Talk:Governor-General of New Zealand

Links to articles for title holders

I'm not sure whether all the names deserve links or how the links for titled people should read. There is scope for confusion for those who are hereditary peers, such as the Earl of Liverpool, which title belonged to a succession of people.

My feeling is that it's best just to link the ones that either have a biographical entry already, or are likely to have one in the reasonably near future. If someone else wants to come along and write a bio for anyone not linked, it's easy enough to add the link later on. There is a page somewhere here that sets out policy on naming conventions, but as I recall, it boils down to use the most common non-ambiguous name for the actual link (which will become the article title) but in the text use whatever name is most appropriate in the context. For example, it might be best to say "Elizabeth Windsor" in one context, and "Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Defender of the Faith, By grace of God Queen of ...." in another, but both should link to Queen Elizabeth II. (Which was a bad example - it [used to lead] to a disambiguation page [till I changed it -- Someone else] . No matter.) Nice work on the list, by the way: it's good to see someone take the trouble to write out the formal titles in full - for this sort of thing I think it's more appropriate to give people their full titles. Tannin

We should probably add the New Zealand Honours System to the mix at some point, as the latter Governors-General have New Zealand honours. http://www.dpmc.govt.nz/honours/index.html should do in the meantime for the curious. – Jonathan Ah Kit

I've now done this. --Polonius 08:44, 10 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Last Briton or first Kiwi?

Why is Sir Arthur Porritt listed as the last Governor-General form Britain when he was a native born Kiwi? Doesn't that make him the first Gov-Gen from NZ?

Um, because I recalled being taught in school when Sir Dennis Blundell succeded him that he was the first NZ GG. Whereas he was actually the first to have lived in NZ for most of his life and been a resident when he was appointed. Sir Arthur Porritt still "came out from Britain" to be GG because he had lived there for more than 30 years.

I'll correct the article. dramatic 02:59, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Pity Freyberg having lived here since age 2 doesn't count :-)

List of viceroys

I've been doing some work on the list of viceroys, to match the appearance of the list at the article Governor-General of India—see here for the result. I think this results in a list less cluttered by titles etc which belong imho on the individual articles for each governor. I've ensured that the info on the stages of development of nz are not lost, though I think this info does not belong in the list but elsewhere.

I'd like to hear some input before any changes are made to the article. These are just my own thoughts, feel free to kick and bash the list (or me) around :D

DiamondVertex 07:01, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Official Secretary

"The office of Official Secretary is currently vacant" - Has a person been employed yet? That text has been there since January, and the link given says "Sorry, we have no vacancies at present." Brian | (Talk) 23:52, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

See Talk:Official Secretary to the Governor-General of New Zealand for further discussion. 202.89.158.211 00:08, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Link request

I've added an external link from this article to a site which I manage in my capacity as web editor for the New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage (the site is www.nzhistory.net.nz).

The link is to the first of a series of substantial features on the history of role of the Governor-General in New Zealand and is written by the author of an official history to be published shortly.

I hope this is considered appropriate for Wikipedia's purposes, please let me know if I've done something wrong (I'm just a newbie here)!

thanks Jamie Mackay 10:40, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm okay with it --Lholden 00:41, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

rewrite

I have just redone the article, I am going to move the list of GG to another page, however I need to finish the table first :) should be done later tonight nzt. Brian | (Talk) 01:52, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Niue, Tokelau etc

I'm not knowledgeable in these topics, but why is there no mention of Niue and Tokelau, which this GG is responsible for? This isn't exclusively a (metropolitan) NZ institution. 202.89.150.160 21:38, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

See Realm of New Zealand. --Lholden 05:07, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:NZ Govt-Gen and Queen.jpg

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Cartwright's extension

The article states,

“ For instance, Dame Silvia Cartwright would have been in office for five years on 4 April 2006, but her appointment as Governor-General was extended by the Queen on the advice of Prime Minister Helen Clark, who deemed that "that the selection and appointment process [should] not coincide with the pre-election period". ”

The link is dead, and it is not clear exactly what election this is talking about. There was no general election in 2006, so is this referring to local elections? -Rrius (talk) 06:07, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I've updated the link. I think Clark was referring to the 2005 election. Interestingly, the new Gov-Gen was announced in April 2006. --Lholden (talk) 07:14, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Earl of Wessex

In 2004 National MP Richard Worth, an avowed monarchist, questioned whether the Government had considered that the Earl of Wessex be the next Governor-General.

