Brian Rudman: Trapped in a time warp with Queen's honours

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key. Photo / Getty Images

With British royals about to process around the country, Labour and Green party leaders rallying behind Prime Minister John Key's plan to award All Black skipper Richie McCaw a knighthood, and the referendum over a national flag pending, it's like I've woken up in colonial New Zealand circa 1915.

The Australians might be only the second-best rugby-playing nation in the world, but at least they have their feet firmly planted in the 21st century. New Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's swift scrapping of his predecessor's eccentric decision to reintroduce knighthoods and damehoods to the Australian honours system has been generally welcomed.

Mr Turnbull said his Cabinet colleagues had agreed "that knights and dames are not appropriate in our modern honours system", and to the majority of Australians, that seems blindingly obvious.

The Hawke Labour federal government stopped recommending imperial awards in 1983. The last two state governments to persevere with the practice, Queensland and Tasmania, ceased it in 1989. And so it remained until March last year, when staunchly monarchist PM Tony Abbott reintroduced knights and dames, without reference to his party colleagues. His subsequent award of one to the Queen's husband, Prince Philip - calling it a "captain's pick" - was widely ridiculed and added fuel to those plotting to overthrow him.

Here we remained trapped in a time warp. In 2009, soon after becoming Prime Minister, Mr Key reinstated the royal titles abolished by the Clark Labour Government in 2000. Indeed he went further, offering them like confetti to all those who'd missed out on the top title during the Clark years. It was like a Moonie mass wedding, with more than 70 knights and dames created overnight.

Since then, Mr Key has ended the charade that the Queen grants knighthoods. In December 2012, he added dying broadcaster Paul Holmes to the New Year's list. Earlier this year, he ignored a TV3 campaign to similarly honour seriously ill cricket star Martin Crowe.

He's also talked openly about how McCaw turned him down when he offered him a knighthood after the 2011 World Cup.

"I personally wanted him to take it," Key later told TV1, but the conclusion he drew was "he would love to take it but now wasn't the right time".

Now we have not just Mr Key but Labour leader Andrew Little and Green co-leader James Shaw all openly supporting a knighthood for the victorious rugby hero.

It would be nice to think McCaw's initial rejection was because he is a thoroughly modern 21st century New Zealander who sees the antiquated royal honours system as belonging to an other era. But I won't congratulate him yet. In 2009, when the Dominion named three refuseniks who said they would turn down Mr Key's offer to trade their Clark era honour into an actual title, I praised them by name, only to get an anguished phone call from one, saying there'd been a terrible mistake. She did want the title.

For all I know, Prince Charles, who arrives today, may have packed a ceremonial sword in his bag in order to fast track Sir Richie's elevation while he's here, like his mum did in the middle of the last century after Ed Hillary conquered Everest. It's the sort of PR stunt he needs, to pretend the heir to the British/New Zealand throne has any relevance on this side of the world.

As for the suggestion from one of the flag consideration panel members this week, that the royal visit and the All Black victory will have an influence on how people vote in this month's flag referendum, that seems to be a desperate attempt to try and breathe some life into the exercise.

It's suggested that weeks of watching the silver fern flag being waved about on our television screens will get us in the mood. I suspect it's going to take a lot more than that.

I'm all for changing the flag - along with the head of state. But the five choices on offer leave me so uninspired that I could well break the habit of a lifetime and for once give this vote a miss.

I suspect I'll be one of the silent majority.