Royal visit no king hit

Support for a Kiwi Head of State is still high after April's royal tour.

A March 2014 poll of 1038 eligible voters showed support for a Kiwi head of state at 44%. Support for the next British Monarch was at 46%. 10% were undecided.

The latest poll taken just last month shows support is still at 44% with a 3% swing toward a royal head of state. There was corresponding 3% decrease in undecided voters.

Savage, who leads New Zealand Republic's campaign for a kiwi head of state is pleased with the result. "Royal tours get a lot of publicity but long-term we don't think they change peoples' opinions very much. There was a massive amount of hype around this last royal visit but support for a New Zealand head of state remains high".

"Based on previous polling we expected a small swing toward the monarchy so we're still confident our campaign is on the right track and that our blueprint for change is a good solution to NZ's head of state debate. "Royalists threw everything into this visit. They bought in the A-list royals and had photo opportunities with celebrities and babies and police dog puppies and spent millions of dollars. We decided to conserve our funds and just ride it out."

"A similar shift in the polls happened after the Charles and Camilla tour in 2012. As the hype dies away voters return to looking at the detail and thinking about the advantages of choosing a New Zealander. Support for the British Monarch is still lower than two years ago but obviously we will be wait until next time this question is polled to measure the longer term trend."

Extra Spending Uncovered

"Our monitoring has so far uncovered an extra $700 000 of spending on the royal visit in excess of the $1 million already announced. We expect the final bill for the royal visit to be over $2 million. That equates to about 5 years travel for the Governor-General. Spending $200 000 a day on royal publicity tours is not going to deliver a better head of state. Far better to spend it on the person who is actually doing all the work."

"It is inevitable that New Zealand will one day have its own head of State. We want to make sure that the office of Head of State serve the needs of all New Zealanders, not just royalists."

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