Fixing Democracy

We Seek A National Discussion To Pursue Wide-Ranging Democratic Reforms

We believe many of New Zealand's institutions no longer function effectively. Our concerns include:

Perverse electoral rules designed to entrench incumbent parties.
Bureaucratic suppression of free speech.
Inadequate protection of personal liberties, resulting from Parliamentary supremacy without adequate checks and balances, such as an upper house or robust constitutional protections.
Centralisation of power and ever-increasing regulations, removing decision-making from individual citizens and affected communities, and creating a widespread feeling of disenfranchisement.
Governments of every colour routinely ignoring the wishes of the people, even when clearly expressed through a citizen's initiated referendum.
A performative political system that has been captured by career party politicians who are overpaid and largely ineffective (whether through incompetence or malice).
A bloated and out-of-control administrative state, where no public officials ever pay a personal price for inexcusable actions & decisions.
Activist judges ignoring or rewriting the law, and police, the courts, and the administrative state being misused as political tools, without any effective means of holding them accountable.

These problems are systemic and will require comprehensive change. We would look for effective models in other jurisdictions that New Zealand can learn from - for example Switzerland, which has highly decentralised government, extensive direct democracy, and part-time politicians who mostly continue to work in regular jobs.

We suggest that the internet makes it much easier to implement systems of direct democracy, and we no longer need to be ruled by an out-of-touch political elite.

Possible Solutions

writing a new constitution.
empowering the public to override government decisions by making citizens initiated referenda binding.
implementing "recall" elections.
establishing term limits.
reducing politicians' pay.
reducing the size of electorates.
re-establishing an upper house of Parliament.
replacing the Governor General with a directly elected head of government.
creating a directly elected executive.
an elected judiciary.
a system of political appointments for senior public servants, to give government direct control over the public service.

We emphasize that government must serve the people, not the other way around.
"Big Government" central planning is failing New Zealand - government needs to be drastically smaller and less intrusive.

Immediate Changes We Propose

to legislate to curtail unconstitutional bureaucratic power.
to initiate a review of existing legislation to identify and repeal sections that are inconsistent with the Bill of Rights.
to make the Bill of Rights supreme law.
to reduce the size of government by eliminating unnecessary functions until it is able to carry out its core functions effectively.
to decentralise power as much as possible, allowing decisions to be made by the communities that are affected.
to allow political parties to fund their own advertising (currently prohibited) and abolish the taxpayer funded broadcasting allocation. We should not be forced to fund our enemies while being prevented from promoting ourselves.
to abolish the 5% party vote threshold.
to implement transferrable voting for both electorate and party votes.
to review New Zealand's membership in all international organisations and agreements, and withdraw from all which are not clearly in our national interest.
to abolish the annuity paid to former Prime Ministers or their surviving spouses.
to make the Parliamentary Service and MPs' expenses subject to the Official Information Act.

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