In predictable “New Zealand Disease” fashion there has been a lot of pearl-clutching and hand-wringing about the recent local body elections. In particular, they are asking whether the system is broken because of the low voter turnout in most parts of the country. No, the system isn’t broken and it is unthinking, ignorant, illogical and incredibly silly to think that it is.
It falls to me – your favourite Capitalist – to point out the elephants in the room; there are several of them wandering around and trampling over the furniture. Pull up a chair and let me explain.
Let us first of all look at an example to see if there is “anything in it”, criticism-wise. I draw your attention to the election results in Dunedin (mainly because I live there). We had a communist mayor who spent three years proving how woke, incompetent, arrogant, and stupid he was. He was turfed out in a landslide; which sounds like a marvellous ‘unbroken’ system working perfectly to me!
He has been replaced by a middle-aged man who has been successful in business, and a member of various local clubs and organisations whose memberships also tend to be middle-aged men who are successful in business. Once again: sounds good to me.
In Auckland, Christchurch, Nelson, Invercargill and – one assumes – other places, divisive left-wing lunatics hellbent on taxing, spending and wrecking were replaced by middle-aged men who have been successful in business or a profession.
Sounds to me like a system which, far from being “broken”, is working spectacularly well!
It is no exaggeration to say that a number of cities around New Zealand have been ‘saved’ and their futures as viable places to live, raise a family and conduct business, have been preserved. Things were a bit 50/50 last week. Some of the gals who got themselves elected are also sensible: Tania Tapsell in Rotorua for instance. Several others are tip-top people and not woke psychopaths.
If all of the above isn’t irrefutable proof that nothing requires changing or reforming then consider the issue of voter turnout. Like you, dear reader, I saw some of the silly adverts on television urging folk to vote; my stomach churned at the possibility of another million or so people filling out voting papers and sending them back. They didn’t, and all I can say is, “Phew!”
Anybody who sees a problem with negligible voter turnout is clearly not thinking things through! Jeepers, thank God those people didn’t vote or imagine how different the results could have been. A higher voter turnout could well have meant the election of…(just pausing here for a stiff drinkie)…Beth Houlbrooke!
Imagine the sorts of people who could have gotten elected and the bull-in-a-china-shop crashing around they’d engage in – with your money and freedoms – over the next three years.
Imagine the cost of “free” this, that, the other; shutting down the economy due to ‘climate change’; handing over the deeds to your house to the local Maori tribe of con artists. It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?
Now, all we have to do is work out how to keep voter turnout down around the 20% level for General Elections.