KEITH LOCKE (Green)
:
I think there are some contradictions in this bill. There has been talk about whether we should take the word “Royal” out of Royal Society, or something like that, although then it is called “Society” or “The Society”, which is not very distinguished or distinguishing. But for those of us who might be tempted to move an amendment from a republican point of view—and I am glad the French Revolution was brought up—to take out the word “Royal” and just have “Society”, or invent a whole new name such as “Kiwi Society” or something, one of the contradictions here is that it is stated under the commencement clause that it commences when it receives the Royal assent. If we tried to extract—
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy)
: This is clause 1.
KEITH LOCKE
: It is important here because this is where the contradiction is. If we tried to take out “Royal” then we might not get the Royal assent. The Queen or her designated person, the Governor-General, might say: “Well, I’m not going to sign off a bill”—and they do have reserve powers—”that is taking out ‘royal’ and undermining my very being as a representative of the Queen.”, or the Queen herself. The other thing is that the concept of royalty is totally opposed to the concept behind the Royal Society, which is about achievement. It is not about inheriting a position in society or winning an honour, it is about achievement in cultural, scientific, or any of the other endeavours in the purpose of the Royal Society, so there is a big contradiction there. What I suggest, and I think it fits with the title and what we conceive of what the Royal Society should be doing, is that we should try to advise or charge the Royal Society to use its expertise in areas of science like genetics, because royalty is based on genetics and inheritance, or it could use its expertise in the cultural field and in the field of the philosophy of religion because the monarch is the head of the Anglican Church, which creates problems in a multi-religious and multicultural society.
If the Royal Society mobilised all its powers to analyse royalty, it might be able to be the author of its destruction because it would come out, with all its collective wisdom and expertise, with such a strong argument about us continuing with the royalty that it would have to be abolished. If I put forward a bill like I put forward previously, the Head of State Referenda Bill, it would not just go down with a few votes, with some members voting against it. It would get the overwhelming majority of the House for a referendum on whether we should go to a republic, because of the great work of the Royal Society in arguing the case for it not being continued. I think this is a serious matter. There are also the questions raised before, and they relate very much to the title as well—the questions that Brendon Burns talked about. He talked about royal succession. I think we could take the initiative here and instead of New Zealand chairing some meeting that Brendon Burns referred to, we could bring a bill before this House to say there should not be any preference to a male heir, one should be able to marry a Catholic, and one should be able to be a Catholic. One of the problems with any changes in Britain is even if they go for some bill that states one is allowed to marry a Catholic and a female heir equals a male heir, they are still faced with the problem of not wiping out the Monarch as the head of the Anglican Church. That is the big sticking point for them in Britain. The Monarch is the head of the Anglican Church in Britain, not the Anglican Church worldwide. That is the big sticking point for them moving to having a Catholic king or queen, whereas in New Zealand we do not have that problem. Also we have something called the Human Rights Act, which would push us down the road of getting rid of any religious discrimination in any sense of the word, and also gender discrimination. We would also be motivated by removing the ethnic or racial discrimination, because it is very hard, given the inheritance line, for a Māori or an Indian New Zealander or whoever to become the head of State in New Zealand because the monarchy is very much European line—
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy)
: Please narrow your speech a little bit.
KEITH LOCKE
: To talk to the expertise of the Royal Society in genetics, one of the things they could analyse is that the gene pool of European monarchies including—
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy)
: I have asked the member to speak to the title. I am going to cut his speech off. That is the end of his speech.