Speech
North Harbour Lawyers Luncheon
May I first acknowledge being among a comforting number of lawyers and judges, many of you whom I have known for a very long time.
Secondly, may I acknowledge how long this institution of the North Harbour Lawyers luncheon, has been operational for the best part of 20 years.
For my contribution, I have decided to attempt a preview of an article that I have in active preparation, describing the job of Governor-General with a view from the inside. Over 20 years it has become a practice for recent Governors-General to write such an account. Now that I have been in office for just over three years of the five-year term, almost one of every expected occurrence has been experienced – with the exception to the moment of a constitutional crisis which, of course, it is to be hoped that no New Zealand Governor-General will ever have to deal with. No title for the article has yet been settled.
By way of approaching the task of Governor-General, with the benefit of some good advice, I have put in place two or three things that have considerably assisted the passage to this date. The first has been to take some time to prepare a strategic plan as to what might be attempted and achieved during the term. To do that, items during the terms of predecessors were analysed, and a similar exercise with holders of similar office in Australia and Canada. Secondly, although I have not been one to keep a daily diary, I have an appointment each month for an interview for an hour with an experienced oral historian, who, armed with a schedule of what has been achieved during the prior month, questions what has gone on and why. This third thing is that I have fastened on three themes which I can stress when speaking. The first is the increasing diversity of the New Zealand community; secondly, the need for people to engage with the community outside their own home; and, thirdly, the importance of civics knowledge and civics education.
It is said to be desirable for every article sent for publication in a law journal to have a set of preliminary quotations that might anchor how the article will proceed and I have identified two which seem to earn their stripes. The first is a quote from one of my predecessors in office, Sir Michael Hardie Boys, who during his Neil Williamson lecture, said as follows about the role:-
“The fundamental thing …is that the Governor-General has the responsibility to ensure the continuity and legitimacy of government … and to do that effectively it is crucial that he or she be, and be seen to be, publically neutral and impartial.”
The second comes from the United States writer, Robert Heinlein, who, in a book called ‘The Notebooks of Lazarus Long’, speaking of the need for variety, said as follows:
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, steer a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization”, he wrote,” is for insects.”
The quotations, I think, give an idea of the centrality to government of the role and the range of things that are transacted in the course of each week, certainly, each month and, undoubtedly, each year. To these can perhaps be added something from the BBC promotion material that espouses the benefit of continuing to ask questions – which is something I have continued to do in this job as in others.
Having listened to this introduction one might ask – “Well what’s it really like?”. The best I can answer is to say that it means always being in public, always being on someone elses timetable – yet always seeing things done well. It is a mixture of being in public life without seeking popularity. That of itself, provides interesting turns of the road of which the following is an example.
There was an article in the Dominion Post in April of this year which read as follows:
“Governor-General Anand Satyanand who took up residence at Government House Vogel at Lower Hutt earlier this year has become the city’s most prominent citizen. But the locals are wondering what he might have done to stir things up on the local graffiti scene. In the past week a solitary ‘Satch’ tag on the walls of the Melling Bridge subway seems to have sent other local graffiti artists into a frenzy. Within days the subway walls were covered with dozens of other, mostly indecipherable, tags.”
The Governor-General role has traditionally been dissected into three layers; constitutional, ceremonial and community and I will deal with each in turn. Constitutionally the Governor-General’s task is set out in law, as people here will know, in the Letters Patent 1983 and the Constitution Act 1986. Those two documents set out how the Governor-General is to act in most circumstances and they have proved durable over the quarter century that has followed. A lingering question, in my mind, is that the Constitution Act 1986 was passed by Parliament, at least partly, in order to avoid, in the future, difficulties with regard to the assumption of office by a new government as had happened following the election in that case, the 1984 general election. This may suggest in the minds of some, that elements of the legal architecture prior to 1986 may have not been correct and I have a lingering question as to whether the Letters Patent ought now be reconstituted or enacted again so that both can be said to function in harmony with each other.
In the five-year term of each New Zealand Governor-General, it is generally the case that there will be a general election held. Such has occurred in my own term, in November 2008, and as a result of the decision made by the voters to effect change the former Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Helen Clark, came to Government House to present her resignation and those of her ministers. I thereafter received the new Prime Minister, the Hon John Key, who asserted in the time honoured form that he commanded a majority in the House of Representatives resulting in him being able to be appointed Prime Minister and sworn in - and the new Ministers likewise shortly after that. This change of Ministry occurred, I am very pleased to say, in a remarkably short time and with conspicuously good manners on sides, outgoing and incoming.
Appointing Ministers is core business because the Governor-General’s task is to act upon the advice of Ministers, in other words, not to do anything off one’s own bat, and that applies in almost every circumstance. At a credentials ceremony, for example, the new Ambassador reads a letter from their Head of State in the expectation of being formally received. There is, however, always a Minister of the Crown in attendance who says something to the effect that,
“The New Zealand government recommends that you accept the Letter of Credence from the Ambassador from the appropriate country”.
Only then, can there be acceptance.
Much of this generic kind of thing, - of appointment of people to jobs, or making orders - is done on the papers and there is a steady flow of documents every day of things coming from, either Cabinet, or individual Ministers and, of course, Parliament. Each will contain advice from the appropriate Minister, - in the case of legislation, the advice of the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General as well as the certification by the Clerk of the House is upon the material. It would be, you will understand, a big call to baulk at providing assent to legislation.
