I was just going through my change (looking for appropriate amounts to give to workmate who is leaving) and noticed I had three 20 cent coins, one from 1967, one from 1987 and one from 2002. I noticed because the 2002 one was very shiny and had a new style pic of the Queen. She's aged a bit...
Anyhow, this rather led me to thinking about the relevance of the royal family to NZ. Obviously there are serious historical links, but there are few and far between live links. Only occasionally does anyone from the royal family get this far away from home. They almost never actually do any of the tasks that the NZ Head of State is supposed to do (avoiding consitutional incidents, meeting foreign digitaries, handing out honours, etc.)
Do I want a President instead? No thanks. An elected Govenor General will avoid the Bush associations, and allow us to recognise our British heritage just fine.
or...
Someone (who will remain nameless) thinks Charles should abdicate the British throne and come out here instead. That way the Treaty of Waitangi would still have the two signitories recognised, and He'd actually be here to worry about it.
(and no, I have no idea how the succession should be handled.)
Perhaps we should try for someone else (there must be some distant royal relative who'd do a good job in return for living in the Governor General's residence).
Posted by carla at September 9, 2003 04:48 PM