Ranking the Order of NZ recipients

As today saw the release of the latest batch of Royal honours, I thought it would be timely to have a look at the members of the Order of New Zealand. This is our highest honour and restricted to 20 living New Zealanders.

Basically those in this list should be considered our greatest sons and daughters. But are they?

Let’s be clear. All of them have done things which make them worthy of an honour. They have all made significant contributions to New Zealand. But would they be one of our 20 greatest?

So let’s look at the 19 current members and I’ll give them a rating from 0 to 10 for whether I think they should be there. A 10 would be Sir Edmund Hillary. A 5 would be just on the line for inclusion.

• Dame Miriam Dell 7/10
• Sir Miles Warren 8/10
• Dame Kiri Te Kanawa 9/10
• Jim Bolger 5/10
• Ken Douglas 3/10
• Mike Moore 5/10
• Cardinal Thomas Williams 5/10
• Jonathan Hunt 1/10
• Lloyd Geering 2/10
• Sir Kenneth Keith 8/10
• Sir Murray Halberg 8/10
• Sir Don McKinnon 6/10
• Helen Clark 6/10
• Sir Robert Charles 9/10
• Albert Wendt 6/10
• Sir Ron Carter 5/10
• Sir Peter Gluckman 6/10
• Richie McCaw 7/10
• Joy Cowley 8/10

Feel free to include your own scores in comments. Again all these people have done very significant things, well beyond what probably any of us commenting have done. But this is about whether their achievements puts them into the top 20 NZers. Also feel free to say who you think is missing, that should be included.