Kate Sheppard would have had plenty to say about the state of the nation.
The country has had six years of being run like a very large company, and tomorrow is the referendum on whether most people feel that's the right way to go about building prosperity, or doomed to stunt us as a nation in perpetuity.
Trickle down is one thing. Then, there
have been plenty of other issues to get exercised about along the way - dirty politics and dirty spying are just two that spring to mind. A Government that has engaged in those things, to whatever extent, will regard another term as a mandate to continue along the present path. Apparently, that doesn't bother at least half the population, who are moaning that their adulation of John Key has been rudely interrupted by an election campaign.
It's great they can afford to be complacent. But many of us, well-off or not, are scanning a horizon where international economies are faltering, resources are becoming more scarce, our society is becoming alarmingly unequal, and we are worried that we do not have the innovative leadership required to bridge the inevitable difficulties.
It was Kate Sheppard, the great suffragette, who said: "All that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or sex, is inhuman, and must be overcome." A great political innovator, Sheppard agitated not just for women's right to vote, but proportional representation, binding referenda, collective workers' rights, and improving family life (as well as the abandonment of corsets). She understood implicitly that a society in which huge chasms exist between those with power (or money) and those without is doomed to dysfunction.
