What does the royal family do for New Zealand that we cannot do for ourselves? Photo / File
What does the royal family do for New Zealand that we cannot do for ourselves? Photo / File
Comment: This British royal family just seems to be going from crisis to scandal and back to crisis.
The poor Queen does not need this at 93 years of age.
Chuck needs to start figuratively putting his number nines up a few posteriors in his weird and dysfunctional family insteadof waltzing around the old empire hobnobbing with the elite and attending a few powhiri to keep the "natives" in line.
Queen Elizabeth, a person whom I have a great deal of respect and admiration for, has been our Queen all my life.
In fact I apparently waved my little Union Jack at her on Waterloo Bridge in Lower Hutt at the age of about 18 months when she toured Aotearoa after her coronation.
Mother told me I was mightily impressed but, of course, I remember nothing of this. However this early experience may have triggered a keen interest I have in the history of the British royal family back to before Bill the Norman arrived.
At least nowadays they have stopped murdering each other, well supposedly.
They have tended to confine themselves to marrying cousins and American chancers and creating scandals for the last 150 years or so.
Queen Elizabeth has stood above all of this, apart from marrying her cousin, Phil the Greek, and has always been a beacon of steadiness and decency, unusual for this particular family of European royalty.
At the age of 19 I took an oath to serve my Queen, something I did for the next 20-odd years with pride until retirement took me back into the normal world.
I spent years helping to protect various members of the royal family on their jaunts to the furthest colony. I even arrested that "cheeky native" Dun Te Ringu Mangu Mihaka, for showing his not inconsiderable bottom to the fairy princess Diana in Wellington in 1983 in that classic Māori act of contempt, the whakapohane.
This got Dun and me in the papers around the world with comments along the lines of New Zealand needing to better control its "natives".
It appears that we are still a colony to some.
Two policemen attempt to stop Dun Mihaka burning the Union Jack during the visit of Prince Charles to Waitangirua in 1981. Photo / NZ Herald
Dun went to court and we had a grand old two-day hearing. He and his wife were, and are, far more interesting people than the fairy princess and her husband were.
In 1981 I was part of the welcome parade of about 200 police at the new Porirua Police College when Chuck arrived to formally open it. We then all had lunch with the wee man. He spoke to us individually and was actually quite pleasant and engaging. He was wearing the nicest suit.
Since the heady days of thousands of Kiwis lining the streets waving flags, stopping whole cities while royalty were present, things have gone downhill for the family firm.
No one here really cares about them and hardly anybody bothers when various members fly in and out of the country.
It all changed about the time Charles and Diana split. This showed the peasants that the royal family does not really matter, they are really no better than, and certainly not as moral as most of their subjects. The concept of God-given rule was seen for what it is, complete bollocks.
The Queen is approaching the end of a very long and honourable reign where duty and tradition have been her guiding lights. She is still, apparently, quite healthy so could rule for some time yet unless she decided to put her feet up at Sandringham and pass the buck to Charles.
Charles is 71. It is possible that he may not be crowned before 75, that perhaps being a record worthy of a Guinness mention.
Is it timely for New Zealand to now consider severing our ties with this British royal family?
Having a Head of State who is a foreigner in all ways seems archaic and irrelevant in a democracy such as ours.
Apart from knighthoods and gongs handed out to the so-called great and good of our wee country what does the royal family do for New Zealand that we cannot do for ourselves?
Charles may be a good king, but going on past performance, I doubt it. It could be 20 years before William gets a crack as these particular royals seem to be long livers.
When our dear Queen either abdicates in favour of her flawed offspring or dies do we need to say taihoa, enough is enough?
We are not a colony who needs a foreign head of state, we are our own destiny.
It would be an appropriate time for us to become a republic of the Commonwealth.
