The NZ Herald in it's editorial this morning attempts to put forward the notion that MP's should heed "expert advice" in the matter of the smacking bill and not the opinion of the people, and that because we voted for those MP's that this is democracy in action.
'Nowhere is it written in stone that the majority is right', they claim.
Sorry, but I still don't agree with this.
Yes, we do vote at election time for the MP's and party we want to represent us - we obviously vote for the MP whose beliefs are the closest to our own and who will represent those beliefs for us in Parliament. The undemocratic bit comes in when those MP's are forced by their leader to vote the way the leader wants them to and not the way the member's constituents want. Suddenly the voter is not represented at all by he or she whose job it is to do just that.
And what about this "expert advice"?
That also gets my gander up, as there is no expert advice to say that smacking is harmful or that is creates violent adults or anything like that. No, it is one woman's ideology being forced on a country.
The Anti-smoking Bill was different; there is plenty of expert advice to tell us that smoking is bad and even smokers will agree with this, but trying the same tactics with smacking without any real evidence that it is harmful is just plain wrong.
'Nowhere is it written in stone that the majority is right', they claim.
Sorry, but I still don't agree with this.
Yes, we do vote at election time for the MP's and party we want to represent us - we obviously vote for the MP whose beliefs are the closest to our own and who will represent those beliefs for us in Parliament. The undemocratic bit comes in when those MP's are forced by their leader to vote the way the leader wants them to and not the way the member's constituents want. Suddenly the voter is not represented at all by he or she whose job it is to do just that.
And what about this "expert advice"?
That also gets my gander up, as there is no expert advice to say that smacking is harmful or that is creates violent adults or anything like that. No, it is one woman's ideology being forced on a country.
The Anti-smoking Bill was different; there is plenty of expert advice to tell us that smoking is bad and even smokers will agree with this, but trying the same tactics with smacking without any real evidence that it is harmful is just plain wrong.
I think they are right - this is democracy in action. The more "democratic" government gets, the more authoritarian it can become. MMP insulates parliament to a certain extent from the people it tries to rule. It's only when 80% of the people are against what the government is trying to do that it gets worried.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if worried is enough to stop them, though. Might be. Chris Trotter certainly thinks it ought to be and maybe they are listening to him.
Chris published another piece pleading with the Government to withdraw the bill. He referenced the sale of Telstra, which the majority of people were against, after which Labour were punished by the people by languishing in opposition for 9 years.
The ideologues don't care, of course. They want this bill through and are happy for it to destroy the government, as long as it's passed. Then the next thing on the agenda can be pushed through to create the Utopia they long for.
The fact that you don't like MMP doesn't make it responsible for poorly representative govt. I commented on another blog recently that other readers might be too young to remember Piggy Muldoon turning up on TV one night to announce that he'd decided we were going to have a wage and price freeze effective immediately, cos he felt like it. Those of us who are old enough to remember such things don't get all outraged over MMP's supposed lack of democratic accountability - quite the reverse.
ReplyDeleteFletch is right re the "expert advice" - there is none. There are various opinionated social scientists with an axe to grind promoting dodgy research with results fiddled to reflect their prejudices, but experts? Nah.