good evening," said the Queen.
"Good morning, here," corrected Kiro.
"Oh! Of course! It's good morning, isn't it, to you," the Queen said apologetically.
Kiro is full of praise for Queen Elizabeth as a person (so sprightly, warm, and good with technology at age 95) but saved her fangirling for veteran broadcaster Kim Hill a few days later.
"Can I just say that I'm so honoured and pleased to be on your show," she swooned, as Hill congratulated her on Radio NZ's Saturday Morning.
"Come on!" Hill scolded. "You've just been speaking to the Queen!"
"Well, now I'm speaking to the queen of broadcasting," Kiro replied, still audibly swooning.
Whether or not Kiro is a staunch monarchist, she's a zeitgeist choice for Governor-General. A public health expert in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. A believer in biculturalism, born to a Māori mum and English dad (Kiro wishes every New Zealander could feel as comfortable as she in both worlds). She's an academic who says good-quality information and a critical mind are the best tools for dealing with any issue. She's spent much of her career championing the vulnerable and marginalised, especially children.
Kiro also happens to be married to a Brit who's lived in colonial Kenya, Northern Ireland and the Falklands – all good geographical fodder for musing the nature of the Crown, should one feel inclined. She and Davies each have two sons from previous marriages. Kiro's oldest has two children of his own; they watched their grandmother's swearing-in ceremony on TV while locked down in Auckland.
Asked how it feels to Governor-General and zooming with the Queen, Kiro said she "certainly never expected it". She claims she's never had a career plan, she simply knew she'd never put up with a job that was "drudgery or detrimental in any way to other people". She has also always tried her best.
Neither of Kiro's parents finished high school. She grew up in modest West Auckland state houses, the oldest of six kids. Their dad was a truck driver. "Everyone in the neighbourhood was just like our family," Kiro says. "They were manual labourers. They were poor. Like me, they had a pair of gumboots for winter and a pair of sandals for summer." She spent a lot of time with her maternal grandparents in South Auckland, who'd take in whole flocks of grandchildren at a time. The house was always bursting with cousins, great aunts, uncles and family friends, Kiro remembers. People were more important than things.
School was her escape from hectic home life, she says. She loved it. Kiro was part of the first generation for whom speaking te reo wasn't frowned upon, so she chose to study at the first high school in New Zealand offering Māori as a subject. Then she enrolled in university – the first of her family to do so. Kiro laughs telling the story of how she picked Massey, thinking it'd be handy to home (Massey is also a suburb in West Auckland). The move to Palmerston North came as a rude shock.
She earned a PhD in social policy, specialising in Māori health, and went on to hold senior positions at Massey, Victoria, and Auckland universities. Kiro became the first woman Children's Commissioner, establishing the Taskforce for Action Against Family Violence. Her latest job was chief executive of the Royal Society Te Apārangi, a not-for-profit dedicated to furthering the fields of sciences and the humanities.
Then Kiro got a letter from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, asking to meet in person. She was "surprised and pleased and honoured" to be asked to take over from Dame Patsy Reddy as Governor-General. However, she was not without qualms. Such high-profile jobs come with costs. You lose privacy. You have to pack up and leave your home. The job is incredibly consuming. Projects and dreams and family life will be sacrificed, to a certain extent.
Being the Governor-General's spouse is also consuming; Davies' work with complex needs patients at Auckland's City Mission would be severely curtailed – and he really loved his job.
The question boiled down to opportunity cost. Could Kiro do more good as Governor-General than the couple could achieve at status quo? Let's do it, they decided. Kiro accepted the job and Davies cut his hours to two days a fortnight at the City Mission.
As the Queen's representative, Kiro's job is threefold. Her constitutional duties include enacting laws on the Prime Minister's advice (Satyanand claims Dame Catherine Tizard, who died this week, signed laws she didn't like with special black ink). The ceremonial side is all about hosting honours investitures and welcoming heads of state. Kiro is finding that part of her role very stimulating, as she gets to meet all sorts of "incredibly clever, connected, and fascinating people". But it's not pomp that most excites Kiro. She's there to serve the people.
"This is an absolutely unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to contribute something of value to this country," Kiro says. "I have a public platform that I never had before. To support people doing community-based work in areas where, maybe, they haven't had the attention they've deserved."
Kiro has two favourite types of people. One knows what they're talking about and makes that knowledge available for the public good. The other inspires people to work together to achieve something greater than themselves.
During our interview she heaps praise upon the likes of Dr Ashley Bloomfield and Professor Michael Baker, for their handling of the Covid crisis. She commends therapy dogs, those who resettle refugees, anyone figuring out how to clean up our rivers and/or fight climate change, the Niwa meteorologists who synthesised 50 years of tidal patterns to develop software used to win the America's Cup. She applauds people who "connect us, unify us, and show our collective humanity and its importance for this country.
"I believe they're what's needed for a better tomorrow," she says.
