I hope that the 50th Parliament will take up the issue of reforming the way Parliament works.
Not the minor twiddling around the edges that the Standing Orders committee does periodically, but a much more fundamental review of how Parliament can be modernised and made more relevant.
So much of Parliamentary procedure is arcane, out-dated, irrelevant and in need of modernisation. Parliament won’t even accept e-petitions, and the Speaker won’t even accept the tabling of digital documents! And a lot of parliamentary debate is so tedious and irrelevant that the media don’t cover it, and few people listen to it.
Many Zealanders tell me they are completely turned off by the nastiness and hostility in the debating chamber.
I suspect one reason for the low voter turn-out in this year’s election is that many people feel alienated from Parliament and the entire political process.
People on my facebook are saying that Parliament is fast becoming irrelevant, and that participating in the democratic process doesn’t seem to make any difference these days. One guy said he felt disempowered and invalidated when he went to the trouble of making a submission to Parliament recently. He felt the entire select committee process was like a ‘democratic placebo’ which does nothing but wasted a lot of his valuable time.
That’s another reason why there needs to be a review of every aspect of the way Parliament works, to see how it could be made more effective and relevant.
We also need to give more power and independence to Parliament, so that it can better hold the government to account. At the moment Parliament operates a lot of the time like a rubber stamp to the executive.
Politicians are notoriously reluctant to make changes to the way they work, so I would like to see an independent review of the way Parliament works. But I am not holding my breath.
See my articles on the need for reform of Parliament.
