Dialogue: Bells toll for the end of an ideal

Before we become totally involved in the festivities of the season, let's all pause to observe a minute's silence for the dying gasps of democracy in New Zealand.

The patient took ill about 25 years ago, experienced one or two remissions but considerably more relapses, and lately the disease has become terminal.

The disease was first diagnosed back in 1976, about a year after Robert Muldoon became Prime Minister. Muldoon, an autocrat who would brook no opposition to what he thought should be done, even from his own ministers, planted the germ of a cancerous growth which has infected our political system ever since.

The disease proceeded slowly over the next 10 years, for Muldoon was also a man who was sensitive to the thoughts, feelings and aspirations of the man in the street. He knew just how far he could go before the public's patience became intolerably strained.

We became aware that the disease was so virulent only during the vast upheaval brought about by Roger Douglas in the first Lange Administration, for here was a man utterly unconcerned with what the people thought as he bulldozed through deregulations and privatisations that left the public gasping for breath.

There was a brief remission when David Lange called for "a cup of tea" and Douglas and his minions had their hands wrenched off the levers of power.

But it didn't last long. Along came the Bolger-Birch Administration and the patient began to deteriorate rapidly.

Then came MMP - and the disease in democracy became terminal. Some of us saw it for what it was - a blatant and unscrupulous grab for power by political parties - and did all that we could to dissuade people from it. But not enough of us had the gumption to understand.

It was, of course, argued that the referendum was democracy at work. Which is nonsense. Apart from the fact that if a majority are in favour of anything, they have misunderstood the question, democracy is not rule by majority but rule "of the people, by the people, for the people." There is a huge difference.

What with MMP and another ideologically hidebound National Government, as the 1990s passed the disease progressed to the point where those who held power completely lost touch with the people who put them there and New Zealanders were left feeling disfranchised.

When people who have been rejected by the electors can still take their places in Parliament as list MPs, we know we've been sidelined. But worse, those whom we elected to power (we elected them to govern, but they never learned how) deprived us of even our local representation.

Hospital boards, power boards, borough and county councils, pest destruction and catchment boards all died a sudden death as the Government of the day created great amorphous local authorities whose members also soon became far removed from the cares and concerns of their constituents.

Finally, in November last year we were able to toss out our political tormentors. Most of us didn't vote for Labour, we voted against National. And, silly buggers that we are, we all thought that the cancer eating away at democracy would again go into remission.

But that sense of relief hasn't lasted long. In fact, our diseased democracy has taken a turn for the worse.

For we are once again faced with a group of hidebound ideologues who are determined to impose their will on us whether we like it or not.

That came home to me forcefully the other day when I read in the Herald that Prime Minister Helen Clark had purged the phrase "Closing the Gaps" from her Government's vocabulary.

And then this: "The programmes are still there," said a Clark spokesman, "but because the expression 'Closing the Gaps' excited all sorts of weird and wonderful reactions among middle New Zealand, the term is not being used."

So now we know what Helen Clark and her ministers think of us.

Our negative reaction to Closing the Gaps is "weird and wonderful."

In other words, we don't know what we're talking about, don't know what's good for us.

So instead of modifying the policy to which we take exception, the Government has simply instructed its officials to present it in a different way.

The death knell of democracy in New Zealand has been sounding for decades. It has just become deafening.

* garth_george@herald.co.nz