• I don't quite understand what this sentence is trying to say. The construction "had considered that he be" is unknown to me.
• The NZ Government cannot simply cause someone to be the Governor-General by "considering them to be" such. There's a process, including the Queen's formal approval, particularly if it's her own son being recommended. He himself might also have something to say about it. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 01:51, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the sentence construction is awful. I've changed the sentence for accuracy (it was actually a Parliamentary question Worth asked). --LJ Holden 04:00, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Political role merge with Constitutional role

These two sub-sections should be merged. At the moment, there's a lot of repeated material in the two sections. It's pretty much impossible to explain the GG's political role without discussing its constitutional role, and vice versa. --LJ Holden 00:05, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Any comment? --LJ Holden 04:43, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Go for it. Schwede66 06:13, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Done. I removed some extraneous statements (e.g. it's obvious New Zealand is a constitutional monarchy from the introduction). --LJ Holden 06:29, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

looks good lewis Brian | (Talk) 10:03, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Admiral

Does the Governor-General hold the rank of admiral? This sources seems to indicate that he does:

http://www.nzdf.mil.nz/news/media-releases/2011/20110119---ass8npop.htm

That being the case, does the Governor-General also hold the rank of general and air chief marshal? Greenshed (talk) 21:32, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

The media release states the GG holds the position of admiral as CnC of the Defence Forces. It sounds like it's an ex officio title. You'll probably need to contact Government House to qualify the use of the term. --LJ Holden 23:21, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Governor-General's car

The article has a photo of an XJ8 Jaguar as the Governor-General's limo, whereas it seems that it was sold last year: http://gg.govt.nz/content/jaguar-sale and replaced by a BMW - can someone update this or delete the photo? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nznewsguy (talk • contribs) 19:35, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Governor of Ross Dependency

It seems like a trivial aspect of the job, but it seems to be at least as important as the "Admiral" concern above. That the title of "Governor of Ross Dependency" comes with being GG should be mentioned somewhere (at least once) in the article. 118.90.39.49 (talk) 10:59, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

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Dame Patsy Reddy taking office

Every article I've seen points to Reddy taking office on the 28th - additionally since the 14th is almost over in New Zealand and it's not in the news anywhere, it's safe to say that it isn't today. Am editing to correct this. MrSeabody (talk) 04:52, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Cost section

I'm wondering why the cost section remains. From what I can see it is really centred on a silly little political dispute/game between the Republican Movement and the Monarchists, one trying to inflate the cost of the Governor-General role and the other trying to play it down, as Parliament considered the Governor-General Act in 2009/10. Time to delete? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nznewsguy (talk • contribs) 02:17, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

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Viceregal representative

Following this revision, I think the opening sentence needs discussing. Descriptions of the office as 'viceregal representative' are difficult to come by, if only because sources rarely define the office in simple descriptive terms and instead delve immediately into the history and outline the contemporary role of the office. However, government and government-approved sources repeatedly use 'viceregal' (or 'vice-regal') to describe the ceremonial functions of the office and the amenities of the governor-general. This official source contains a reference to "the vice-regal office" and descriptions of officeholders as "vice-regal representative"! It certainly would be inappropriate to use the standalone term 'viceroy'; however I believe that "representative of the monarch of New Zealand" needs qualifying with either 'viceregal' or, alternatively, 'personal' (i.e. personal representative) in order to define the special nature of the role. --Hazhk (talk) 00:38, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

