Bruce Bisset: Tweak the voting system with care

Bruce Bisset

Democracy is a strange beast, and with MMP and phone-in voting and what some see as Māori "privilege" granting places at the table, it's getting stranger all the time.

Which begs the question as to whether traditional Westminster-style democracy remains the best form of governance.

Hastings District Council has decided to include a Māori representative with voting rights on each of their four standing committees. These members are selected, not elected, and as no one outside the council gets to vote on that selection it seems undemocratic.

However, by law the council can co-opt anyone it likes to serve on a committee; by that measure it's a democratic process elected councillors are free to pursue.

This is a "specialist" role designed to bring a deeper understanding of Māori views into decision-making, as distinct from the more generic role a councillor is expected to play regardless of their ancestry.

Crucially, it gives substance to the "partnership" model espoused by the Treaty of Waitangi – and in that light deserves support.

Admittedly when I was an elected representative I felt threatened by the idea of non-elected people having power they had not "earned".

But I have come to accept that the principles of Te Tiriti require more than lip service, and the more we include Māori in decision-making roles, the stronger we will grow, together, as a nation – even if the partnership model is not strictly "democratic".

However, tinkering with the mechanics of the voting process is fraught. Napier City Council's decision to go ahead with a new swimming pool complex, pushed through on a casting vote, shows what can happen when the principles of one person one vote are stretched.

The meeting was notable for allowing councillor Tania Wright to be "present", and vote, via an open telephone line – a curious allowance in the city's standing orders.

But it was stand-in chair Faye White's use of a casting to vote to break a 6-6 deadlock that breached accepted practice: Local Government New Zealand advises that when a decision is not clear-cut, a casting vote should maintain the status quo. Instead, hers was for change.

Technically, it's democratic in that the majority vote rules, but to use an "extra" vote to progress a $44 million and counting new capital work which has, as reflected on council, split citizens' opinion is very poor governance.

Then there is the "consensus" model, long a staple of the way the Green Party operates, a version of which forms the basis for how the present coalition Government works internally.

The idea is that Labour, the Greens, and NZ First negotiate and as necessary compromise their positions on any topic until they reach a point where all can agree – or agree to disagree.

Debate on a capital gains tax clearly reached an impasse which no amount of argument could mitigate, so the introduction of such a tax has been ditched.

This may be a loss for Labour and the Greens, but it's no one's "fault"; simply the reality of how a three-party coalition must work, and not everything survives that test.

Unfortunately that non-decision works against democracy overall, because a CGT would help to actualise a fairer distribution of wealth – something we badly need to avoid devolving into an "us and them" society.

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others," said Winston Churchill in 1947, and that remains true.

But as these examples perhaps highlight, politics needs to be more inclusive and less adversarial in order for everyone to feel democracy still works for them.

Are we open and flexible enough in our views to achieve that?

* Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet. Views expressed are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's.