Mallard on Titular Honours

Claire Trevett at the NZ Herald reports:

One of the senior Labour politicians who abolished knighthoods in 2000 now says the party moved too soon to do so and was not supported by many New Zealanders.

I agree. I’m a republican, but I also support titular honours. They can exist whether the Queen is Head of State or not.

Mr Mallard said yesterday he did not believe New Zealand should have titular honours but Labour moved to abolish them too early.

“In time, like the monarchy, they will go. But I’ve got a personal view most Kiwis aren’t ready for that yet. I thought there was a trend in public opinion away from the monarchy and overseas-based honours systems – especially titular – but the feedback I had both at that time and since is that there is still a lot of public support for them.”

He said many also found the Order of Merit system Labour created to be too hard to understand.

The Order of Merit system isn’t particularly complex – it is basically the old MBE to GBE system. And in fact National created it in the late 1990s.

Labour changed the top two ranks from Knight/Dame Companion to Distinguished Companion and Knight/Dame Grand Companion to Principal Companion.

Of the 13 NZers who have the highest level of the Order of Merit, 11 have the GNZM and just two the PCNZM. Those two however have an earlier titular honour, so all 13 are Sir or Dame.

For the next level down, 106 have gone with the titular KNZM or DNZM and 11 with the non titular DCNZM.