Locke Keith: Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Locke Keith: Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:672;Page:18398] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 There are some contradictions in the Royal Society of New Zealand Bill. There has been talk about whether we should take the word “Royal” out of Royal Society or something like that although then it would be called “Society” or “The Society” which is not very distinguished or distinguishing. But there are those of us who might be tempted from a republican point of view—and I am glad the French Revolution was brought up—to move an amendment to take out the word “Royal” and just have “Society” or to invent a whole new name such as “Kiwi Society” or something. One of the contradictions here is that under the commencement clause the bill commences when it receives Royal assent. If we tried to extract— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: This is clause 1. 
KEITH LOCKE 
: It is important because this is where the contradiction is. If we tried to take out “Royal” then we might not get 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’.” because it is undermining his very being as a representative of the Queen and undermining 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 but actually achieving honour in cultural scientific or any of the other endeavours in the purposes 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 charge the Royal Society to use in respect of royalty its expertise in areas of science like genetics—because royalty is based on genetics and inheritance—or its expertise in the cultural field in 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 with all its collective wisdom and expertise it would come out with such a strong argument against our continuing with royalty that it would have to be abolished. Unlike the bill I put forward previously the Head of State Referenda Bill any such bill would not go down by a few votes with some members voting against it but would get the support of the overwhelming majority of the House for a referendum on whether we should be a republic because of the great work of the Royal Society in arguing the case for royalty not being continued. I think this is a serious matter. 
There are also the questions about royal succession raised before by Brendon Burns and they relate very much to the title of the bill as well. I think we could take the initiative here and instead of New Zealand chairing the meeting that Brendon Burns referred to we could bring a bill before this House to say that there should not be any preference for a male heir that the heir should be able to marry a Catholic and that the heir should be able to be a Catholic. One of the problems with any changes in Britain is even if its citizens go for some bill that states the heir is allowed to marry a Catholic and a female heir equals a male heir the British are still faced with the problem of wiping out the monarch as head of the Anglican Church. That is the big sticking point for them. The monarch is the head of the Anglican Church in Britain—not the Anglican Church worldwide. That is the big sticking point for the British in respect of moving to 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 to remove ethnic or racial discrimination. It is very hard given the inheritance line for a Maori or an Indian New Zealander—whomever—to become the head of State in New Zealand because the monarchy is very much a European line— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Please narrow your speech to the title. 
KEITH LOCKE 
: To talk to the expertise of the Royal Society in genetics one of the things it could analyse is 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.