I've no objections to adding viceregal. Would recommend it be added to all 15 Commonwealth realm governors-general articles. GoodDay (talk) 00:45, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree that it would be preferable to have the description added to all governor-general articles (after all, most of the text in this article is replicated in the set). Use of 'viceregal' on one article is not contingent on repetition in every single comparable article, however. The omission from Governor-General of Australia does not actually contradict this article (i.e. doesn't say the GG of Australia isn't a viceregal representative ;). --Hazhk (talk) 00:56, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm quite certain, if you were to add viceregal to the intro at Governor-General of Australia, there'd be at least 'one' Australian editor who'd immediately revert it. GoodDay (talk) 02:45, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Interesting discussion. My thoughts (which are presented off the cuff, so apologies if anyone teases out any legal/constitutional inconsistencies) are:

1) 'Vice-regal' is appropriate here because it's an adjective pertaining to a representative exercising the same functions as the appointer. A Commonwealth governor-general/governor is such a position: all governors-general act in loco regis in toto, i.e. that within their territories they are effectively the monarch for as long as the monarch is not there and/or not interacting with that territory. Cf. one of Her Majesty's ambassadors - they are empowered to exercise but one aspect of the Sovereign's prerogatives, and are not acting in a viceregal capacity, but as envoys. When members of the Royal Family stand in for the Queen at official functions the effect is the same. The word is also desirable because it exists in one facet of the lexicon precisely to cover these sorts of relationships.

2) 'Viceroy' should be avoided. Whilst (strictly non-capitalised) one could defend its use as being the noun equivalent of the generic adjective used in 1) above, I don't think it's helpful here because (inter alia): a) Viceroy tends to be a specific named title - Viceroy of New Spain, and indeed Viceroy of India in our common British Imperial heritage; so it is potentially misleading; b) I can't think of a single example where one would wish to use 'viceroy' in place of 'governor-general', where one cannot get around the point simply by using the adjective form.

3) We should strongly avoid use of the phrase 'personal representative' because it is constitutionally misleading. Constitutionally (certainly in Britain, but I would imagine across the realms) where the Queen is acting in a 'personal' capacity it means as an individual. For example the Queen owns Balmoral personally; it isn't owned by the British state, so George VI had to buy that castle off the Duke of Windsor following the latter's abdication because, being owned personally as opposed to through the Crown, it did not pass automatically on abdication. A comparative example would be the Queen's (English - sorry don't have a Kiwi example) lawyer: as an individual she is represented by Farrer & Co, a private firm. As the monarch she is represented by the Attorney General for England & Wales (inter alios). The G-G is thus not a personal representative, but a crown representative, in this case for the Crown in Right of New Zealand.

4) It probably should be used across the realms, though I am only familiar with the constitutions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and The Bahamas. The rest I only know vicariously through the shared heritage. Query if others might be similarly cautious based on that lack of specificity. The G-G of Australia is certainly viceregal and I think that would be both accurate and an improvement on that page, but I personally would rather not fight my Aussie constitutional cousins on the point! Not sure they'd take kindly to a Pommy (even an Ultonian one) fighting the good fight on this! --Lucius Winslow 22:49, 10 April 2019 (BST)

