KEY POINTS:
As New Zealanders reluctantly pack up their tents, lock the bach door and head back to work from one of the sunniest summer holiday seasons in memory, the last thing most will be thinking about is our nation's constitutional arrangements.
Yet former Prime Minister Mike Moore has raised the issue out of the blue by announcing he's had a constitutional conversion.
He once wrote in the Herald that he opposed having a constitution. Now, he supports change out of fear that New Zealand's inherited enlightenment values may be in jeopardy.
As someone who supports a limited constitution, I welcome his change of heart and his effort to keep New Zealanders thinking about our evolution as a nation state. But as is often the case with Moore, there's a lot right and a lot wrong in what he says.
Fundamentally, he's wrong to say we don't have a constitution. We do. Every country does. What we don't have is a formal, written constitution. Our constitution is by international standards incredibly fluid.
It's made up of a long list of laws and conventions, treaties (The Treaty of Waitangi prominent among them), and British, New Zealand and international laws, from the Magna Carta in 1215 to the Electoral Finance Act in 2007.
Like a bundle of twigs, they're much weaker on their own, and would be stronger if we bundled them together.
But those laws and conventions are vitally important, because they will be the outside pieces we have to hand whenever we start serious work on our constitutional jigsaw, and so will frame the final picture.
This loose constitutional arrangement makes us unusual. Only two other democracies, Britain and Israel, lack a written, formal constitution spelling out the rights of citizens and restrictions on political power in that country.
What it means is that for much of our national life, including while Moore was on the ninth floor, our political leaders have had many fewer checks and balances than those in other democracies.
One Government white paper in 1985 seriously compared Sir Robert Muldoon's power as PM (and Finance Minister) with that of the Stuart kings.
Our human rights protections are some of the weakest in the Western world and we have been subject more than most to political whim. MMP has significantly improved the situation, but is not enough on its own.
Unless he knows of some forthcoming plan by the Government to rush us towards republicanism, Moore's suggestion that any constitutional reform is most likely to be done in a fit of populism and will represent ad hoc change seems odd and unlikely.
Where is the evidence for such a claim?
There is a well-trod tradition of constitutional change in Western democracies, and the most widely followed rule is, don't rush it. It's hard to see this Government or the next bucking that tradition.
Moore also assumes that constitutional change and republicanism go hand-in-hand. I disagree.
We are a constitutional monarchy, and there's no reason for us to change that status even if we formalised our constitution.
Certainly, the republican question will come up as soon as a new constitution starts being seriously discussed, but it would be a distraction to all the other nation-building foundation stones we could lay quite independently of that.
Whatever your position on the issue, it seems fair to conclude that New Zealanders are unlikely to embrace republicanism at this stage in our history.
That does not mean we should delay a full and frank constitutional debate. Time is pressing, and for exactly the reason Moore gives.
Social change in the coming century puts at risk those age-old principles that we inherited from Britain, including the rule of law, an independent judiciary, freedom of expression and movement and the right of protest, among many others, and the enlightenment values inherited from Europe as a whole.
One of the reasons these values may be lost is that New Zealand, naturally enough, is becoming a much less European country.
Rough predictions suggest that by 2051 half New Zealand's population will identify themselves as Maori, Pacific or Asian New Zealanders.
This is no bad thing and can be rightfully celebrated. But it will inevitably lead to significant social change. Add in globalisation, the growing impact of international law, the rise of religious militancy, and you will see those enlightenment values that Moore rightly holds so dear, cannot be taken for granted.
We cannot assume Western values will dominate global thought in the next 50 years.
Let me stress, we should and must graft on the values of other cultures, both indigenous and arriving.
A new constitution would be a great opportunity for some Maori values - perhaps kaitiakitanga, for example - to regain their rightful place at the centre of our national life. And some traditional values can happily be jettisoned.
This is not an argument for xenophobia and it does not mean abandoning the best traditions that Pakeha settlers brought with them.
We need only look at the US to see how fragile our values are. Under pressure, nation which brought us the Marshall Plan and passionately, if imperfectly, defended democratic values throughout the 20th century - has resorted to rendition, torture and bugging its own citizens.
These values we so treasure in New Zealand would be safer with a fence around them. Not a 10m concrete job, but a decent piece of number eight wire.
As Moore suggests, a deliberate, detailed, sober (and I would add inclusive) debate is needed to consider how to do that.
Politically, it may be hard to get moving until the next parliamentary term. But let's consider these issues while the weather is still fair, and not wait until the storms of social change hit and it's all too late.
* Tim Watkin is a former award-winning New Zealand Herald journalist now working in the United States.
