Is democracy working?

elocal Magazine, ed. 183. 27 May 2016

A few days ago, a friend expressed doubt about whether democracy was really working in New Zealand.  She had just watched the Speaker of Parliament throw Winston Peters out of the House, apparently for asking a question which embarrassed the Government.  How can democracy be working if one of the Government’s most frequent and vociferous critics can be so unceremoniously silenced?

Well of course, Mr Peters isn’t silenced by being thrown out of the House – he is just unable to make his point within the Parliamentary chamber on that day. He is perfectly at liberty to criticize the Government outside the chamber, and indeed he is free to criticize the Government on the next Parliamentary sitting day.  He was thrown out not for criticizing the Government but for behaviour which, in the Speaker’s judgement, was “unparliamentary”. 

And as if to prove the point, the Speaker threw the Prime Minister out of the chamber a few days later, again for behaviour which, in the Speaker’s judgement, was unparliamentary.

Politicians get thrown out of the House on a reasonably frequent basis.  In most cases that’s because tempers can get very hot in the Parliamentary chamber and people get carried away.  When I was Leader of the Opposition, I myself got thrown out of the chamber on one occasion, and at about the same time Helen Clark was also thrown out.  

But democracy isn’t threatened by those expulsions, particularly when the Speaker is seen to be acting objectively and without regard to party affiliation – and that isn’t always easy to do!

One of the great things about New Zealand is that, in principle and normally in practice, nobody is above the law.  Helen Clark’s Prime Ministerial car was stopped for speeding and the driver charged – though many thought that it was the Prime Minister herself who should have been charged because it seemed pretty clear at the time that the driver had been asked to speed so that the Prime Minister could attend a rugby game.   John Banks was charged with falsifying his electoral expense return in relation to his campaign for the Auckland mayoralty even though he was, at the time, a Minister of the Crown.

So in many ways, democracy is working just fine in New Zealand and, I venture to suggest, rather better than in a great many other countries.

But at a more fundamental level there are problems.  Does Government policy reflect the will of the majority of the people?  The honest answer to that is “sometimes”.  At other times, it is pretty clear that policy reflects not the views of the majority but the views of a small minority which is able to influence policy in a way distasteful to the majority by virtue of a particular configuration of political forces.

Perhaps the best current example is the way in which the Government is proposing to amend the Resource Management Act.  A Bill currently before Parliament to amend the RMA would, if passed, require all local governments within 30 days of being elected to invite iwi into what are termed “iwi participation agreements”, intended to involve iwi in much local government decision-making.  

There is, of course, absolutely no logic in elevating iwi into a kind of co-governance relationship with local government any more than there would be a case for elevating, say, Chinese immigrants into such a relationship.  Maori are absolutely able to be elected to local councils, and are so elected on a regular basis.  And if New Zealanders were asked whether they favoured such an arrangement, I have little doubt that the proposal would be thrown out on its ear.

When the first super-city council was elected in Auckland in 2010, three of the 20 councillors happened to be Maori.  There was absolutely no need to create a so-called Independent Maori Statutory Board, and certainly no logic to giving members of that Board voting rights on most Auckland Council committees.  Had Aucklanders been asked whether they wanted such a Board established, I have little doubt that the answer would have been a resounding “no”.  It was a good example of something being done against the wishes of the public because, at the time, there was a need for the Government to placate the Maori Party and their supporters.

There has to be a serious question whether democracy is, in the long term, a sustainable form of government.

The great 19th century French historian Alexis de Tocqueville once remarked that “the American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers it can bribe the public with the public’s money”. 

And even earlier, in the late 18th century, Alexander Tytler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, is alleged to have said, in commenting on the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2000 years earlier, “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.”

As we watch the Government’s reluctance to confront the longer-term fiscal implications of the steady ageing of our population, and its reluctance to prick the housing bubble which is having such devastating social and economic consequence – both for fear of offending important voting blocs – it’s not hard to understand what de Tocqueville and Tytler were saying.

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Copyright © 2024 Don Brash.