Clive Bibby: Do policies determine elections?

Why is it that transformative policies have rarely determined the outcome of New Zealand elections? This time could be different!

I have voted in over 20 general elections during my adult life and am surprised to see, during that time, few if any party was elected based on policies that had the ability to radically change people’s lives for the better.

Kate Hawkesby: I'm none the wiser as to how this will go

I’m rallying the troops at the moment to early vote.  

By troops I mean family members, but also anyone who’ll listen. So far I think just my husband, my sister and I have early voted. Others are waiting til the last minute. I’m not sure what might happen last minute that could change your mind, short of a scandal of some kind I guess. But you either like the direction the country is going and want to keep it this way, or you don’t.  

At the heart of it we’re essentially voting for change or more of the same. My concern is the short memories of Kiwis as I said the other day, and how many will try to justify pepper potting their vote around like some kind of MMP pick and mix. That’ll only end in tears, probably mine if Winston has anything to do with it.

David Round: Democracy!

  

Colin Craig, the leader of the Conservative Party, recently announced that a bottom line in any coalition agreement with the National Party after the general election would be National’s agreement to introduce binding referendums as part of our constitutional arrangements. These referendums would, presumably, be ones initiated by citizens themselves, such as we already have here in non-binding form. (In some countries governments themselves can propose referendums, to run their ideas past the people.) 

Binding referendums are familiar to us from overseas; in California, for example, citizens vote on “propositions’, put forward by a certain minimum number of voters, at the same time they cast their ballots in general elections. The resulting decision of the voters automatically acquires legal effect.