Apathy reigns in NZ [Updated]

It had to happen. A poll was done to see if New Zealanders thought there was any point to the upcoming smacking referendum, and surprise, surprise 75% of us think it is a waste of money.

Congratulations media people and politicians, you have achieved your aim of ensuring that the citizens of this country continue to think of themselves as completely powerless.

An extra big congratulations to John Key, who torpedoed the whole referendum at the start by saying that whatever the result, he would ignore it anyway. Not that he could understand the question of course. And like regular little yes-men, most of the media followed suit. With a couple of notable exceptions such as Karl du Fresne and Tracy Watkins, who despite everything stacked against them still regain the ability to think for themselves.

So what's wrong with apathy anyway? Why not just vote the politicians in every three years and then let them get on with it all, because most of governing is really too complicated for the likes of us peasants.

Willie Whitelaw, a genial old buffer who served as Margaret Thatcher’s deputy for many years, once accused the Labour party of going around Britain stirring up apathy. Viscount Whitelaw’s apparent paradox is, in fact, a shrewd political insight, and all the sharper for being accidental. Big government depends, in large part, on going around the country stirring up apathy — creating the sense that problems are so big, so complex, so intractable that even attempting to think about them for yourself gives you such a splitting headache it’s easier to shrug and accept as given the proposition that only government can deal with them.

And today in NZ, we have a National Prime Minister doing the same. By telling New Zealanders he would ignore the results the referendum, John Key was stirring up apathy. An action far more suited to a socialist who wants to expand government than a person leading a party that apparently stands for personal freedom and responsibility. This from National's website:

National stands for freedom, choice, independence and ambition. We believe in less government not more red tape. We stand for personal freedom and responsibility.

It's not what you say, it's what you do that really tells everyone what you stand for. So, is National's aim to make us more like Britain?

More important, there is a cost to governmentalizing every responsibility of adulthood — and it is, in Lord Whitelaw’s phrase, the stirring up of apathy. If you wander round Liverpool or Antwerp, Hamburg or Lyons, the fatalism is palpable. In Britain, once the crucible of freedom, civic life is all but dead: In Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, some three-quarters of the economy is government spending; a malign alliance between state bureaucrats and state dependents has corroded democracy, perhaps irreparably. In England, the ground ceded to the worst sociopathic pathologies advances every day — and the latest report on “the seven evils” afflicting an ever more unlovely land blames “poverty” and “individualism,” failing to understand that if you remove the burdens of individual responsibility while loosening all restraint on individual hedonism the vaporization of the public space is all but inevitable.

Wake up, New Zealanders!

Nine million dollars is nothing compared to allowing the Government, any government, run by any party, to think they can do anything, take away any liberty or right and we will just shrug and go, it's pointless protesting they don't listen anyway. They do listen, they just don't want us to know that. Our politicians need to be afraid of us, the people, otherwise democracy is dead.

Related Links:
Poll says $8.9m smacking referendum 'a waste of money' ~ NZ Herald

Democracy would be fine if it wasn't for the voters ~ Karl du Fresne

Referendums can deliver political correction ~ Tracy Watkins, Dominion Post *

Retreat into Apathy ~ Mark Steyn, National Review Online

*[UPDATE] : A wonderful Admin person at the Dominion Post website has given me the link to Tracy Watkins' opinion piece, so I can now include it in my related links. I'll keep the original title that it was published under in the paper even though it's been retitled on the link.