Opinion: I don’t vote. I never have.
Some people will scoff at my decision. Others will say, “But people die for the right to have their voices heard.” That’s all true, but my decision to abstain from voting isn’t flippant or one I took lightly.
Some elections appear more crucial than others, and in those instances, I have wrestled with myself, but today I remain dedicated to non-voting celibacy.
The upcoming October 14 election is crucial. Without sounding like a hypocritical prat, I urge everyone to enrol, vote and make it count. MMP elections are traditionally close.
Despite what appears to be a big gap between the two major parties, MMP has a way of making the contest much closer.
So, make sure you vote – and it’s the party vote that counts. The rest is just noise.
I’d really like to exercise my vote in this election, but I’m staying true to the 28-year-old pact I made with myself.
As long as I continue to interview politicians and have daily political opinions on my Duncan Garner, Editor-in-Chief podcast, then my self-imposed rules set in 1995 exist today.
I’m 49 and have been eligible to vote in every election since 1993. But I made this decision in 1995 after I was seconded to TVNZ’s One Network News Parliamentary Bureau as an intern, who would support senior political staff with their daily storytelling at 6pm.
That was the official job description. The unofficial but more honest approach was to be everywhere first, get the interviews before everyone else, stay in the loop, find good stories, get up earlier than your opponents, go to bed last and crush them in the hours in between.
I made this decision aged just 21. I was covering Parliament. It was a brutal and unforgiving place: blokey, boozy and littered with bovver boys. The parties were wild and went all night. You could form bonds, get to know MPs in a different and more informal light, and I got into my fair share of trouble. A few Google searches in and around this will likely reveal all.
Politics was like blood sport. The UFC of politics was the debating chamber. People knew their stripes, their side, their colours. Any sign of weakness would be highlighted, and the person humiliated. The bigger the personal humiliation, the better. I learned very quickly how to play hardball.
I saw Dover Samuels and Richard Prebble eyeball each other a few inches apart. I was sure punches were going to fly and was disappointed they didn’t, from memory. Winston Peters ruled the nightlife. Winston didn’t host parties, he was the party. National had all the best parties. Act was a close second. I know times have changed and the fun has been removed. In its place have come social media and people pretending to be all those amazing things.
Anyway, let me remove the rose-tints.
It was the mid-1990s, Rodney Hide had come to Wellington and was tearing down traditional entitlements, structures, allowances and benefits that parliamentary “lifers” had got for just turning up. There was little transparency, and most certainly on perks there was solidarity – to keep them. Rodney was rocking the boat, and we were covering it.
I was in the firing line, too. Allegations flew around that I was in his pocket, but it didn’t last. The last MP you were seen with always raised suspicion – people are paranoid there. You just had to ride it out.
I was in the Act office one night and laughing at one of Rodney’s stories when Jim Anderton walked past, saw me and shook his head. Later, a message was passed on that it had become clear I was voting Act. Wrong. I carried on.
For me, not voting meant no one could accuse me of being up the backside of a particular party.
Yet many still did, and if I had a dollar for the number of times I was accused of being both a National supporter and Labour supporter, I’d have retired to the Hokianga years ago.
I saw journalists who were “out” and had nailed their colours to a particular party mast. They were very good journalists, but whenever they wrote a story on their favoured party, who could take it seriously?
Helen Clark’s former spin doctor, Mike Munro, was defending me one day when he said, “Duncan doesn’t care if it’s blue blood or red blood as long as it’s flowing somewhere.”
The people who are tribal and accuse you of bias are really admitting they are card-carrying members of a particular party and your views don’t align with their bias.
My position on voting got me places. It ensured equal access to the big parties, and when pushed on who I was voting for, or who I liked, I had a credible answer, which was respected by most, although not everyone agreed with it.
I treated them all the same. I have never been a member of a political party, and because I was so young when I started in Parliament, and I stayed for 17 years, the people, the MPs, all became way too familiar to me. Friendships and working relationships got blurred. I saw more of them than my own family. It could be bloody confusing.
The last thing you would do as a journalist is vote for one of them and announce it to the world. It’s called bias.
Stay a mystery.
The only place camaraderie really exists is in the joint netball and rugby teams. I played for the parliamentary rugby team for years.
I had great sources in that team, and they told me stuff. We were playing up north once when I saw a flurry of activity on cell phones.
My source, who remains a National MP, turned to me and said, “They’re rolling Bolger.” As he was a new MP, I thought he was speaking out of a hole in his backside.
But I remained uneasy about the information, returned to Wellington and informed my boss, Linda Clark.
Bolger was gone the next day.
I don’t vote and I stay neutral. As a result, I was handed a scoop and almost ignored it.
Earlier that year, when Prime Minister Jim Bolger was having 60th birthday drinks in his office, I was invited, although I’d been in the Press Gallery less than a year. Winston was there, John Armstrong, the brilliant opinion writer for the NZ Herald who has since died, was there, and Ian Templeton, Barry Soper and David Barber were all present.
A staff member from Bolger’s office was there, too, a young man named Todd Muller, who, the room agreed, would one day make a great leader.
But I often think to myself, had I told people in the months earlier that I was a Labour voter, would I have been invited?
Parliament can be an unpleasant place where the weakest are preyed upon, sometimes in the most public of ways – journalists included – and no one is off limits.
Now we have social media, too, the dynamic has changed – and not for the better.
But some things stay true. I still believe it is the right call to abstain from voting for any of them. It’s the best way of staying neutral in a place that demands everyone takes a side. Journalists are big targets in a democratic system, but in doing this, I took one such target off my head. And I stand by it. I still have my say, I just don’t vote.
