Recognising our taonga
It’s likely entertainers Lynda and Jools Topp will be embarrassed if they are referred to as the dames they have now become in this year’s Queen’s Birthday honours.
They’ve built a stellar and enduring career on being wonderfully self-effacing and approachable, and wouldn’t want a thing like being a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit to change that. Which it surely won’t. But let’s hope they are rightfully proud of the recognition for their services to entertainment, because Huntly’s most famous twins are a national taonga.
Through their music, iconic television shows (who can either forget or fail to identify with Camp Mother and Camp Leader) and the enduring openness with which they share their lives, they have helped define the qualities we are proud of as Kiwis.
And through their work to raise awareness of breast cancer and equality for those in same-sex relationships they have actively made our society healthier and more robust.
Lower Hutt’s Catherine Healy has also helped make our society healthier, and has been made a dame for service to the rights of sex workers.
While the Prostitution Reform Bill, which effectively decriminalised prostitution in 2003, may now seem like a natural progression of rights and dignities in a developed country, it would not have happened without 14 years of work from Healy.
As national co-ordinator of the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective from 1989, it was her campaign to gather support for decriminalisation that ultimately ended with the change in law that safeguards the human rights and occupational safety of sex workers.
Our 39th prime minister is now Sir Bill English, which after 27 years of service to the state is certainly well deserved, regardless of where on the political spectrum you sit.
Rounding out the list of top honours is Dame Winnie Laban for services to education and the Pacific community, Dame Jocelyn O’Connor for services to education and chemistry, and Sir Hekenukumai (Hector) Busby for services to
Ma¯ ori, and Sir John Rowles for services to entertainment.
Regardless of whether you think it’s time we started honouring our own, rather than leaving it to a Queen on the other side of the world, the Birthday honours list is a much-needed system of recognition that bestows kudos to those who largely do not seek it.
The vast majority of recipients will have put in decades of work, much of it unpaid and almost certainly on weekends, and that work won’t stop now that they’ve been recognised for it.
People such as Beverley Doreen of Christchurch, who has been recognised with a Queen’s Service Medal for her nearly 50 years of services to bonsai. Or Raymond Mettrick of Hastings, who received the same recognition for a lifetime of services to cricket. Or what about tiny Reefton’s Heather Aitken, who has been recognised for decades of service to karate.
It is a near-universal truth that recipients of a Queen’s honour will say they are humbled by the recognition. But as a society, we too should be humbled by this list, and genuinely celebrate these people for their quiet contribution to making our lives just that little bit better.