Man puts on hat, many cheer
Charles and Camilla cross 'coronation' off the to-do list, the Greens lose an MP and, yes, the headline is stolen from Private Eye.
Mōrena and welcome to The Bulletin for Monday May 8, by Toby Manhire. Presented in partnership with Z Energy.
In today’s edition: Green Party MP Elizabeth Kerekere quits, Willie Jackson speaks on Meka Whaitiri, and what’s with all the toilets in political discourse? But first: the coronations.
Send him victorious, happy and glorious, and so on
As if by magic, three great British traditions entwined on Saturday night: pageantry, drizzle and queuing. Whether or not you watched the coronation, I would not only recommend but giddily swear my allegiance to the live, very funny and only sometimes seditious coverage by the Spinoff’s senior royal correspondents, Alex Casey and Tara Ward.
Committed monarchists loved it, and fair enough, too. Personally, I was struck how sombre the whole occasion was. “Excitement is building,” the television kept saying, but everyone looked so anxious and sad. At times it seemed more funereal than, well, the Queen’s funeral. The gravity of the responsibility, I suppose, or nerves about dropping one of those golden spoons. Yes, the crowds cheered for the palace balcony, but like the Sydney Opera House, it never really lit up.
Brighter times today, with the Coronation concert at Windsor Concert about to begin, starring – checks notes – Katy Perry, Lionel Richie and Take That. Let’s hope it doesn’t all go Pete Tong.
What to read
There were, of course, many millions of words written. For more on the day for Chris Hipkins and the rest of the New Zealand delegation, read this from Newshub, which begins with a note of seeming disappointment – “Hipkins kept a low profile at King Charles III's coronation overnight” – as if he might have missed a chance to get more camera time by, say, wearing a fascinator in the shape of a giant sausage roll.
For an elegant overview, the Financial Times has you sorted. On claims of a heavy-handed police crackdown on protest, there’s this. Read the Hosking on the boss king, and wash it down with an investigation into some very expensive shoes. Scroll through countless newspaper front pages here. Splash headlines include “The look that says ‘Darling, it was a triumph’”, “King of the World” (really), and “King Chas III”.
If it’s the clothes that do it for you, try this. And if you need to know more about all those spoons and swords, orbs, rings and esoteric anointment procedures, I direct you to Town & Country. Another of Britain’s illustrious magazines, meanwhile, Private Eye, continued its own fine tradition of big rotyal covers.
How about a republic?
Some (me included) had forecast that after a respectful mourning of the Queen, republican sentiment would rise with her son on the throne. There hasn’t been much of that in New Zealand as yet; Chris Hipkins was right to say there’s no “groundswell”, and polling suggests a referendum today would see the monarchy retained – even if most reckon we’d likely to vote to ditch in a decade.
Still, “change is inevitable and we need to prepare for it now”, writes Andrew Butler in the best piece on the subject from the weekend. He identifies three myths about what a republic would mean for Aotearoa, and four arguments for making the change. Butler knows his onions. He wrote with Geoffrey Palmer a book calling for a written constitution. He is also, so it happens, a king’s counsel.
The Kigwit of the Abbey
The breakout star of the coronation, the Kigwit of Westminster Abbey? No, not Penny Mourdant, though that is a very funny subplot, but Sir Karl Jenkins. The man with the grey handlebar moustache and dusky shades is a 79-year-old Welsh composer who remembers the last coronation in 1953. His ‘Tros y Garreg’ (Crossing the Stone), one of the top coro-anthems, is based on a Welsh folk song.
Kerekere quits the Green Party
Parliament resumes tomorrow with two seats for independent members: Meka Whaitiri and Elizabeth Kerekere. When Kerekere addressed Green members on Friday night, as a party MP placed fourth on a draft list for the election, she took aim at co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson and questioned the motives and timing of an inquiry into her behaviour, which was sparked by a mis-sent groupchat message. Almost immediately after that truncated online session, she quit as a Green MP and party member.
In an analysis for the Herald (paywall), Thomas Coughlan suggests, “Kerekere’s resignation may be worse for Hipkins than the Greens”.
