Brian Rudman: Electorate gives parties a whack

Trevor Mallard seems to find it hard to accept Labour is no longer in power. Photo / Mark Mitchell

I prefer to think the 1.4 million people who voted "no" in the recent referendum did so to give the liberal political establishment a good whack around the ears rather than from any desire to beat their kids with impunity.

No doubt a few zealots had convinced themselves - against all the police reports to the contrary - that the amendment to the Crimes Act passed in 2007 gave Constable Plod the right to barge into homes of God-fearing folk and drag innocent parents off to jail for lovingly tapping their errant child on the bottom.

But mostly, I suspect the no vote was an electoral after-shock, echoing the "time for a change" sentiment signalled in last year's general election. A chance to give the Helen Clark regime one last two-fingered salute.

And not just the Clark government. After all, it was National leader John Key who negotiated the compromise that ensured practically every politician in the House - 113 to 8 - would vote to remove the anomaly in the Crimes Act which allowed a parent to thrash a child, then put up the defence of "reasonable force for the purpose of correction".

That the campaigners for a referendum could so easily gather 300,000 signatures in support of their meaningless petition should have been warning enough that those beyond the castle gates were very restless.

A letter in yesterday's NZ Herald shows they still are. Dripping with irony, the writer thanked Mr Key for suggesting the no voters had not understood the hated law.

"Was it when 1,053,398 of us voted for a National Government last year we did not understand, or was it when 1,420,959 voted against the smacking law that we did not understand?" He said Mr Key could either repeal a law "overwhelmingly opposed ... or he can dictate like a despotic nanny ..."

But it was not just the masses the political establishment misread so badly. Perhaps the most stunning kick in the face for Helen Clark came from her own sort - from the people she singled out for special honouring.

Creating an indigenous honours system was her way of helping cut away some of the remaining constitutional apron strings with Mother England. She thought she had at least the liberal establishment on her side on this.

But the moment her successor gave them the chance to trade in their Clark honour for a more glittering trinket from Buckingham Palace, he was knocked over in the rush of snobs clamouring to become a knight or a dame. Particularly dispiriting was that her choice as Governor-General led the way. Of the 85 top honourees under Ms Clark, only 11 held out.

Many were honoured because the Clark leadership thought they shared a similar vision for New Zealand's future. How wrong this was.

Obviously from Ms Clark's viewpoint, it was a betrayal on a grand scale. But from the other end of the telescope, both the honours and smacking fiascos can be seen as a failure to lead. A failure to sell policies and visions that were important to the leadership.

Mr Key is now wriggling like mad to get off the hook that he and Ms Clark jointly created. Like Ms Clark, he has failed to sell to his followers the simple truth that not one parent has been convicted of smacking a child since the law was passed.

Democracy is supposed to be about booting governments out when they lose touch, thus forcing the rejected leaders to reconnect with their grassroots.

Nearly 10 months after it was roundly rejected at the polls, Labour is still having difficulty adopting this supplicant pose.

Sure it's going through the motions, with televised bus trips around the provinces to meet the people. But what sticks in my mind is Labour front bencher Trevor Mallard's recent posting on the party's blog Red Alert about Auckland transport.

Mr Mallard isn't even spokesman on transport or Auckland affairs, but that didn't stop him claiming "Auckland Regional Transport Agency has rejected the Infratil-led bid for their integrated ticketing system. They have chosen Thales, a French company.

Insiders tell me that ARTA was conned by consultants into a highly overspeced solution ... rather than the alternative," which he says is the Infratil "solution currently in use in Wellington". He claimed "extra cost $30-$50 million. IT jobs exported ... Just stupid."

Mr Mallard's ignorance on the issue was roundly attacked by readers of the site who knew much more on the issue than he, one pointedly commenting, "This kind of post reminds me why I didn't vote for them [Labour] last year."

Leading Auckland Labour Party politicians involved in the negotiations were also appalled with the comments, and that Mr Mallard had made no effort to check the facts with them.

He might have realised that he was the victim of a last-ditch PR campaign by Wellington-based Infratil, whose proposal had been found inferior by ARTA, ARC and Wellington government funding agencies.

What rankled most is he didn't bother to check with them on this crucial transport issue. If Labour wants to get back into power, picking up the phone might be a good way to start.