Royal party guests to be vetted

Press, 27 December 1985, Page 4

Royal party guests to be vetted

Invitations to the Royal Garden Party in the Botanic Gardens may be offered in a ballot, but normal security vetting of guests will apply, said Mr Edward Babe, the Royal tour director.

The Mayor of Christchurch, Sir Hamish Hay, announced on Tuesday that a ballot might be needed to decide who would receive invitations to the Royal Garden Party, on March 1 next year. For the first time, Christchurch people have been invited to apply to attend a Royal function in the city. Mr Babe said yesterday that he would require a guest list by the end of January, so that the vetting process could begin. He suspected that the deadline for applications of January 20, set by the Christchurch City Council, was designed to allow this. He had not realised that a ballot would be held until he was told yesterday by “The Press,” but felt it was a fair means of selecting guests.

Mr Babe was quick to quash any suggestion that the invitations would be raffled. He said that the term “raffle” implied the sale of tickets or some sort of financial or monetary gain for the winners.

He would be most uneasy about invitations being raffled, but he had no qualms about a ballot "I know the Christchurch City Council very well and they know my ideas and how to arrange a Royal occasion. They are not going to be selling tickets. I have complete confidence in them and I am sure they are only trying to find a fair way of handling invitations,” he said. The Town Clerk of Christchurch, Mr John Gray, reassured those who might see the ballot as a token gesture. Although the Mayor’s call for applications said that there would be only a ‘limited number” of invitations to the public, Mr Gray said it would be “some hundreds.” “This is certainly not a token gesture of a dozen or so. The aim is to have a more representative gathering and with the garden party arrangement we can do that,” he said. The usual representatives of groups and organisations would also be invited, he said.

Mr Gray would not comment on any security arrangements for the garden party. He said that Christchurch

had done very well from the Royal itinerary. The people of Christchurch had several chances—at the Cathedral Square walkabout, the garden party, and the Youth in Action Day at Queen Elizabeth II Park—to see the Royal couple. He could not say whether the ballot for invitations would be used for future functions. “We had a chance to use it for the garden party and decided we would give as many people a. chance to participate as possible,” he said.

Mr Babe said that the question of a ballot would not arise for any other functions during next year’s Royal tour. The Christchurch garden party would probably have 800 to 1000 guests. Every other function was either much larger, and did not require a limited guest list, or much smaller, where the guest list was determined by protocol, he said.

Organising the garden party was the responsibility of the council. But MiBabes said that both he and Sir William Heseltine, one of the Queen’s private secretaries, had discussed the garden party with Sir Hamish and inspected the Botanic Garden site.

What chance then do those eager applicants wanting to rub shoulders with the Queen have of being selected? When he suggested the random guest list for city functions in October, a Labour councillor, Mr David Close, estimated people were as likely to be invited to a function for Royalty as they were to win the Golden Kiwi lottery. Not a fortunate analogy, perhaps, in view of Mr Babe’s caution about seeing the invitation ballot as a raffle.

Those odds were if people were chosen at random from the electoral rolls. Presumably if they are chosen from a list of applications the odds will be better.

Arguing in favour of a random list, rather than a list favouring any one section of the community, Cr Close said that it was always the same people who were invited to special functions.

A fellow Labour councillor, Mr Alex Clark, agreed that there should be a better cross-section of Christchurch people at official functions. He deplored the “secret, unknown list” used in the past.