Dialogue: Queen needs to loosen up a little

By SANDY BURGHAM

While our Prime Minister is overseas, having seen fit to ignore the Queen by attending more pressing engagements, Her Majesty will soon be forced to shake the hand of her Australian representative, a former archbishop of her church at present embroiled in a sex abuse cover-up scandal.

How distasteful all of this is.

Call me old-fashioned but there is nothing worse than witnessing disrespect of the elderly. She must hate coming Down Under and I really wish she wouldn't. Every time she does I feel embarrassed on behalf of Australasia.

I remember during one royal tour I was rushing along a main street of Wellington when an unfamiliar-looking black car with a flag drove past within which a tired hand seemed to be waving to the distracted lunchtime shoppers racing to the local cafeteria.

"My God, it's the Queen," I thought. "I didn't even know she was in town."

On another occasion, when someone threw an egg at her, it was simply mortifying for me.

Why on earth does she bother? So seriously she takes this role bestowed upon her 50 years ago that, unflaggingly devoted to public duty, she presses on despite a waning public interest in her existence and her family antics being prime tabloid fodder.

Lesser people would have long ago thrown their gloved hands in the air and thought, "Sod you all then, I don't need this. I can retire to one of my palaces and be done with you ungrateful lot."

Obviously, the royals have a problem. They probably can't work out why they sell so many magazine covers yet people are so mean to them.

Well, it's because they are too stitched up in protocol to be themselves and this is what people respond to.

Thus, the Poms might find it relevant to agonise over whether the Queen should say hello to Camilla or just give her a nod, but I am yet to find a New Zealander who cares.

We accept those racy rooting-tooting European royals - who seem to be fully integrated into society - for who they are, but in a country devoid of national rituals and one that prides itself on informality, to be expected to roll out the red carpet and play along with antiquated rituals is anathema.

Remember when former United States President Bill Clinton came, saw and did a little shopping in Parnell. He was a hit. We felt good about ourselves, decided Jenny Shipley was doing a sterling job, and hoped her son would marry Chelsea.

Our response to Clinton's glib praise for New Zealand was as nauseatingly simplistic as Sally Field's memorable Academy Awards acceptance speech: "You like me, you really like me."

We forgave him for his sins against Monica and Hilary and promised to keep in touch.

Clinton knew how to keep his star shining ... breeze into town, get among the people, use the family ticket, and say wonderful things about the country and its inhabitants.

It's a basic formula that keeps us simpletons happy and one the royals might like to adopt.

We may want the fairy tale of having a royal family, but they should kick off their shoes and loosen up a little. Thus, my favourite shots of the Queen are those outdoorsy ones featuring her in trousers and gumboots, with a scarf around her head, chatting amiably to her husband - I assume about horses.

I can almost imagine her cutting her own sandwiches and filling her own thermos.

Although it must be hard to stomach Antipodean philistines with their common ways, if she insists on coming the Queen unfortunately needs to appreciate that down here all the pomp and ceremony is completely out of sync. She may think the lack of fanfare is deeply rooted in the question of whether we want a republic.

And this is not altogether true. I am sick of those pollsters who want a definitive yes/no answer to the question.

Some of us might quite enjoy the quaint notion of having a Queen but just need more information about the benefits of having her as our head of state.

In case the Queen is reading this over tea and toast, I do wish for her own sake that she puts herself out of this misery by handing the reins over to Charles, the royal divorcee with wayward teenage sons and de facto girlfriend, to try to make sense of it all in modern times.

At her stage of life she should enjoy her corgis, her husband, and spend precious time with her ailing mother rather than having to endure dreary obligatory visits to her uninterested subjects around the world.