Editorial: Question not worth the effort of answering

Not for the first time, a citizens' initiated referendum has been ruined before it begins by a clumsy question. "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?" People on both sides of the debate over parental violence could answer, no.

Quite a number of people, including Prime Minister John Key, came around to supporting the "anti-smacking" bill when it was made clear that police should not prosecute parents for a smack in the manner that most people understand the term. Thus a "no" vote will not necessarily imply opposition to the law as it now stands.

The question is not only ambiguous, it is biased. It presents a smack as "part of good parental correction". It is easy for an organisation to get a poll result it wants by asking a leading question. Commercial lobbyists and social campaigners do this frequently. Surveys that genuinely want to discover public opinion take great care to phrase their questions neutrally.

The $9 million smacking referendum, a postal ballot over three weeks in August, will tell us nothing useful. The only law it may change is that governing citizens' initiatives. Green Party MP Sue Bradford, initiator of the anti-smacking legislation, has written another bill, this time to stop confusing questions being put to referendums. Mr Key says the Government may support her.

If it does, it will need to amend her proposal in one respect. Sue Bradford wants the wording of questions to be reformulated, if necessary, after the petition stage. The question would be vetted by Parliament's procedural adviser, the Clerk of the House, to ensure it was "not ambiguous, complex, leading or misleading". If the question is turned down it could be "reformulated", she suggests.

That means a question put to a referendum could be worded quite differently from the petition that demanded it. It would be preferable to have the question approved before people are invited to sign the petition. That would mean more work for the Clerk's office, dealing with petitions that never come to fruition. But the alternative is to waste the time and effort of petitioners and signatories, who might not recognise their concern in the issue eventually put to the referendum.

In fact, the Citizens Initiated Referenda Act already requires that a petition should be submitted to the Clerk of the House with its question specified. The Clerk is then supposed to issue a public notice of the proposal and invite comments on the wording of the question. Ultimately it is for the Clerk to decide the precise question that can be put to voters.

It is hard to believe that procedure has produced the anti-smacking question, or the law and order poll at the 1999 election which begged three issues in one question.

The citizens' initiative was introduced to our democracy in 1993, when larger electoral reform was looming and it has been overtaken perhaps by MMP. The referendums are not binding on the Government and even clear results have been ignored. A petition to reduce the size of Parliament's 120 MPs to 99 was supported by 81.5 per cent of voters. Nothing happened.

Petitioners and voters probably have come to expect no more from "indicative" referendums, and plainly officials are not vetting the questions as the law intended.

The exercise has become little more than an outlet for letting off steam. This time it has produced a question that is an insult to intelligence. It is not worth the expense or the effort of answering it. A low turnout would be most telling.