King Charles’ illness produced an outpouring of support and good wishes for him. He has been King for less than a year. Like his mother, Queen Elizabeth, Charles is New Zealand’s head of state, but he has yet to visit us in his new role. Will his illness prevent him from visiting later this year, at the time of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting scheduled for October in Samoa?
Charles is already as old as his mother was when she last visited New Zealand, in 2002. New Zealand’s head of state has not visited us in more than 20 years.
Charles’ representative in New Zealand is, of course, the governor-general, currently Dame Cindy Kiro. She performs the role and responsibilities of the King as a constitutional monarch, but the King is remote in London.
The monarch appoints the governor-general, but does so always on the advice of the prime minister of New Zealand. How the governor-general is chosen is opaque at best. The Leader of the Opposition is, by convention, supposed to be consulted for their concurrence, but this does not happen in every case. It is an undemocratic process.
The governor-general carries out the domestic duties of the sovereign, including appointing (and dismissing) ministers of the crown, signing acts of parliament into law, presiding over weekly meetings of the Executive Council to sign orders in council, holding investitures and carrying out public events on the King’s behalf.
Unlike in the UK, where the prime minister has a weekly audience with the monarch, New Zealand’s prime minister does not regularly brief the governor-general, one on one, on affairs of state. Some previous governors-general have sought to institute a regular briefing by the prime minister, but this depends on the inclination of the prime minister of the day.
So, the scope for the governor-general to provide wise counsel privately to the prime minister, as happens in the UK, is absent here. The governor-general can request information on any topic from the relevant minister. But it is largely a passive, reactive process.
Neither does the governor-general regularly receive all state papers and diplomatic reporting in the way the British monarch does (the famous “red boxes”).
To what extent does the governor-general keep the King informed of actions s/he undertakes on his behalf in New Zealand? Again, it appears largely to be an ad hoc process. There is no formal obligation to keep the monarch informed of developments in his New Zealand realm or the actions taken on his behalf. The King no longer personally signs all congratulatory messages sent in his name to us.
The monarch in London is incapable of representing New Zealand internationally, a standard function of a modern head of state. To the limited extent that the governor-general undertakes this role, their designation as “vice-regal” causes confusion in countries unused to our colonial-era heritage and constitutional set-up. These countries do not regard our governor-general as equivalent in rank to their own head of state (eg, the Emperor of Japan).
Since the governor-general is already our head of state in embryo (“de facto”, but not “de jure”), we should consider transforming the office of the governor-general into that of our head of state, with clearer agreed rules on appointment, role and responsibilities. This is not a difficult legal process or a costly undertaking. The Treaty of Waitangi remains as it is. The country remains a member of the Commonwealth, and the King is still a welcome guest as Commonwealth head.
It is time to bring the office of head of state home to New Zealand and accord it the mana and dignity it deserves. Only then will we have full independence as a sovereign nation.
Peter Hamilton is a former Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade deputy secretary. He worked as a New Zealand diplomat for 35 years, including as ambassador to Germany.