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‘We’re a bit traumatised’ – Jackson on Whaitiri
Kerekere told Green Party members on Friday night that she had not had any discussions with the Māori Party, but speculation around further defections will continue. Following Meka Whaitiri’s jump, Te Pāti Māori president John Tamihere told Waatea Radio: “We're in discussions with people in the Green Party and the Māori in the Labour Party right now." Asked about the lack of a heads-up to his good friend and Labour minister Willie Jackson, Tamihere said: “We’re coming into finals season, and the gloves are off … Willie knows that.”
Jackson told Q+A yesterday that the Labour Māori caucus, of which he is co-chair, was taking Whaitiri’s departure hard. “We're a bit traumatised,” he said, adding that on reflection he might have done more to keep her in the fold.
Conjecture and confusion remain over what prompted her decision (we assembled all the stated reasons we could find), as it does over precisely what she did and didn’t write to the speaker. She didn’t notify him she was leaving the Labour Party but he nevertheless did infer she was leaving the Labour Party. OK? Here’s hoping she releases the correspondence this week. The public interest is compelling.
What is it with NZ politics and pissing?
Rotary Club members in St Johns, east Auckland, were revealed on the weekend to have attached an image of the former prime minister Jacinda Ardern to a toilet bowl which was, naturally, a trophy for an annual debate. The moot this year: was Muldoon a better PM than Ardern? Mercifully there is no footage of the debate itself, the Rotary Club has apologised, and in itself it is hardly Watergate. But this is not the first time pissing on pics of people has soured the political discourse.
During the Auckland local election campaign last year, Wayne Brown’s troubling fixation with the Herald journalist Simon Wilson burbled out in the form of a hot-mic declaration that his first action as mayor would be to instruct staff to “glue little pictures of [Wilson] on all the urinals so people can pee on him”.
In 2020, meanwhile, Clare Curran revealed a photograph from a National Party regional conference some years earlier in which Michael Woodhouse was being presented with (again, some kind of debate trophy) a bright blue toilet seat with her picture affixed.
The question, I guess, is does this amount to a pattern? And: Are we OK?
For their part, the St Johns Rotarians might take a leaf from the book of counterparts in Rhos-on-Sea, Wales. Their efforts were celebrated in the pages of North Wales Pioneer last week, which hailed in a headline, “Park benches in Rhos given attention ahead of Coronation”. President Pauline Hogan was quoted as saying: "We felt in particular, with the upcoming coronation, that the benches in Rhos Park could do with a spruce up so they can be used during any celebrations.”
Click and collect
The use of buy-now-pay-later for groceries continues to grow, and there are warnings of record numbers of accounts in arrears.
Michael Baker says the WHO downgrade of the Covid-19 status is fair, but shouldn’t affect New Zealand’s approach to the virus.
Margaret Mutu on co-governance: “You can change the meaning of a word however you like, but it won’t change our reality.
Yet more bad weather is on the way.
If you are a member of a royal family or just an ordinary Bulletin reader, let us know your thoughts by emailing thebulletin@thespinoff.co.nz.
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Why are our tempers so short these days? Chris Schulz investigates. A review of Sweet Tooth by a good-tempered Chris Schulz. The case for sister cities, by Shanti Mathias. Hannah August on a new Katherine Mansfield biography. An incredible oral history of Dei Hamo’s ‘We Gon’ Ride’, by Alex Casey. And Duncan Greive on a little change to the singles chart that has big consequences.
Sporting snippets
The Black Caps have this morning avoided a whitewash in the ODI series against Pakistan, winning the fifth and final game in Karachi by 47 runs.
Grace Nweke is getting back to her best, shooting 53 goals in a 65-55 win over the Southern Steel to keep the Mystics top of the table.
The Warriors went down to Penrith, and not for the first time fans, including one high profile figure, are furious about the NRL officiating.
The night Scout died
I’d read anything Aimie Cronin wrote, but her essay yesterday is something else. It’s about the death of a dog, so please don’t read it while operating heavy machinery. One of New Zealand’s best editors said yesterday: “This piece just ripped my heart into tiny pieces.” Same.
