Dialogue: What if the G-G had turned up?

"Why didn't he just come?" asked one of those at Waitangi who well knew that a Governor-General is compelled to obey the "advice" of an elected Government.

"He couldn't," I replied, faithful to 400 years of English constitutional wisdom.

"I suppose so," she said, but she wasn't convinced. One of the beauties of women in public life is that they know there are times to push the envelope. And they are very good at it.

Ever since the indignities done five years ago to a former Governor-General, Dame Catherine Tizard, and to the flag, Jenny Shipley has harboured a regret that nobody thought to go out, pick up the flag, fold it and take it away.

Only a woman would think of that. Probably only a woman could do it.

I am not sure how Sir Michael Hardie Boys would have handled the ugly and deeply offensive demonstration that invaded the ceremony in the treaty grounds this year. My little constitutional conversation occurred after an unusually flat dawn service, before the real drama started.

The mid-morning invasion was raucous, tense and under the total command of women who know how to push the envelope. As the several hundred protesters approached the flagstaff, guarded by a dozen police, Annette Sykes and two other women fanned out, went behind the police line and controlled the front row of the march with hand signals.

First they had it pause, then very slowly they pulled it forward until the banner and flags were right in the faces of the constables. Right on their noses.

The police didn't flinch, didn't touch the long batons at their belts. When the tension subsided they drew back, leaving the demonstrators to make a great deal of noise but with no chance of raising their flag.

Meanwhile, the little service was proceeding in front of the meeting house 50m away. For several wonderful Waitangi moments there was a contest in the air between hymns from one side and haka from the other.

The hymns prevailed. Frustrated at the flagstaff, the horde regrouped and advanced towards the service. They did not stop at the people sitting on the grass, forcing them to scramble.

Ms Sykes and her lieutenants pulled their crowd right up to the back row of seats and sent flag-bearers forward to where Maori bishops were leading the service.

I don't know how a Governor-General would have responded but the bishops and a lay woman, Sarah Marianne Williams, a descendant of the missionaries, gave us a lesson in dignity.

Amid the chanting and uproar they read the preamble to the treaty. It was another Waitangi moment, another tingle in the spine and tear in the eye and you know again it is right to be here.

Despite disappointments in the Government that made the trouble on Tuesday entirely predictable, I think Sir Michael wanted to come. What would have happened if he had defied the Government's advice?

You can probably hear splutter from Wellington at the very suggestion. It strikes at the heart of constitutional monarchy.

There is not much wrong with constitutional monarchy. It is deservedly doomed here because the monarch is not one of us and inherited appointments are against our principles, at least in the public sector. But for 400 years it has proved to be a durable foundation of liberty, democracy, stability, justice and prosperity.

That would have been apparent to Maori chiefs by the time they decided to sign on with Queen Victoria. Well, not the democracy; 1840 was a bit early even for British liberals to see how far that idea would go.

Both sides assumed, probably, that those elected to power in a constitutional monarchy would always be gentlemen who would honour contracts made in the monarch's name. How wrong they were.

Even today a recent Prime Minister, David Lange, declares that the treaty says nothing to him, and historian Michael King insists that Pakeha were not party to a deal done by a British Government. Both sentiments were heard in a serious television discussion on Tuesday night.

If this goes on, the entire chattering class may come to imagine that the treaty is something they can recast over their second chardonnay.

It may be time to reinforce the status of the treaty a little, and this week a golden opportunity went begging. Imagine that after the cabinet had decided the Crown would not be represented at Waitangi this year, Sir Michael had replied thus:

"After careful reflection, I feel obliged to accept an invitation from people of Ngapuhi to be where the Treaty was presented to their forebears in the name of the sovereign whose successor I represent."

I have done a little research and this is what might have happened. Helen Clark could have tried to sack him. She cannot do so directly. She has to ask the Queen to appoint a replacement.

Buckingham Palace, like the Privy Council, is not anxious to enter New Zealand's arguments nowadays. Quite likely, the Queen would urge the Prime Minister to try to resolve things.

I doubt that the Government would welcome a public debate where Maori opinion was ranged solidly on the other side. But if Ms Clark did, I suspect that in the end public opinion would say, "If the Governor-General wants to go and be insulted at Waitangi, why should anybody be allowed to stop him?"

When he went, he would have established a unique and fitting exception to English constitutional conventions in this country. His office would be able to assert an obligation to the treaty over the conventions of deference to the parliamentary majority. Perhaps his successor, a woman, can do it.