Earlier this week, Australia and New Zeland won the right to host FIFA’s 2023 Women’s World Cup in football. This is fantastic news for both countries as we recover from Covid-19 and continue to develop women’s sport. It came, however, with yet another example of why having the British monarch as our head of state is a broken system: Prince William, who is President of England’s powerful Football Association (the FA), did nothing to persuade the FA to vote for Australia and New Zealand’s bid - the FA voted for Columbia.

As the Australian Republic Movement’s Peter FitzSimons put it:

“Prince William … mate, you want to be King of Australia down the track — 20, 30, 40 years — any chance that you might lend your voice, your weight to saying, ‘Yeah’. “Quite seriously, it shows the absurdity, the ludicrousness of having our future King on the side against us to say, ‘Go to Colombia, not Australia’.”

This is yet another example of a long list of examples where Britian’s Royals have put Britain’s interests ahead of ours. From supporting the EU’s farming subsidies to the British and Irish Lions, there’s a multitude of examples. The issue is not that they do so - they are the British Royals after all (despite claims to the contrary - in fact, examples such as this one underline that reality). The issue is that we haven’t done anything about it.

By not having a New Zealand citizen as our head of state we miss out on opportunities to present Aotearoa’s best interests to the world, to show the world that we’re more than capable of handling our independence. The colonial mindset that says no New Zealander will ever be good enough to be our head of state denies our obvious capabilities as a country. We can host excellent international sporting events - and have our own head of state.