I recently attended the Summer Sounds Symposium as one of a number of guest speakers at the Vintners Retreat near Blenheim. A fantastic event, there were a number of exceptional speakers who jolted us out of our indulgent complacency with the kind of critical thinking I find increasingly on the endangered species list. Whether forced to face discomfiture at cherished ideas that no longer stack up, or to engage in wholly new directions unfamiliar to us, the occasion was more than the sum of its parts.

Being prodded to embark on a rigorous analytic excursion hitherto obscured to me, I discovered new intellectual flavors which have re-kindled the fire of my curiosity. The following is but one direction sparked by the indefatigable Joseph Poprzeczny who exposed a fresh path bedeviling modern democracies and casting a light on the direction of a few possible solutions. For more information see: www.summersounds.co.nz

Mob rule or Snob rule?

Democracy is a fragile thing. We take it for granted, rarely questioning why at times our elected parliamentarians choose not to hear the demands we expect of them. There are numerous examples: the grossly misnamed smacking bill was a classic. Poll after poll showed over 80% did not want a law change. But MP's know best and we had a change.

The last time we held a referendum (1999), 92% demanded changes to the criminal justice system. Despite the public wanting tougher laws, harsher sentencing, and prisons to deliver punishment (as opposed to the idea of incarceration being the punishment), the government, again knowing best, did precisely the opposite. Their response was to reduce the amount of time spent in prison before being eligibility for parole; providing home detentions as a sentence in itself - often to abusers who now found they had even more time to beat up their wives and/or children since their obligation to work was uplifted as part of the penalty; enshrine the criminals' right to compensation; suggest daft ideas like "Open Prisons"; and finally, to embolden the parole board to side with criminals that most rational individuals, other than the dubious psychology department professionals, would consider a continuing threat to public safety.

We were also promised a review of MMP but there's no political appetite for a change let alone an inquiry to ask the public what they might think. Just as well I suppose since they'd end up doing the opposite anyway.

It's been suggested that the best argument against an authentic democracy is a five minute conversation with the average constituent. In my experience the reverse seems equally true: a five minute attempt at a conversation with a politician simply saps our will to live in much the same way as listening to a human rights activist drone on about society's obligations to the criminal. Of course not all MP's are created equal. Some are exceptional leaders who are never threatened by the public they serve. That's why they can listen to them. Sadly they are few and far between and, at the moment, are mostly sitting on the opposition benches awaiting the next election to prove the point. The vast majority however, are very ordinary. That's not necessarily a bad thing because despite their humdrum quality, many have particular skills useful to counter the overly preposterous clap-trap promoted by senior Labour government ministers held captive by the academic socialists inhabiting the higher echelons of state bureaucracy.

Nevertheless it is clear that just because politicians claim we have a democracy and point to the triennial elections as proof, doesn't make it so. A once in three years validation of who holds the treasury benches is less about the right of the public to choose how they want to be governed but in deciding which team becomes dictator. MMP has made the process even less democratic because although more points of view are represented, the requirement to straddle the 50% parliamentary voting hurdle necessitates compromises that were never part of the public's voting calculation. As we've seen with the present Labour administration, those who wanted a Labour government have now ended up with a Labour/Progressive/N.Z. First/United/Greens hybrid which in supply and confidence measures also requires the support of independent Gordon Copeland and/or disgraced MP Phillip Field - who awaits due process on corruption charges. I wonder...who voted for that.

Each prospective law can only advance after deep legislative surgery imposed by the splinter political interests mostly for no other reason than to assert themselves in a game of one-upmanship. What this has led to is nothing less than compromised legislation where the only choice is bad law or worse law. Most of the time no law may actually be preferable. The idea of micro-chipping dogs to stem dog attacks without any rational explanation of how doing the former could result in the latter is a clear and compelling example. But of course, we shouldn't be surprised. The rare commodity of stupidity amongst the public is well and truly represented by government.

Much of the public are fed-up and calls for greater involvement are increasingly being heard - and not just in New Zealand. In some cases politicians are finally responding, mainly through the realization that their continued positions depend on it. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has proposed a range of measures including moves towards a written constitution; a change in the way the nation goes to war including the need for parliamentary consent; proposals for a bill of rights to codify protection of individual rights; a concordat to explicitly enunciate the balance of power between government, parliament, and the people; and finally to "boost engagement in the democratic process".

Although Britain has a bi-cameral parliament, while we dispensed with our Legislative Council in 1951, there is much similarity insofar as our constitution is a default position, being as it is an un-codified body of law that largely consists of written legal precedents, international treaties, and parliamentary conventions.

If we are ever to re-gain our rightful place as sovereign of parliament, then we must begin by demanding greater accountability and responsibility for what we want. Changing the nature of MMP would be a good place to start. We should not settle for tails to wag dogs - but even that would be preferable to our current situation where we often have fleas on the tail wagging the dog. What about the increased use of referenda? To those who argue that we would end up with 'mob rule' (the tyranny of the majority as it's sometimes referred to), I would make the case that it must be preferable to 'snob rule' (the tyranny of the minority). Why would we expect a decision arrived at by 61 MP's to be necessarily superior to that arrived by over fifty percent of the public taking part? If the public really is that stupid so as not to be trusted in greater involvement with matters of state, then why give them a vote at all? Or do we imagine that the charade of elections is really simply a contest of who has the best ads where the outcome matters little?

The problem can best be summed up by public apathy to politics and the contempt with which politicians are generally held. It takes more to get the public engaged on issues than ever before because we are now resigned to dumb laws being the norm rather than the exception. Such a lack of interest only encourages successive governments to dream up solutions to problems that exist only in their fertile imaginations. Unfortunately it is the public who pays for these experiments in idiocy not only because they are subject to them, but because we have forgotten the proper relationship between people and parliament. They represent us because they are paid by us to. We are their employers yet they treat us like their subjects. If we are serious about democracy, we must be serious about change.

Prime Minister Helen Clark was once asked about how she saw the function of government and she replied "the government's role was whatever the government defined it to be." It's an attitude indicative of a government that has abandoned all pretense of humility, service, and the principles of democracy on which are nation was founded.

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