Brian Rudman: 'Wisdom of crowds' smells like mob rule to me

Talk about unfortunate timing. The day Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey wrote in these pages of the virtue of politicians following the voice of the people on big issues, his council decided, in secret session, to become part-owners of a film studio venture.

Henderson becoming the Hollywood of the South Pacific has long been a dream of Mayor Bob. But what say the workers of Universal Drive?

Mr Harvey, a recent convert to "direct democracy," says the time is now right for Waitakere City to start conducting referendums or going through the citizens' jury process "on matters of significant public interest". He's proposing that for a start, the process be limited to three major projects a year.

At least the citizens' jury process, which involves 18 to 24 representative citizens gathering for a week to hear the evidence and make recommendations, offers the chance of a little rational debate and the sifting of evidence. But the thought of leaving it to referendums leaves me terrified.

In a lengthy report last week to his councillors, the mayor calls it "the wisdom of crowds". To an old cynic like me, it sniffs more of mob rule, a curse which our system of representative democracy is here to protect us from.

Mr Harvey approvingly offers a couple of recent examples of people power. "Just last month Hamilton City residents voted to keep fluoride in their tap water via a referendum, and Wanganui District Council has held several ... including whether to put an "h" in Wanganui ... "

It's that latter example which classically illustrates the short-comings of asking the mob to judge an issue. Since when did spelling a place name become a matter to be decided by popular vote? Just because 82 per cent of Wanganuians voted in a referendum this year to put uppity Maori in their place by rejecting their request to spell the city's name correctly doesn't represent a victory for democracy.

The same nonsense is going on in Whangarei, where former Act MP Muriel Newman is trying to keep her name in lights by calling for a referendum on the recent renaming of a local hill. She says locals will vote overwhelmingly in favour of restoring the incorrect spelling, Parahaki, to the hill which is now called Parihaki. A majority of her supporters probably think the Earth is flat and Roger Douglas is God as well. But does that make them right?

As for the fluoride vote in Hamilton, in that case the referendum fluked a match with the scientific evidence. But that's hardly an endorsement of the process. Six years ago in Onehunga, a city council poll had 62 per cent against fluoridation of the local water and 33 per cent in favour. But an earlier district health board survey showed 48 per cent were for, 21 per cent were against and 30 per cent didn't know.

An analysis of the results revealed two-thirds of ratepayers did not return their city council survey forms. Not that it would have made much difference because there was also widespread ignorance of the issues. Forty per cent of business respondents and 22 per cent of residents didn't know what fluoridation was about. Ditto 61 per cent of Pacific Islanders and 50 per cent of Asians.

It's this widespread ignorance of an issue and the low participation levels which count so heavily against Mr Harvey's utopian dream of a village-square democracy. It's bad enough leaving the decision-making to politicians, but at least with the system we have there is an intricate interchange of lobbying and checks and balances and subsequent accountability, which increases the odds of a good decision being made.

Calling on the mob to raise or lower their thumbs on the life or death of a proposition, though, is a reversion to the Dark Ages.

But there was one historic idea that the irrepressible Westie mayor has floated that I could warm to, although it would risk no one standing for public office ever again. The ancient Athenians, he says, had a way of getting rid of unpopular politicians. Once a year citizens could write on a piece of broken pot (ostrakon), the name of a politician they wished to see banished. Any politician scoring more than 600 ostrakons was immediately made to leave town for 10 years.