One cannot help but refer to some of the matters coming before the Governor-General under odd circumstances and out of areas of the law with which I was not ever familiar. I bring to mind, for example, an order just a few weeks ago bringing quite a considerable tract of land in the middle of Southland under the Land Transfer Act, even though it had been occupied and farmed since the early 1860s. Or the fact that the term ‘Royal’ used by a company or an organisation within New Zealand, requires permission of the Governor-General and advice in regard to that is furnished by the appropriate Minister. Not so long ago, permission for a firm called “The Nippon Royal Company Limited” to trade as a car dealer was forthcoming on the advice of the Minister. A third item relates to the Ross Dependency being part of New Zealand along with Niue and Tokelau and the Cook Islands. It is pursuant to legislation passed in the United Kingdom at Westminster in 1923 that every few months a document comes up for a person to be appointed as a Justice of the Peace with jurisdiction over the Ross Dependency.
All this may seem, in some ways, to be rather straightforward and mundane material, but there is an opportunity for anyone who is interested in the processes, to suggest positive change and I can advise of a number of steps of that kind that have been taken in my time. Examples include the form of documents supporting material coming before the Executive Council each Monday after Cabinet and new forms which have been devised in plain language for people applying for the Prerogative of Mercy to be exercised.
I turn then to the ceremonial aspects of the job which occur almost every month and almost every week during those months. In the last week, for example, there has been Remembrance Sunday, and a credentials ceremony for four new diplomats. Every so often there has been a change in the Cabinet with a Minister resigning or changing portfolio and another being appointed. Of course, following the general election there was the general swearing in of an entire Cabinet. Investitures occur twice each year with 200 New Zealanders at each time coming forward to receiving the honours with which the government has sought to provide them and the Queen having been willing to accept the advice for the various honours to be provided. It makes one think as to how much goes on in our community – often on a voluntary basis - to make things function. ANZAC Day, Waitangi Day, Commonwealth and Armistice Day provide occasions to be mindful of the reasons for which those days exist.
There are occasionally issues arising with ceremonial things frequently calling for reconsideration and change. I bring to mind two things. The first relates to Government House being decommissioned at the moment and that a great many ceremonial actions have to take place off site for two years preserving the expected procedure but in different circumstances. The second is the formality attaching to the appointment of Consuls in a document called an exequatur which presently calls for affixation of the Seal of New Zealand and signatures of Governor-General and Minister and which is being reviewed with a view to a simpler process.
The third layer is that of association with the New Zealand community. It is a matter which takes up the most time by a considerable margin –with several hundred encounters in each year. This is so, whether it be related to business, to youth, New Zealand’s ethnic communities, organisations which are given patronage, the education sector, central and local government. There are calls for every Governor-General and spouse to make themselves available to attend significant occasions that are being undertaken by such groups or organisations. The upside is that this provides a very happy connection with positive things that are occurring every week and every month in some part of the New Zealand community. Management and preparation is called for in what ends up having to be an appropriate, amount of knowledge and enthusiasm, for the event. It is also necessary to ensure that one stands between being regarded as a demand-driven sponge and someone who is endeavouring to manage the outcomes. It is here that having a strategic plan is vital, as is examining it, to make sure that there is a fair spread of activity be it geographical or sectoral.
Community contact generates the necessity for different sorts of communications like messages to organisations when it is not possible to attend their function; cards upon specific occurrences, such as, people achieving 100 years of age or a significant wedding anniversary, or at Christmas time. Communication also occurs by means of brochures and having an active website. A great deal of work has been done in the last three years for which satisfaction can be listed.
The issues that arise out of this include just having sufficient time to undertake what is asked, the continuing contestability of dates, and often times within each date. Even in this area, where people are doing things well, problems can be generated that need attention and that can be a challenge. For example the notion of being chairman of an organisation has caused conflict of interest difficulties particularly where there is a trustee relationship. It is reasonable well-known that I did not agree to become a trustee of the Waitangi National Trust Board after taking advice from the Solicitor-General in that respect, although steps are being taken to re-engineer a kind of patron role with that organisation. There are community things which arise involving continuing challenge, such as, speaking in Maori (even if just in greeting) and speaking to children which I had not personally undertaken, certainly in public, for some considerable time before appointment, just over three years ago.
After that quick tour d’horizon I hope that what I have said, has painted something of a picture of what goes on in a day-to-day fashion and gives you some idea, that for someone of a legal background, there arises continuing fascination with what is there to be done. The Governor-General space is one where imagination and general knowledge is tested and stretched, in a nice way, all the time.
To conclude, it is also appropriate in every journal article to think of an apposite quotation and I come to one of Sir William Deane, recently Governor-General of Australia, who, I think, in his ability to speak in a forthright and liberal fashion, has provided for myself, yet another excellent role model to give credence to, on many occasions. Sir William said, as he came to canvass things to do with being a Governor-General, as follows:
“The Governor-General is entitled to raise concerns and to explore issues of national importance; but not to debate solutions, for solutions are the domain of the politicians.”
Finally a crucial pointer as to what it all involves was provided by Charles II in the 1660s when he said “my actions are my own: my words are my Ministers.” And so it is for what Her Majesty is pleased to call her “trusty and well-beloved representative”.
Thank you for your courteous attention.