The time has surely arrived to dump New Zealand's failed two-decade-old experiment with American-style citizens-initiated referendums.
Anyone questioning that recommendation should look no further than some of the self-serving behaviour following last Monday's official authorisation of such a plebiscite on National's partial privatisation programme.
The will of the people - David Lange once observed - was a fickle beast. It could be an awful tyrant; it could be a terrible slave.
Someone should have told the Greens. They are happy to accept the will of the people when it comes to the results of the forthcoming referendum on asset sales. But not so when it came to the 2009 referendum on smacking. That is hypocrisy, pure and simple. If you accept the will of the people once, you have to accept it for good. And that is not a recipe for good government.
Ouch! But Armstrong is dead right; the Greens' hypocrisy is there for all to see, and he is dead right to have called them on it.
He's not done though; read on:
If you do accept it, you accept your Cabinet decisions are going to be proscribed by referendum. The Greens would not like that happening to them. So why impose such restraints on National.
There has been a lot of talk this week about the will of the people. The Greens and Labour argued that had been ignored by John Key following the referendum announcement.
The Prime Minister was accused of being anti-democratic in refusing to halt the upcoming floats of shares in Meridian Energy and Genesis Energy, plus the sale of shares in Air New Zealand, until the referendum has taken place. He was castigated for saying National would ignore the result of the referendum because it had a mandate for the sale of up to 49 per cent of those state-owned electricity generators courtesy of its stunning result at the 2011 election.
To top things off, Key then dismissed the referendum as an "utter waste of money".
That line got wide pick-up with editorial writers across the country asking why $9 million in taxpayers' money was being spent on a postal referendum solely so Labour and the Greens could make a political point that everybody already knew - that a lot more people oppose asset sales than support them.
Sensing they were on the wrong side of the argument regarding cost, the two major Opposition parties the next day offered to help pass legislation which would enable the referendum to be held at the same time as next year's general election - a move that would be cheaper than a postal ballot. That remained conditional, however, on National putting asset sales on hold until then.
That drew a scathing response from Acting Prime Minister Bill English, who said it was typical of Labour to offer something that was not within its power.
Suddenly it was apparent the referendum horse had bolted in the four months since the petition seeking a referendum initially failed for lack of sufficient valid signatures. The public's desire for a referendum has cooled substantially. Once again, John Key had outmanoeuvred his opponents and captured the high ground when they thought they held it.
John Armstrong is dead right; the asset sales horse has bolted. Mighty River Power shares were sold some months ago, and the sky hasn't fallen, unless people foolishly bought the shares hoping to make a fast buck. That was certainly not our intent when we bought MRP shares, and nor will it be when we buy Meridian shares; they are a long-term investment in New Zealand's future.
And Armstrong gives us a bit of a political history lesson:
The country's politicians should daily give thanks to Sir Douglas Graham, National's astute Justice Minister for much of the 1990s, for making the referendums non-binding.
He was obliged to implement a promise inserted in National's 1990 election manifesto following demands from the more reactionary elements in the National Party
When the law allowing voters recourse to these devices was passed by Parliament 20 years ago, Labour's Michael Cullen described the measure as "an ill-thought-out piece of political flummery" and predicted correctly that it would end up satisfying no one. He was too kind. Making it mandatory for governments to implement the results of referendums risks making good government nigh on impossible.
Making such referendums non-binding on governments, however, renders those referendums as next to useless.
Both John Armstrong, and (dare we say it?) Michael Cullen are/were dead right. There is nothing to be gained from this referendum. It is solely an exercise in political posturing and positioning with the 2014 General Election in mind. If the public dislikes asset sales sufficiently, it will vote National out next year. And if partial asset sales are not seen as particularly offensive or significant, National may well be re-elected.
National campaigned on its Mixed Ownership Model policy, and formed a government under the conditions of the MMP system of democracy. That gave them a mandate to implement EVERY policy they had campaigned on. By contrast Labour, the Greens, NZ First and Mana all campaigned against asset sales, but did not win enough public support to form an MMP government.
It's called democracy folks. It may not be perfect, but it sure beats the alternatives.
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