Who is our head of state?

Yesterday we released the results of a poll conducted for New Zealand Republic by Curia. The poll of 1,000 voting-age New Zealanders found that 32% see our Governor-General as New Zealand’s head of state. Only 18% could identify the Queen as our head of state. What are we to make of these results? Despite this inaccuracy, this result is a great one for our campaign for a New Zealand citizen as head of state.

Some of the responses were, as you’d expect, defensive of the poor showing by the Queen as head of state. One response was that the term “head of state” is understood by a small number of people. Another was that New Zealand Republic has caused this confusion by referring to the Governor-General as de facto head of state. We would love it if we were that influential! In fact, historian Gavin McLean popularised the term in his excellent book on New Zealand’s Governors and Governors-General in the mid-2000s, along with former Prime Minister Helen Clark, who referred to the Governor-General as such. Other responses claimed this was simply an education issue.

Our campaign for a New Zealand citizen as head of state starts from the position that the Governor-General is in a practical sense our head of state already. So it’s heartening to the campaign that one in three New Zealanders also take that view. The next logical step, which we outline in our policy statement, is to put in place an appointment process that is out of the hands of the Prime Minister, who at the moment effectively is the only one who can choose the Governor-General. Follow that, the office of Governor-General would transition to our actual head of state following a referendum, with further decisions on the title of the office and the electoral method (if any) decided in a second referendum.