A referendum on the regime

The Justice Committee has reported back on ACT's Term of Parliament (Enabling 4-year Term) Legislation Amendment Bill, recommending that it be fundamentally amended. Instead of ACT's weird variable term length based on a pinky-promise by the executive (which is explicitly revokable with no consequences), they recommend simply a straight up-down referendum on moving to a four year term - without any additional safeguards. Which is the worst of both worlds. The only party to vote against this was (ironically) ACT - which tells us that the political elite are united in their desire for less accountability and less democracy.

Meanwhile, this regime is providing a perfect reason why a four-year term is a terrible idea (can you imagine it? An extra year of this?) And a perfect example of why we need a shorter term, not a longer one. Because given the lack of other safeguards and accountability mechanisms in our constitutional system, our only real check and balance is the frequent opportunity to throw the bums out. And as the executive accrues more and more power and behaves in ever more anti-democratic and unconstitutional ways - abusing urgency, corruption, undermining te Tiriti, cracking down on protest - we need to have more opportunities to topple them, not less.

Fortunately, this is subject to a vote. And any referendum is inevitably going to end up as a referendum on the constitutional practices of this regime. Which means we should look forward to it going down by the same margin as it did in 1967 and 1990.