Almost half of us don't realise there is a general election in New Zealand later this year, according to a recent survey. The political chattering classes must throw their arms up in horror at this mass ignorance of the lumpen population. In fact, polls have consistently shown that a huge slice of the electorate has no idea that we get two votes - one for an electorate candidate and the other for a party.

Less surprising is that most of us don't have any idea which vote is more important. Despite spending millions of our tax dollars in explaining our election system to us, the boffins at the Electoral Commission must think we are a nation of bozos.

But oddly enough, 80 per cent of people entitled to vote pop down to the local voting booth and have no trouble voting for an electorate candidate and the party of their choice. Only a handful make a mistake. So our politicos shouldn't worry. It's just that our national politics are, well, boring.

Our present Prime Minister and the wannabe prime minister make being boring an art form.

I think we like that about them. In fact, our political system was designed to be boringly concessional. It was designed to stop politics being adversarial and interesting. Mind you, after Robert Muldoon, followed by Roger Douglas, followed by Ruth Richardson, you can hardly blame us for wanting a bit of peace and predictability.

And as the world becomes more global we realise that our national politics which once we thought was so important is really inconsequential.

The last politician who pretended our country could make independent decisions on our economy was Muldoon, and he was dumped three decades ago. Deep down, we know we are a small outpost attached to Australia, a sort of East Tasmania. Even our senior corporate chief executives are really just branch managers of international chains which own us.

Our parliamentary politicians are essentially people we elect to manage and implement decisions made by those who run the world economy. Parliament is really just an overblown version of a local city or district council. Our Prime Minister is our outpost's mayor. That explains why we get so excited over smacking kids, or micro-chipping dogs, or drinking ages. Yet we leave all the important decisions to bureaucrats here and overseas.

The real election to get excited about is in the United States. That's where we are really governed and influenced. They have a housing problem and suddenly our economy takes a downward spiral. Because of their films and television shows, their culture is now ours. Even our gangs imitate theirs.