Collins Judith: Royal Succession Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCollins Judith: Royal Succession Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 10 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15438. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice): I will take just a short call on the Royal Succession Bill. It is not usual for me to agree with Andrew Little and I am not going to break the habit of a lifetime by starting now. I just want to correct a couple of things that have been said here today. The first is that actually the Queen is the Queen of New Zealand for us. She is the Queen of Great Britain and the United Kingdom when she is there but for us she is our Queen.I would also just like to remind the Green Party member Gareth Hughes—who spoke before and who after much impassioned rhetoric then decided to abstain—that it actually does not do any good for the status of the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand to then try to belittle the history of the Crown the monarchy and actually the establishment of New Zealand. I think that we should all just remember that the Treaty is in fact a partnership between the Crown and the iwi of New Zealand. It is not a partnership that went anywhere other than that. It was in fact that important. Some of the strongest supporters of the monarchy in New Zealand are in fact Māori because of that historical relationship.I think that it does not help us in New Zealand to forget where this Parliament came from. Actually it came from a tradition that started in the UK. We may well talk about Catholicism and all that sort of thing but until Henry VIII all of the monarchs of Britain were actually Catholic ever since Catholicism had been established. That was the religion of the day. In fact people did not get a choice as to whether or not they were Catholic; they were either Catholic or dead frankly.Hon Maryan Street: What’s changed?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Similar things happened and of course these things changed over the years.Of course this bill does help to modernise what many people in New Zealand would think is a very quaint tradition but it is a quaint tradition with a lot of history and a lot of importance to many other New Zealanders. I am one of those New Zealanders who is relatively ambivalent on the issue of whether to have a republic or a monarchy but I will say that for the monarchy to be of importance to New Zealand and for the Treaty of Waitangi to be important the monarchy needs to be given its fair due. I was shocked to hear the Green Party member criticise the number of times that the Queen has been to New Zealand. She has been here many many times. I actually thought that was outrageous. He should apologise to the Queen for that—not that she has ever heard of him and she probably never will I should hope.But anyway it is a good bill. It is a sensible bill. It is very moderate. It will never make the monarchy modern but it will in fact help to bring to the monarchy a little bit of what we have today—in other words gender neutrality and not actually excluding Roman Catholics. The reason for excluding Roman Catholics has well and truly passed. It was really all about who controlled Britain. Everything has now passed and it is time for us to come together and support this bill. I would like to thank everyone who has supported it.