Your say: We blew it

The media chose to use its bully pulpit to rubbish the Conservatives. Photo / HBT

We had our best chance to achieve a proper democracy at the last election via the Conservative proposal for binding referenda and we blew it.

So when the issues that will invariably arise during any three-year term, and we wish to impress our displeasure on the governing party, what are we to do?

Oh sure, we'll stamp down the streets chanting "Ho Ho Ho, Hey Hey Hey -- about whatever we're protesting that day" but it will have the same inaudibly hollow sound in the ears of our politicians.

Then, in desperation, we will call for yet another $6 million waste of time and money referendum, that government will undoubtedly ignore in its customary fashion.

It's fair to say the greatest impediment to its introduction was the media, who chose to use its bully pulpit to rubbish the Conservatives by perpetually highlighting a couple of gaffes made by Colin Craig, and downplaying the importance that people power plays when elected governments and councils move outside the mandate on which they were elected to office.

It's obviously too late now to be bleating about the demise of achieving binding referenda in NZ, at least for this term, but as the years lapse and issues such as the GCSB, control over the internet, the decision to commit troops overseas and the tentacles of the United Nations Plan for Sustainable Development for the 21st Century, aka Agenda 21, start to squeeze, we can all lament in vain, our shortsightedness.

E. Morgan
Whangarei