Electoral Reform

Democracy is the underpinning foundation of our society and economy. Every three years we collectively choose 120 of our fellow citizens to act on behalf of the collective interest in governing the country. These 120 Parliamentarians are the ones making the big decisions about how the country functions. These parliamentarians hold the most important positions in our economy and society.

The role of parliamentarian is the most important job in this country. The wellbeing of the collective depends on parliament being occupied by people of talent, competence, integrity and experience, not by people representative of the widest range of personal opinions, genders, age groups or cultural backgrounds.

It also depends on those same representatives actually representing the wider community interests, not imposing a personal ideological perspective that is not widely supported.

The leadership our representatives provide (or fail to provide) determines the well-being of the entire population. So often the party in power blames some subsidiary agency for the country’s problems but Parliament is NZ’s General Manager and Board of Directors. As with any enterprise, the buck must stop at the top!

The fact that we have a housing crisis, an infrastructure crisis, a public and mental health crisis, and environmental crisis, a faltering economy and a public service seemingly incapable of competently providing services the public require, and our children are fleeing the country for better opportunities elsewhere, suggests that we have not been well served by our elected representatives and their philosophical positions, over the past several decades.

Globally governments appear to no longer be representative in the original sense of democracy – being a process of selecting a group of representatives of the entirety of society to manage the nation for the collective good.