The Queen versus Covid: Labour’s chance at a reset hits royal snag

OPINION: The Queen is dead, long live the King.

The death of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth is one of those moments that shakes the assumptions of life. The Queen was always there. After an extraordinarily long reign, the many and varied tributes for her life of service have come flooding in.

And her reign was incredible. Although known to be a keen political observer, she never clouded the job with political opinions, instead being the outward and visible symbol of a nation and a Commonwealth.

She was also “Queen of New Zealand and Her Other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith”. She travelled to New Zealand 10 times, laid the foundation stone of the Wellington Cathedral of St Paul in 1954, opened the Beehive in 1977 and reopened the Parliament in 1995, as well as attending the Commonwealth Games in 1974 and 1990. In 1995, she delivered an apology from the Crown to Tainui.

READ MORE:
* Queen Elizabeth II dies: Princess Elizabeth doll a highlight of Queen memorabilia at Te Papa
* From grudging republican to secret Elizabethan: How I came to love the Queen
* Queen Elizabeth dies: What New Zealand has gifted the Queen over the years

She was monarch from a time when New Zealand was essentially British in nature to one which now has its own, increasingly multicultural identity. Throughout all the turmoil of social and political changes over the decades, she has remained a constant.

In fact, the only really significant political events, after World War II, that preceded her reign were the election of the first National government and the 1951 waterfront dispute. She has been sovereign for basically everything else: the introduction of decimal currency, the Springbok tour, the Rainbow Warrior bombing, and New Zealand’s move from a Westminster electoral system to a proportional one that retains many of the old traditions.

Her passing also marks another loss for the generation that witnessed – and served in – World War II.

Her death brings change at the top of a set of constitutional arrangements that have been in place for a very long time. Now some of those arrangements may start to be questioned. They also may not.

The Government will also desperately not want the republican movement to really fire up during the rest of its term – even if many of its MPs are in favour of a republic. It has enough on its plate without getting dragged into debate over the head of state, while household bills are going up.

Just as with John Key’s campaign to change the New Zealand flag, constitutional reform of that magnitude comes with many downsides and few upsides. It’s also expensive and ultimately unnecessary (even though there are principled arguments for a republic).

We will now have a whole pile of names and titles that will change: next year we will have King’s Birthday Weekend. Queen’s counsels become King’s counsels immediately. For Anglicans, prayers will now include the King, not the Queen. Over the coming years coins will change

There will be an official proclamation on Sunday declaring Charles III the new King of New Zealand.

For the Government, all this throws a pretty big spanner in the works of what it was looking to achieve during the next couple of weeks. The Covid-19 reset that will be announced after Cabinet on Monday will be a significant piece of news that signals New Zealand’s return to more or less normal after two and a half years of on-again off-again restrictions.

So, instead of being able to start selling those changes, the prime minister will have to go to London to attend the Queen’s funeral. Aside from tributes on Tuesday, Parliament will also not sit until at least the week after next.

The prime minister was to head to New York for the United Nations General Assembly at the end of next week, but given that she and a whole phalanx of world leaders will probably attend the Queen’s funeral, who know where that leaves the UN General Assembly and the prime minister’s programme there.

When she returns a New Zealand memorial service will be held for the Queen.

Politics is about responding to events such as these. In all likelihood, after Monday’s Covid announcements Parliament will go into a sort of hiatus for at least a week, which is appropriate.

But, given that Labour is trying to reset the agenda and give the Government a springboard into the back half of the year with a positive story to tell, having the prime minister out of the country, and MPs back in their electorates, will be time lost.

On the Covid announcements themselves, it is expected that the entire traffic light system will be dismantled, as will many of the other Covid rules and restrictions in place over the past couple of years.

Mask-wearing requirements will probably be reduced, but rules will remain for ramping up and down both mask wearing and Covid testing and isolation.

The significant legislative parts of Covid will have gone by the wayside and there will be a fresh start to go along with spring. And the Government will be trying to tell a new economic story to accompany that. That will now be made more difficult by the Queen’s passing.

The memorial services will be done. Charles III is already king under the old common law rule Rex nunquam moritur – “the king never dies”.

A coronation will beckon at some point in the coming months, but before and after that politics will continue.