The thing about Sue Bradford's anti-smacking bill that gets right up my nose is not the stupidity and futility of it but that parliamentarians are permitting it to proceed in the face of the opposition of a vast majority of the populace.

It's not that the amendment to Section 59 of the Crimes Act will in the long term have the very opposite effect of what is intended, but that its promoters and supporters must be fully aware that up to 80 per cent of New Zealanders don't want a bar of it.

That's not new, of course, and neither is the fact that in every case that a majority in Parliament have gone against the wishes of the people who put them there, the results have been disastrous.

In 1977 the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act was passed in the face of stern public opposition. In 1986 the Homosexual Law Reform Act became law in spite of an opposing petition with more than 600,000 names.

More recently the public majority have been ignored while politicians have, among other things, lowered the drinking age, legalised prostitution and mandated civil unions.

And, it should be noted, all but the drinking age law were introduced into Parliament while Labour governments were in power.

However, this is a Green Party initiative and when it comes to social engineering, the pinkish socialists of the Labour Party can't hold a candle to the bright red Greens, whose determination to force us all to live the way they think we should makes the old Soviet politburo look like a bunch of benevolent uncles.

I always thought that democracy was created so we could have, in Abraham Lincoln's immortal words, government of the people, by the people, for the people. But that doesn't seem to be the way of it any more.

Thanks to the corruption of our electoral system, democracy has transmogrified into government of the politicians (if our electorate tosses us out, we can stay on as party list members), by the politicians (we know best, so you'll do it our way), for the politicians (we'll stay in power no matter what we have to do or what odious compromises we have to make).

I always thought, too, that so-called conscience votes were just that - an opportunity for parliamentarians to vote according to their personal beliefs and not have to toe the party line.

No more. The rotten electoral system, with its self-serving coalitions and alliances, has put paid to that, too, and now we have Labour whips flogging their MPs into line in case their vote might offend an individual or group on whom it depends to govern. You can smell the stench of that from North Cape to Bluff.