Grumpy old Geezers were hugely pleased when Lewis Holden, a leading member of the New Zealand republican movement, became seriously vexed by what he described as an inaccurate GoG rant about the SNUBBED Dominion Post story back in January that rather soured the events surrounding Sir Edmund Hillary’s death and funeral.

At www.holdenrepublic.org.nz, Lewis rebutted claims that we did not make; but he could not deny that the so-called Royal Snub story was a poorly-researched invention, cooked up by lazy and irresponsible journalists who work for a paper whose stand on republicanism was again made plain only a few days later in an editorial (Jan 26).

Lewis strongly denied that he initiated the SNUBBED article, which claimed widespread public foaming at the mouth because no Royals were coming to Sir Ed’s funeral. We didn’t say he kicked off the non-story, but he admitted to issuing a press release about the funeral, and he was clearly content to join in the misguided mess that ensued.

The SNUBBED story didn’t go down too well among media commentators – notably Radio New Zealand National’s Mediawatch (Sunday, Jan 27). (You can hear what they had to say about republican antics and deeply-flawed journalism by listening to the programme at http://www.radionz.co.nz/nr/programmes/mediawatch)

Naturally, the Radio NZ piece grabbed Lewis’s attention – but what really got up his nose was that GoG had also earned a significant mention on it. On his blog, Lewis hit back, and claimed that the New Zealand taxpayer “supports” the British Royal Family.

Well, that’s a really curious suggestion; so we asked Finance Minister Michael Cullen how much Kiwis pay to support one of the world’s wealthiest families. We waited quite a long time for Dr Cullen’s response.

And this is what he finally said:

“With the exception of some financial outlay for Royal Tours to New Zealand, the New Zealand government contributes nothing to the personal expenses of Queen Elizabeth II, or any member of the Royal Family, nor towards the costs of the Royal Household and residences in the United Kingdom; these expenses are met by the British Government through the civil list, grant-in-aid for maintaining Royal Palaces, and similar funds.

Her Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh last visited New Zealand in February 2002. The Department of Internal Affairs’ Annual Report for the year ended June 2002 outlines costs associated with this tour.

The Queen’s representative in New Zealand is the Governor-General. The costs associated with the Household of the Governor-General are funded by the New Zealand government. The costs of the Household of the Governor-General for the year ended 30 June 2007 are outlined in the Annual Report of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.”

You can bet your life that the amounts we pay for all of the above would be dwarfed by the costs of electing and maintaining Lewis’s President of New Zealand.

In a mildly paranoid way, Lewis also seems to believe that we Grumpies are linked to monarchists. Naturally, he gets it wrong again. Almost all of us have very grave misgivings about kings, queens, hangers-on and class-based systems in the New Zealand context. But we’re also far from convinced that Lewis offers any worthwhile alternative to an admittedly flawed system, and we question his motives in seeking to break a valuable link between British heritage, history and values and our country.

Oh, and now – unless Lewis has some financial information that neither Dr Cullen nor we currently are privy to, and unless he can solve the MMP problem – we also seriously question his credibility.