Most politicians I know are decent honest people.

 

Most politicians I know are decent honest people. Or at least they started out that way. 

At the local government level, politicians are generally hard working individuals who simply want to serve their communities. At the central government level, politicians are more ambitious but the ones I know or have known, all seemed to be good people. 

So why is it that politicians are regarded as being dishonest? Why is it, when a survey about honesty and trustworthiness is done, politicians are always at the bottom of the heap? 

Clearly if they are good people as individuals it is the system, particularly in central government, that corrupts them.

 

Look at our current National led government for example. 

They have promised and continue to promise that they will not force amalgamation on anyone. Chris Tremain when he was Minister for Local Government told me that. The current Minister Paula Bennett sat in my office and told me that. And yet it is not true. 

They will claim that people have the right to vote on the matter so they are not being forced to amalgamate. And that is half true. 

The law the National led government passed in 2012 does not guarantee the people’s right to a vote on any amalgamation proposal. It simply says that if 10% of the people in any affected area vote by way of an electoral petition to demand a poll, then a poll must take place. And that poll must be taken over the whole affected area. The democratic right of communities of interest to determine their own future governance arrangements was removed. 

So let’s look at what the National led government has done, while claiming that no community will be forced to amalgamate with another. 

Firstly they removed the right for our communities of interest to determine their own future. They passed legislation that allowed towns with a larger population to take over towns with smaller populations. The same legislation allowed groups of self-interested individuals to make application to the Local Government Commission to amalgamate their region. 

How the government can then say that no communities will have amalgamation forced on them I will never know. It is nonsense like this that gives all politicians a bad name. 

I presume they, the government, will claim it is not forcing amalgamation on communities. But they, the government changed the law to ensure it happens. 

Having passed legislation to allow amalgamation to be forced on communities, the government then indulged in an embarrassing charade. They ensured that the majority of the members of the Local Government Commission were pro-amalgamation. 

So now we have the Local Government Commission whose members were appointed by a clearly pro-amalgamation government running a “consultation” process. And that commission, made up of three or four unelected government appointees, will tell us how we are to be governed. 

The government will tell us of course that if we don’t like the final proposal we can organise an electoral petition and demand a poll. And they are right. But how does that stop our smaller communities having amalgamation forced on them. 

Let’s look at the numbers in Hawkes Bay. Wairoa has about 8,000 people and Central Hawkes Bay something over 13,000. Hastings has about 72,000 and Napier 58,000. So if the people of Napier and Hastings decided they wanted to take over Wairoa and CHB, what chance would those two areas have of avoiding having amalgamation forced on them. The answer is none. 

And yet the government continues to trumpet the line that no community will have amalgamation forced on them. This is the sort of dishonesty that leads to people saying that politicians are untrustworthy. 

Fortunately, Wairoa, CHB and Napier are all firmly against amalgamation. And many people who are not, will vote against it because they detest the undemocratic process that has been undertaken by the government. As one fellow said to me the other day, our democratically elected government has used the democratic system to remove people’s right to democracy. 

Increasingly, people I meet from right across Hawkes Bay are picking up on the message that we need to have a proper conversation about a shared vision for us all. And the only way we can do that is by defeating the current proposal for radical amalgamation. 

Once the amalgamation proposal is defeated and everyone has had time to lick their wounds, our political and community leaders need to step up and run an honest, inclusive process that develops a prosperous way forward for the whole of Hawkes Bay. 

Only when that process is complete will we have a truly unified Hawkes Bay