References

Recent edits

Thanks, @Lucius Winslow: for your edits, including something I'd not noticed for a while on this article, the statement that the Queen is "shared" amongst the Commonwealth realms. This wording is confusing as it implies the Queen is (a) physically shared between the realms (clearly not the case) and (b) monetarily shared. The new wording makes much more sense, i.e. that the Queen is concurrently Queen of the UK, NZ, Canada etc. Secondly, there is a statement that the Queen resides in the UK because it is her "oldest and most populous realm." This again is confusing and not accurate. The Queen resides in the UK because HM is first and foremost the UK's head of state, with historical ties there, and is paid for by British taxpayers. To my mind the wording should be dropped all together, there's no reason to qualify why the Queen lives in the UK. --LJ Holden 20:16, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi @LJ Holden:. Will do the practical bit first, then the fun esoteric bit. Conceptually, I think we should have context as to why Her Majesty lives in Britain and not New Zealand because, whilst ninety-nine percent of persons reading the page will know the reason instinctively, the encyclopaedic principle is to have: i) a very low presumption of knowledge on the part of the reader; and ii) (where practicable) standalone knowledge on subjects, even in the hyperlinked Wiki paradigm. Exampling these principles, a [Korean] casual reader may be unfamiliar with Kiwi history, such that they may not even have been aware of the sixteen-realm personal union or the context as to why the main residency is in Great Britain - as a matter of policy I don't think we should presume this, since every presumption of knowledge undermines the ability to impart knowledge. So the simple parenthesised explanation as to Britain being the motherland serves to satisfy limb i) by adding the knowledge, and forms a good Wiki balance between whole pages, and links to other pages - the hypothetical Korean now knows where to go (various British pages) to get the context behind this page's statement. So I think 'as her oldest...' should stay. I'll concede we should get rid of 'most populous' since this stems from my (admittedly academically-minded) view that acquiescence of the domicile is in part due to the UK being the biggest. However: "citation required" - mea culpa. I've made this change now since that bit is now resolved.

Now, the fun bit! I did think 'shared' was a very odd word to use. I think it was just slightly loose grammar, and I also accept your two examples. But my primary thinking was actually constitutional: the historical context allows for further contextualisation/differentiation on this. During the British Empire the monarch was indeed shared, because:

- there was no separate responsible government or legal designation (e.g. Newfoundland in 1867); and/or

- it was clear that even where there were separate aspects of the Crown (e.g. the Crown in Right of Canada post Confederation), the British Crown was the superior form; and/or

- as a matter of constitutional law and theory jurists and theorists held that the Crown was indivisible across its various incarnations. However recent jurisprudence (e.g. Ex parte Quark (2005) [UKHL]) has moved away from that view, which represents a change from 'shared' (axiomatically if it is indivisible) to 'concurrent'.

These changes thus move the British and New Zealand monarchies (inter alia) from shared to parallel. Indeed prior to 1900 it's not really constitutionally accurate to speak of the British and New Zealand 'monarchies' - there was only the British monarchy. But I'd need to do more research on this to tease out the granular detail.

In support of the above I could elaborate at length on the Statutes of Westminster, Kiwi constitutional acts, Parliamentary Sovereignty (and whether actually in law it is still a shared Crown - my personal legal view is that in British law it is still a shared Crown courtesy of Parliamentary Sovereignty, but in Kiwi law it isn't because Kiwi jurists accept the Kiwi Parliament's legislation in this area as qausi-synonymous in policy to America's declaration of independence, and thus wouldn't enforce any UK Act purporting to seize back control of NZ).

As a complete aside - thank you for discussing this, rather than hitting the 'revert' button automatically, as some more passive aggressive Wikipedians are fond of doing. --Lucius Winslow 22:20, 10 April 2019 (BST)

Thanks, I'm likewise frustrated by major changes being made without discussion, it's an unfortunate and natural consequence of "anyone can edit".

My suggestion for the opening paragraph is:

"The Governor-General of New Zealand (Māori: Te Kāwana Tianara o Aotearoa) is the viceregal representative of the monarch of New Zealand, currently Queen Elizabeth II. As the Queen is concurrently the monarch of fifteen other Commonwealth realms, and resides in the United Kingdom (as her principal residence), she, on the advice of her Prime Minister of New Zealand, appoints a governor-general to carry out her constitutional and ceremonial duties within the Realm of New Zealand, and often overseas."

Going back to the hypothetical Korean, thinking laterally it makes more sense to emphasise that the Queen lives in the United Kingdom as her principal residence, especially in the context of why the office of Governor-General exists. I'm only aware of the Queen taking up residence in Canada once, but never in New Zealand (or Australia as far as I'm aware).

In terms of the contact with the Queen, I'm not sure why that's relevant to the lede, and to my mind it's a minor point anyway. --LJ Holden 02:45, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

This proposal looks good. --Hazhk (talk) 08:25, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Implemented proposed changes. Any other minor tweaks can be carried out with little hassle. --Hazhk (talk) 16:21, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

References