Rob Rattenbury likes to think of himself as a swing voter.
Rob Rattenbury is a retired police officer who lives in Whanganui. He has written a weekly column for the Chronicle since 2019.
OPINION
I’m one of those voters who actually change our Government. I’m a swinger. I swing from the middle.
But, yes I like to swing
Voters like me vote for the party that best reflects their feelings and thoughts about a certain subject at a certain time.
Also, most of us are selfish voters. We like to vote for a party that will likely offer us or ours something that will improve our lives or the lives of our loved ones.
We are a faithless breed, non-partisan. We can see the sense in both sides of an argument, especially the side that favours us. We never actually join any political party.
Because we swing from the centre, we never venture too far into the world of the extreme ends of politics. You won’t find many centre voters giving ticks to small parties.
We like the big parties, the ones who have governed our country between them for many years. The ones who have made the hard decisions for our society, succeeded or paid a heavy price for them at the polling booth.
Being an MP in our Parliament is a privilege, not a sojourn for the disaffected who tilt at windmills.
Making our laws, taking part in consensus-building inter-party debate and select committees, being available to the people who actually voted for them, but also to any other person, no matter what political persuasion that person may be.
Being principled and holding those in power to account but knowing that they will be held to account as well if they gain power. A sobering thought if you are dishing it out to the other side. Your turn will come. So keep it seemly.
Presently I see that in most of our parliamentarians. There will always be the few who sneak through their party selection criteria only to be uncovered in due course, besmirching their public reputations then either facing the ignominy of demotion within the ranks or, quite often, the red card.
What we have seen in recent times are parties in our Parliament seem to be going through a pretty rough patch in terms of what their sitting MPs are getting up to out of the House or got up to prior to coming into the House.
All parties have well-intentioned people with noble ideas wanting the best for our country. But they also seem to have their share of people who seem to have missed the message about what it takes to be a public figure: to be someone who is vested with huge power by their people. To be someone who is trusted to perform with honesty and ethics in our most important public forum.
Some of those troubled people have moved on, quite rightly, and some are yet to have their particular situations settled. Maybe more will go, maybe they will stay.
Of course, as I said above, all parties have their problems. None can claim innocence. It is how those problems are addressed that matters.
No matter what comes, we are a very lucky country compared to many others when we do politics here. Corruption is rare and smartly stamped on when it ever raises its head. That is not the way in many other nations, even democracies.
All the debates in our Parliament make for interesting reading or watching but overall we know our system of government is safe.
As Winston Churchill said: “Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time...”