Vulnerability in a rush to republics
It will depend a lot on the jury call made on Charles’ first months. Early opinions prove very hard to overturn.
Elizabeth started as a fresh young beauty, coronated in front of a tame press who — along with their public — were mad for her. She had a much, much easier public honeymoon than Charles can expect.
His reign debuts before a media which is totally transformed. It’s far less restrained (which is not without good points), much more intrusive, and almost manically judgemental.
Charles will be the constant target of ‘‘gotcha’’ journalism. Clear proof was the mammoth coverage of a monumentally unimportant moment — a tired and bereaved old man’s meltdown over a leaky fountain pen.
(But will some courtier please tell Charles the fountain pen was invented 24 years before the Model T Ford. Montblanc — even Bic — makes Roller Balls suitable for thick and kingly signatures).
There’s no present Kiwi mania for a republic. Should Charles’ reign change sentiment, creating a republic would be much easier than in Australia which has a very protected constitution, and an obstreperous senatorial house of review.
Many New Zealanders think our country’s most important founding document is the Treaty of Waitangi. But just as vital is Westminster’s New Zealand Constitution Act of 1852, which established our country as a parliamentary democracy.
We started with both a House of Reps and an appointed Lord’slike House of Review. But this Upper House was abolished in 1951, fulfilling a National Party election pledge.
New Zealand now has neither a codified constitution, nor a constraining House of Review. Which leaves a solo majority government disturbingly unfettered.
A determined government could (as even the New York
points out) change New Zealand to Aotearoa without so much as a referendum.
And if Parliament decided to send Charles and constitutional monarchy on its way, it could accomplish this via a simple majority vote in the Beehive.
Yes, that seems unduly alarmist. But our longstanding concepts of democracy are already being challenged by something unmandated, without any set of rules, called ‘‘cogovernance’’.
The future is an unknowable beast. That’s why protection is offered through constitutions and Houses of Review. We’re vulnerable.
Dear Uncle Norm,
I salute Victoria University for introducing its new Intimate and Personal Relationships policy.
It calls creeps to account. University staff are forbidden outright from sex relationships with students they may have power over now, or even in the future. Wisely, the sex ban reaches all the way down to potential petty dictators like research assistants and parttime tutors.
The AntiCreep laws demanded that anyone already offending confess to their superiors by September 1. (I trust they’ve done this)
Staff must also tell their manager if they, say, have a casual snog, and later on discover the snoggee was in the banned category.
In all, 24 insightful clauses and subclauses detail the university’s new intimate relationship rules. These even specify what is acceptable behaviour from couples who break up.
Bravo! This is an excellent model for banning the mingling of sex and power. Our government should extend it to all workplaces.
Them Too. (via email).
These rules treat Vic staff like secret Harvey Weinsteins.
We need to be less doctrinaire and more honest about the sources of power in intimate relationships.
Henry Kissinger, bespectacled and owlish, declared that ‘‘power is the ultimate aphrodisiac’’. But while he offered a grain of selfinterested truth, he is flat wrong.
The greatest sexual power doesn’t belong to those who struggle up the ladder and earn position. It is owned, used, and often abused, by those whom dumb chance has made goodlooking and desirable.
Sexual attraction is also behind ‘‘upward mobility’’ in almost every romantic novel from Jane Austen to a thousand Mills and Boon titles. Here the rich and powerful become the targets of the beautifully ambitious. And the world spins on.
It’s the socalled ‘‘softpowers’’ which are actually the most used weapons of intersex control, and their subtle but deadly use has no particular connection to position.
We need to be squeamish about regulating workplace relationships on a basis of rank, because rank is not actually inherent to the power balance of relationships. And people of all ranks mix in the jumble of attraction.
Love is as complicated as life itself. It is foolish, it is blind. But no more so than Victoria University’s human resources grandees, and their blunderbuss approach to sexuality.
John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer
TODAY is Monday, September 19, the 262nd day of 2022. There are 103 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1356 — An English army led by Edward, The Black Prince, eldest son of Edward III, defeats King John II (John the Good), of France, in the Battle of Poitiers at the end of the first phase of the Hundred Years’ War.
1656 — A British fleet under Robert Blake captures Spanish treasure ships off Cadiz, Spain.
1668 — John II (John Casimir) abdicates as king of Poland.
1788 — Captain William Bligh discovers and names the Bounty Islands, southeast of New Zealand.
1876 — The first carpetsweeper is patented in the United States by inventor Melville Bissell.
1881 — The 20th president of the United States, James Garfield, dies of wounds inflicted by an assassin 11 weeks earlier.
1893 — The Electoral Act is signed into law by the Governor, the Earl of Glasgow, and New Zealand becomes the first selfgoverning country to grant women a parliamentary vote.
1898 — Twice New Zealand governor and prime minister from 1877 to 1879, Sir George Grey, dies in London aged 86. He is buried at St Paul’s Cathedral.
1928 — Steamboat Willie, the first animated cartoon talking picture, starring Mickey Mouse, is shown at the Colony Theatre in New York.
1934 — Bruno Richard Hauptmann is arrested in New York and charged with kidnapping the baby of US aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh.
1945 — William Joyce, who broadcast Nazi propaganda to Britain during World War 2 as Lord Haw Haw, is sentenced to death by a British court for treason. He was later hanged.
1949 — The New Zealand currency is devalued in line with the British pound.
1957 — The US conducts its first underground nuclear test, in the Nevada Desert.
1969 — Two miners are killed in a rockfall 800m from the mine entrance and 60m underground, at the Fernhill Coal Company’s mine at Brighton, near Dunedin.
1983 — The Caribbean islands of St KittsNevis become an independent state.
1992 — Otago and Southland electorates follow the national trend by voting overwhelmingly in favour of MMP in a national referendum on electoral reform. A second referendum will be held in association with the general election the following year.
1996 — Russian president Boris Yeltsin agrees to transfer full power to his prime minister while he undergoes heart surgery.
1997 — New Zealand cricket captain Stephen Fleming completes his fifth catch of Zimbabwe’s first innings in Harare to equal the test record set by Australian Victor Richardson in 193536. Fleming took another two catches in Zimbabwe’s second innings to equal another test record, set by Richardson’s grandson
Greg Chappell in 197475, of seven catches in a match.
2012 — The first Olympic goldmedal presentation in New Zealand occurs at a ceremony on Auckland’s waterfront when GovernorGeneral Sir Jerry Mateparae presents Valerie Adams with her gold medal for the women’s shot put at the recent Olympic Games in London.