Queen's Birthday Honours

NZHerald: "Heroes in word and deed" LAWS179: "New Zealand Order of Merit (Titular Titles) Bill" The nonsense of removing the titular titles from the honours system is once again demonstrated by this weekend's awards. Reporting on the awards, the Herald notes in its lead item:

Two women and three men were created Distinguished Companions of the New Zealand Order of Merit (DCNZM). Under the old honours system, they would have been dames and knights. Honoured were writer Patricia Grace, barrister Alison Quentin-Baxter, Warehouse founder Stephen Tindall, dairy farmer and Fonterra chairman Henry van der Heyden and Justice William Young, president of the Court of Appeal.

Seven years after the change, the media and the public still read the honours list in the light of the old titular titles. Let's remove the artificiality and simply adopt titular titles within our indigenous system of honours. A draft Member's Bill is set out in my January post on this issue: > LAWS179: "New Zealand Order of Merit (Titular Titles) Bill" PS I see Sir Kenneth Keith was appointed to the Order of New Zealand (the honour which has never carried titular titles). Sir Ken has made a huge contribution to law and governance in New Zealand and elsewhere. In fact, the New Zealand Centre for Public Law is hosted a conference on 23 & 24 August 2007 to honour his contribution: > NZCPL: "From Professing to Advising to Judging: a conference in honour of Sir Kenneth Keith" (pdf) Rather than being a blow-by-blow account of Sir Ken's contribution, he will be honoured by bringing together leading scholars from the areas in which he was active to present their own cutting-edge scholarship on topics they are actively researching.