Editorial: Honours drought for North this time

Craig Cooper, Northern Advocate editor.

Government House investitures are a special occasion for the recipients of New Zealand Royal Honours.

But this week, for Northland, there is a sense of quiet embarrassment as the ceremonies for New Year Honours recipients take place in Wellington.

For the first time in at least 15 years, no Northlanders are receiving an honour.

Nationally, close to 180 people received recognition in the honours list, with retired All Blacks captain and double Rugby World Cup winner Richie McCaw receiving the highest accolade, being made a Member of the Order of New Zealand (ONZ) for services to New Zealand.

But no one from Te Tai Tokerau.

And it's difficult to analyse why, because the information surrounding nominations, if there were indeed some made, is confidential.

Ten people could have been nominated from Northland and rejected, we don't know.

The law of averages would tend to suggest that if a healthy number of nominations are made, some will be accepted.

It could be that we suffer from nomination apathy.

Zonta assembled a roll call this year honouring "Women of Achievement".

There were no Northlanders on the list, we cried.

There were no Northlanders nominated, Zonta replied.

Can't argue with that - you have to be in to win, they say.

Making a NZ Royal Honours nomination is simple, and you can make one any time, but they have to be made well in advance. The processing of nominations and decisions around who receives an honour are made six months beforehand. So New Year Honours decisions are made in June. Maybe, as followers of something known occasionally as "Northland time", we missed the New Years Honours deadline last year.

So if we missed the bus for New Year's, hopefully there's a busload of nominees heading south later this year to receive Queen's Birthday Honours.

Here's hoping, because there are plenty of Northlanders doing great work in their communities.