I ask Kiro who, alive or dead, she'd most like to invite to a dinner party. Her answer comes fast: "Michelle Obama, Nelson Mandela, Pope Francis and Sir David Attenborough. And this amazing young Pasifika woman doing work for climate change in South Auckland, though I can't remember her name. And definitely a writer."
Davies suggests Vasily Grossman – a Jewish-Russian author who worked as a Soviet war correspondent before turning to fiction. The couple are both fans of him, and voracious readers in general.
The "spouse of Governor-General" doesn't have a job description. Davies doesn't quite know what he's in for, but has located a few points of reference. When Kiro got the call-up, he read Lady Beverley Reeves' memoir, Playing the Part: My Life as Wife of the Governor-General. Lady Beverley's husband was the late Sir Paul Reeves, the first Māori Governor-General. Then there's his 85-year-old mum, an Anglican vicar's wife who supported her husband "fantastically" for 50 years. "I guess my role is a little bit like my mother's. If I do as good a job as her, I'll be doing well," he says.
![Dame Cindy's husband Dr Richard Davies read the memoir of Lady Beverley Reeves, Playing the Part: My Life as as Wife of the Governor General [Sir Paul Reeves, left]. Photo / NZ Herald](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/YYXRTTD3WMXBWHUN34XMGOXNRY.jpg?auth=6ea0d99a67d32c9577493db25c54297783d60fa433bf7787e94071d912327265&width=16&height=20&quality=70&smart=true)
Davies imagines he'll be a sounding board for Kiro and "a bit of a second-best" on the ceremonial front. He's mainly looking forward to championing a few causes of his own. As a medical expert at the coalface of New Zealand's homelessness crisis, he knows of plenty.
Born in England, Davies spent his childhood in Kenya, where his dad was a vicar. His mum's family had a long history in the region with the East Africa colonial service (Davies' grandfather was a Swahili scholar, campaigning for the language's lingua franca status in the region). Davies credits this unique upbringing for a "great respect for other cultures". A later chapter in Northern Ireland, witnessing the peacemaking process between Catholics and Protestants, broadened his respect into deep concern for human unity. Something he and Kiro clearly share.
Davies studied philosophy and psychology at Oxford University, but found England "cold and crowded and grey". So, he joined the Merchant Navy and visited New Zealand for the first time in the early 80s.
"I thought it was paradise," he says. Back in the UK, he decided to follow in an aunt's footsteps and qualified as a doctor. By the mid-90s, Davies was restless again: he and his first wife took off around the world in a 36-foot sailing boat named Cowrie.
The couple landed in the Falkland Islands, a rugged archipelago 480km off the coast of Argentina, in early 1997. This was 15 years after the British won the Falklands War against Argentina. By the time Davies arrived, the territory's famously failed economy had pivoted from sheep farming to squid fishing. And its long-impecunious population was fast becoming one of the world's richest. But conditions aboard the offshore fishing fleets were often abysmal. Davies, working as a GP, spent a lot of time on these boats treating injured fishermen.
He found the work fascinating, bought a house, and fathered two sons. But as the boys reached their teens, he and his wife felt stifled by the remote islands' limitations. They relocated to Auckland in 2010. "If I hadn't liked the Falklands so much, I probably would have gone back to New Zealand sooner," he says.
The marriage broke down soon after and his wife went back to the UK. Davies stayed on in Auckland with his sons, starting work as a GP at the City Mission. A friend told Davies, who is naturally shy, that if he wanted to meet Kiwis he needed to join a club. So Davies and his youngest son signed up to be kayakers. On a trip around Whangaparāoa Peninsula, they stopped for lunch at Army Bay. Davies recalls feeling lost on the group's periphery when "a nice lady beckoned us over". That was Kiro, also a member of the kayaking club and herself recently divorced.
"Right from the very first time I met her, Cindy showed her true colours," Davies says. "She reached out to [my son], a child, and sought to include me in the crew. It was just such a Cindy thing to do."
The following weekend, Davies, Kiro, and Davies' son went for a walk in the Waitākere Ranges. A few weekends later, Davies, Kiro, and Kiro's friend kayaked through Doubtful Sound. On December 7, 2013, Davies and Kiro got married.
Home for the couple is Northland. "I associate Tai Tokerau with warmth, family, beaches, and, you know, positive things," Kiro says. While Government House's manicured grounds – dotted with trees planted by generations of visiting royals – hold exciting opportunities for the dogs and keen gardener Davies, the couple love their bush block in Parua Bay. Its Swiss chalet-style house remains their sanctuary.
Kir looked like she was fighting off sleep near the end of our interview. On her behalf, I was relieved time was nearly up. The dogs were already snoring, Lucy using Pebbles' plump rump as a pillow at our feet. The new Governor-General media-rush would be over soon, an aide told me – looking a little exhausted herself. I left Government House hoping Kiro found time for a nap before getting down to the business of shining lights on to all those good causes.