This is the question I find myself asking of late, with another uninformed set of decisions that have led to yet again Kiwi’s having to make sacrifices and the government walking away from the consequences as it was “not their government” making the error.
Whether it’s crime, power or just fiscal responsibility, no government seems to be capable of identifying the issues or managing them, from my experience with government agencies the issue is not that they are stupid, it’s just they are unmotivated or ill informed by people with their own agendas, the people responsible are taking advice from committee driven politics, giving leaders little to no time to discuss long term or down stream consequences. Some government agencies around the world are doing awesome, creative work but this information is either not being passed onto our government or they can’t get the funding for the project for one reason or another.
With decentralisation combined with direct democracy and repealing unfit legislation this would allow people to discuss the local issues plaguing local communities without needing to have feasibility studies occurring, the local population would discuss these at town hall meetings discuss how the problem is being solved by the rest of the world (hence living in the information age can be used for other things than funny cat videos), and then direct their regional administrators to carry out the work and the funding will be organised by the people in one way or another.
Firstly Kiwi’s need to stop being so compliant and forgiving of these governments and here are some of the reasons, firstly, representative government is made up of people you voted for, so when you hear a prime-minister blame the previous government remember that they were part of this government, if the argument is that they were not part of the previous government then we no longer need Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) or, more importantly, a shadow cabinet including a shadow leader, secondly parliament is where ideas are discussed and the best idea is supposed to win out, yet this has not been occurring, I think a reasonable question would be, why are these ministers not doing their own research and becoming experts at the portfolio’s they are given even if it’s not your area of expertise we are paying them large amounts to figure this out any CEO who had a inefficiency like this lot would be fired very quickly.
In closing if you want to change this system vote for a local government candidate who will implement a constitution with three things:
- Right of recall through petition,
- Binding referendums of 50% of the voting population in your region,
- right of veto through petition.
This will enable you as a region to practice on a small scale, prove to yourself that the system works and once it does you can then apply this on a national level.