Anne Salmond: New Zealanders deserve better

Newsroom

5 days ago

Comment: The past few weeks have been extraordinary.
It's not every day that you're targeted in an online 'Victim of the Day' trolling campaign authorised by an Acting Prime Minister, and delivered via the Parliamentary Service from the Beehive, for writing a Newsroom article about the Regulatory Standards Bill.
Or that the same Acting Prime Minister attacks you on Breakfast TV, accusing you of misinformation and having described a New Zealand government as Nazis.
It's been surreal – reminiscent of George Orwell's imaginary Oceania in 1984, with Big Brother and his 'thought police' (think tanks?) with their 'doublethink' slogans – 'Truth is Falsehood,' 'Inequality is freedom'.
Or since I'm a woman, maybe Margaret Attwood's Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale, with its tales of female oppression and its hidden motto of resistance, carved on the closet floor -'Nolite te bastardes carborundorum'- 'Don't let the bastards grind you down.'
That's what my brothers and my sister said when I phoned during a family gathering recently.
And those 25,000 citizens who signed an Action Station petition protesting against the 'Victim of the Day' campaign, asking the Prime Minister to call the Acting Prime Minister to account, said much the same thing.
Rather than a barrage of hate mail, there's been a stream of messages of support and encouragement, and strangers coming up and asking 'Are you all right?'
The radical disjuncture between the tactics adopted by some politicians and the expectations that New Zealanders have of their leaders is dismaying, but at the same time, a sign of hope.
It seems that those who use the tactics of verbal bullying and intimidation to try and silence critics, or to divide and rule are misjudging their audience, or most of them. This is not Orwell's Oceania or Attwood's Gilead – not yet, at least; and these tactics are more likely to backfire and damage their own credibility.
Across the board, many Kiwis are disenchanted with the political class in New Zealand and their top-down ways, the radical zig-zagging from 'left' to 'right,' the rush to cancel the projects of the last administration, and the self-serving lobbying and elite capture.
In their tit-for-tat exchanges, too many politicians are forgetting the 'middle ground' inhabited by most New Zealanders, who want governance that is honest, respectful and competent, and relatively consistent through time.
In the past, responsible leaders have worked to build cross-party consensus on key matters including climate change, Te Tiriti and the need for a healthy environment.
Divisive tactics including climate denial, 'Iwi vs. Kiwi' politics and a disdain for 'Freddy the Frog' work against the national interest, making it harder for New Zealanders to agree on long-term strategies that give us a chance of a prosperous, peaceful future.
Measures like changes to the Pay Equity Act put the boot into people who are already struggling. From the 'politics of kindness' we've switched to an empathy bypass, making radical inequality even worse in New Zealand.
At present, many Kiwis feel that the occupants of the Beehive need reining in. The executive has seized too much power, both within government and beyond it. At the same time, fringe parties are allowed to run riot, imposing unpopular measures on the electorate without their consent.
Some politicians seem to regard themselves as a higher form of life, looking down on the populace, berating us and telling us what to do, rather than listening. As a result, many voters feel disenchanted and resentful.
My recent experience may be a case in point, when minor politicians assume power beyond their capacity to wield it wisely. With public displays of bullying and abusive behaviour, they authorise others to do the same.
New Zealanders deserve better. Law-making has become shoddy, rushed and peremptory, often serving the interests of particular elites rather than the public interest. Serious constitutional reform is needed.
At present, the constant use of urgency, the degradation of select committees, the overreach by minor parties and the debates over the Regulatory Standards Bill and the attempted treaty principles bill make this urgent, and imperative.
According to the Cabinet Manual 'there is no statutory provision that constitutes the office of Prime Minister or defines its role.' That needs to change. The current mantra that a coalition agreement overrides the clearly expressed will of the people, in the case of the Regulatory Standards Bill, for instance, is deeply undemocratic.
A Prime Minister should be required to uphold democratic conventions in New Zealand, and their constitutional duties defined more precisely, so it's clear what's expected. Otherwise, as they say, 'Rot starts from the head of the fish' – which in te ao Māori, is in Wellington.