Justice Minister Kris Faafoi has announced a review of electoral rules and “democracy” in New Zealand. Like you and 99 per cent of the population, I have also been yawning in response; Mr Faafoi has been desperate for some success ever since that dodgy visa application for some pop star a couple of years back.
I see some problems with this review.
First of all, most people’s view of democracy is that their own personal ‘bee-in-their-bonnet’ one issue, should be the law of the land: just ask any MP holding a clinic with constituents and being berated for not promising said issue will be law by nine o’clock next Tuesday morning.
(As an aside, I have never understood why any MP holds ‘clinics’ with constituents; I never would were I in parliament – stuff that! – because if you don’t magically do whatever people want, and smartly, they berate you all over town or talkback radio shows, causing more harm than good. Better to let your secretary in the electorate office deal with nutter constituents.)
The other aspect of what most people view as being “democracy” is that lots and lots of your tax dollars should be spent on it, while they don’t have to work, or do much at all except watch sport on TV and relax. Maybe a round of golf or two.
Because the review won’t address either of these matters, it won’t be seen by the average man in the street as improving democracy and will ultimately fail.
The last time there was a major review of elections, electoral rules and ‘democracy’, the New Zealand people were offered a three-card trick and they swallowed it whole. This was the MMP referendum and its subsequent adoption: the biggest humbug ever foisted on the public of New Zealand.
In 1992 the MMP con game went something along the lines of Muldoon was a tyrant and Rogernomics has destroyed New Zealand: change the voting system and it won’t be able to happen again.
In reality, the reason the people were served up MMP, served up a card trick and they didn’t know any better so voted for it, was because the powers that be didn’t want the easiest solution, democracy-wise, to ever occur and destroy their power (i.e. actually prevent another Muldoon or Rogernomics from happening).
I am referring to whipping in parliament: party discipline.
Had there been no whipping, making the NZ parliament similar to the US House of Representatives or Senate, there would have been none of the bad stuff of the 1980s and 90s. Good luck Roger Douglas trying to sell the family silver or rip the guts out of provincial New Zealand – and other horrors – with no party whips; good luck trying to persuade 49 MPs their constituents should be thrown out of work in vast numbers and lives destroyed because it was ‘good for them’!
Improving ‘democracy’ could be done in five minutes flat by simply abolishing whipping so everything in parliament was a ‘free’ vote. If every bill, every proposal and every budget had to stand on its merits – and which way you vote could affect re-election chances – the way New Zealand is governed would be vastly different.
If government bills are able to stand on their merits, are ‘genuinely’ a good idea, the government has nothing to fear from no whipping (if you know what I mean).