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Good description of the elements that are or may be The Crown.

Sad to hear your mother’s story. Thank you fie sharing it . I had an aunt who was ‘treated’ at a hellish NZ asylum. I know mental health services are seriously lacking today but what we had in our asylums was a disgrace.

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Thanks for sharing this Grant. I too was really moved by the apology and know something of the experiences of the Porirua mental hospital (or 'asylum' as it was originally called) through my work in history/museums. The depth of the abuse that the report has uncovered will have enormous implications for how we make sense of who we are - or it should - and I really appreciate you sharing the experience of you mum. And, juxtaposing this with your discussion about the Crown/Treaty was a profound choice. Cat-among-the-pigeons here, but what strikes me about the anger/angst and extremism in the response to the Treaty Principles bill (which will never go beyond its first reading and is a largely manipulated, political stir up) says a lot about our priorities. Great for the extremists on both sides of the debate, but in my view this is largely a distraction and gets in the way of us talking about the deep-seated problems we face on our country - especially in regards to questions of inequality in health, education, housing, social policy etc. I look forward to a time, when as a nation we can feel the same sense of outrage about questions such as the Abuse in State Care (which is only the tip of the iceberg) as we are currently seeing over a Bill that will not go beyond its first reading.

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HI Mark. Thanks for your comments. This week has been all about looking back, rather than forward. People's grievances (including my own) may be real, but they are, after all, grievances left over from past experiences. I note also how KCs and Crown Law have been having their say against the Principles Bill – not with the most convincing logic, but nonetheless worthy of attention. But this is precisely what drives populist politics: vast numbers of people will feel that their country is being shaped by experts who don't listen and by extremists (as you rightly say, on both sides). Thousands of people make noise on the streets, but get nothing productive done. Parliament debates a bill that goes nowhere. Wasted efforts. Meanwhile, we have entrenched inequalities and climate change to deal with, and a wave of technological change transforming our world. I fear that this country is not prepared for the tsunami that's coming here from Silicon Valley. What can one do?

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The Crown is the symbol of the monarch's sovereign authority. It is used to represent all those offices and institutions which function under the authority of the monarch. That is the Governor-General, parliament, judiciary, military, police and civil service. Constitutionally none of these elements of "the Crown" are themselves sovereign. The monarch is, currently King Charles.

The people certainly are not sovereign in this or any other jurisdiction. It is impossible to conceive how they could be, and it is misleading to suggest that they are. If we want to get all fuzzy wuzzy and talk about how the people are the source of all authority that is fine, but it is not the legal or constitutional reality. One problem with talk about "the sovereignty of the people" is that it legitimizes revolution - something that all established powers are anxious to avoid. Thus the idea of popular sovereignty is something that states play around with at those times when they face no serious domestic threat. At other times they become very clear about where sovereignty resides, and it is never with the people.

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That's the conservative view, Geoff!

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Precisely. It is the strict legal view. It is also the view that will prevail within the colonialist regime when it comes down to the wire. Let's have no illusions about that.

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