Green Party candidate Keith Locke says any changes to royal succession laws must end all discrimination against Catholics.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has proposed a change in royal succession law to remove the bias against female heirs and the disqualification on a heir who marries a Catholic.
Locke said the Government should tell Cameron that any reform bill going through the New Zealand Parliament will also end the prohibition against a Catholic ascending to the throne.
To do otherwise “makes a mockery” of New Zealand’s Human Rights Act, which prevents discrimination on religious grounds, he said.
“We should ask Mr Cameron to be a little bolder and remove all discrimination against Catholics.
“If that means the Monarch can no longer automatically be head of the British Anglican Church, so be it.”
Brian Rudman has pointed out that and law change will have to be agreed to by 16 different commonwealth parliaments and the only people who stand to gain or lose by any proposed law are the “handful of blue bloods who can claim legitimate descent from the 17th-century Electress Sophia of Hanover, who was a granddaughter of James IV of Scotland (and James I of England) and the niece of Charles I. ”
Source
- TVNZ
- New Zealand Herald
- Image: The Telegraph
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