Sheep, Wolves and a Swiss Shepherd

Taxpayers’ Union take note: there is only one system of government in the world that allows citizens to rein in runaway government expenditure.

It is not representative democracy.

On September 27, 2020, the voters of Switzerland were given a binding choice to approve or reject Armasuisse’s latest defence procurement.

The Swiss people have exercised this power before. Last year the cantons narrowly voted yes in a referendum on the 6 billion franc purchase of new fighter jets, but in 2014 the Swiss voted down a 3 billion franc update from Northrop for Gripen jets.

The Swiss Taxpayer Union has serious muscle power.

Without regional, direct democracy that gives citizens the power to bypass and overrule centralised bureaucracy, we will never control the utter profligacy in the Beehive and local town halls that the good folk of the Taxpayers’ Union expose in their thoroughly researched and damning articles.

With the Swiss system, conservatives and nationalists can implement popular reforms in expenditure, education, immigration and cultural policy outside the vested and foreign interests of the party system.

For example, there are 70 ministerial portfolios. At least 4 of these should not exist. Imagine a quarterly binding referendum system where one of the questions was: Should we defund the D. I. E. (Diversity, Inclusion & Equity) ministerial portfolio and redirect the budget to cancer treatments in Southland?

Here is a small sample of initiatives we could launch:

1. Defund globalist cartels within universities and redirect money to farmers, schools and aged care.
2. Repeal legislation designed to supress free speech.
3. Place controls on local council budgets.
4. Give parents the ability to determine regional Year 1-13 curricula and remove powers from radical, ideologically driven managerial cliques.
5. Set immigration levels and criteria at the regional level.
6. Address media bias by mandating media in receipt of public subsidies give equal coverage to conservative referendum topics.
7. Give the public power to overrule political show trials by an activist, partisan judiciary and achieve fair sentencing.
8. Redistribute arts, culture and heritage funding to regions to invest in locally appropriate festivals that citizens determine.

There are of course risks.

Direct democracy has had mixed results in California. The once Golden State has been permanently wrecked by 20 years of progressive radicalism. The USA’s most diverse region is a one-party state thanks to mass migration and it leads in homelessness, inequality and crime.

A 1978 referendum, Proposition 13, that limited property taxes, has been argued to have had unintended, negative impacts on education. Some direct democracy advocates argue taxation should be exempt from referenda and remain the prerogative of representatives. And the commercialisation of referendum signature collection has also corrupted the democratic process. But these examples are peculiar to America.

Following Switzerland’s sensible example enshrines regional autonomy. Decentralisation can protect us from the ravages of representative progressivism. Constitutional referenda require a double majority of votes and cantons. Setting the minimum signatures at 15% of the national and local level would ensure citizen-initiated referenda are safe from activist class manipulation and are used sparingly and wisely. A reasonable submission fee of $1,000 and a requirement of 7+ referendum sponsors would deter crank initiatives.

The Swiss may not utilise their system to its full potential, but the opportunity is there. Instead of a compliant, distracted populace being subject to far left, top-down social engineering, we can reverse roles and subject our ruling class to positive social engineering. Elites must be made elected servants.

A recent meme stated ‘a nation of sheep breeds a government of wolves’. The Swiss system gives the sheep a Swiss shepherd to protect them from government overreach.

The Swiss Constitution is well worth reading:

We can start by launching referendum after referendum to adopt the Swiss Constitution. Of course, it may not succeed at the first attempt and Wellington will ignore a positive result. But it is an excellent campaign tool and sooner or later, given repeated pressure, National or ACT might endorse public opinion.

Conservatives must not be afraid of wielding transformative power. Labour and Greens certainly aren’t. If Labour wins a third term as looks likely, a globalist republic that uses UN sustainability ideology as a smokescreen will be on the agenda.

And that won’t be pretty.

There’s nothing sacred about representative democracy. It functioned moderately well for most of our history but has severe flaws and in a pluralistic, global society is open to corruption.

The Swiss describe their system as an ongoing experiment. The results of that experiment are a stable, healthy and intelligent democracy. Kiwis deserve the Swiss system.