Worse, it's difficult at best to get any decision reviewed because justice may not be blind but it's usuriously expensive; few ordinary citizens can afford to walk into court, let alone mount a robust case.
Those who govern know this, and take advantage of it. And that's where things go bad. Take the debate over a new swimming pool complex for Napier.
The one levelling device inserted into current process is that there must be relevant consultation – and, as supported by case law, that consultation must be "meaningful".
Having identified the need, Napier City Council consulted widely on four options and received excellent public feedback which "overwhelmingly" supported building a new 50m pool as part of redevelopment of the existing Onekawa site.
Council then ignored that feedback, instead producing a plan for a 25m pool plus frilly bits, costing around $43 million, on a new site no one had mentioned before.
Forty-plus million dollar projects do not drop out of the sky. Given the tight time frames involved, someone – probably several someones – had to be working on that concept well before the public consultation began? If so, why was it not included?
Certainly there's no way consultation could be defined as "meaningful", since the absence of the now preferred option removes all meaning from the exercise.
Despite mounting public protest they've forged ahead, citing the need to enshrine the Prebensen Drive scheme in the long-term plan as justification for haste.
But they didn't have to hurry. They could have simply earmarked an amount – say, $45m – in the LTP for a new swimming pool complex and left the detail for later debate.
After all, it's a 10-year plan and even the best-designed projects change; so the idea that you have to have a full-blown nuts and bolts plan before you commit to future expenditure is a nonsense. A concept and estimate will do.
But with this scheme confirmed as part of the LTP, is the only avenue for objection a judicial review – costing a minimum of $50,000?
Who's going to pay for that? More to the point, why should they have to?
What this case, and others like it, highlights is the need for a regulatory authority, such as the Auditor-General's Office or the Ombudsman, to gain stronger extra-judicial powers to be able to proactively step in and, on the public's behalf, empower a judicial review – at council's cost.
If a robust such mechanism existed, politicians would take far more care with their consultation process and final decision-making. Whereas as it stands, they can discount the risk of review and have the outcome they wish, regardless.
At a time when democracy seems increasingly dysfunctional, government should move to ensure the judiciary is both accessible and responsive to the public need to address such breaches of trust.
• Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet. Views expressed are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's.
