Last year, when they passed the Electoral Finance Act, the government promised a citizens' jury to investigate wider issues around electoral administration and political party funding. Now National is opposing that process, calling it "part of a grubby deal done between Labour and the Greens over the Electoral Finance Act". Why am I not surprised?
While ordinary voters and their views may seem "grubby" to National's millionaire leader and his millionaire funders, we are ultimately what democracy is all about. The electoral system belongs to us, not the parties, and certainly not to National's tiny clique of wealthy backers who think they can buy and sell our government and constitution. It follows that the people deciding the shape of that system should be the people, not the politicians. While most of us aren't experts in electoral law or democratic theory, each of us has an opinion on what we want from our political system: how much transparency we want, how much corruption we are prepared to tolerate, whether we want the rich to be able to buy elections, and what constitutes a "level playing field". And in a democracy, those should be the only views which matter.
A citizens' jury - essentially a public inquiry conducted by a random sample of voters rather than government appointees - is a perfect way of putting those views at the centre of policy. By opposing it, National is saying that they do not think our views should count. And that is not just arrogant, but deeply undemocratic.
