Tuesday, September 7, 2010

New Zealand - too democratic for its own good?

For the last nine years I have lived in Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud, which coincidentally seems to be the land of the elected officials.

To put things into perspective lets look at the numbers; in New Zealand there were (according to the official stats) 2,344,566 votes cast, resulting in 122 MP's; that works out to just over 19000 voters per MP. Across the ditch in Aussie their 2007 election had 12,419,863 for 150 seats = 83000 voters per MP (OK they also have state governments, but hold fire, there's more!) In the UK, the mother of all parliaments, there are 650 MP's voted in by 29,691,780 voters, which works out to over 45000 voters per MP. So on a pro-rata basis NZ really only requires around 60 MP's!

The we go to the next level the regional councils - one of the great enigma's of the NZ democracy. There are 16 of these, and conveniently these don't match the boundaries of the 20 (once upon a time there were 21) district health boards (DHB's).

The regional councils have responsibility for a number of other functions under other statutes
  • flood and river control under the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Act 1941,
  • reserves vested in regional councils under the Reserves Act 1977,
  • civil defence under the Civil Defence Act 1990,
  • regional pest management under the Biosecurity Act 1993,
  • harbour and water navigation under the Maritime Transport Act 1994,
  • hazardous waste under the HSNO Act 1996, and,
  • public transport planning under the Land Transport Act 1998.
Regional councils were also given responsibilities for the supervision of the safety of dams in the Building Act 2004.

But for a country with a sparse a population as New Zealand do we need 16, each with a dozen or so elected (and paid) officials?

Then there are the aforementioned DHB's - 20, each with a half dozen elected people, most with limited knowledge of the contemporary health service, but with lots and lots of axes to grind.

We haven't even got to the local councils - there are 73 of those, each with a plethora of elected officials. Then there is the education sector; every school (except those in statutory management for non-compliance) has an elected board of trustees.

So, as a proportion of the population there must be a sizable number of people who are some kind of elected official. Successive governments have spoken about improving efficiency; maybe we need to be efficient and get rid of many of these elected roles?

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