I once had a dog who could climb trees and fences. Every year she would get larger and more cunning and we would add some extra wood to the backyard fence to try to keep her in.
Eventually she learned to respect the fence even if the fence looked like it could have starred in the exercise yard of a 1950s prison film.
Every time the government breaches another democratic principle I think about that dog. I know, unfair on the dog. But is the sentiment so different?
Doesn’t it feel like we are frantically trying to shore up our democratic rights in the face of relentless coalition attempts to breach its precepts?
Every few weeks legislation is rammed through under urgency, or rights are stripped away retrospectively, and new rules are imposed without public scrutiny. The pattern is relentless: people are sidelined, your voices an afterthought. Democracy feels too flimsy a safety net.
Suddenly, you and your community must scramble to organise campaigns or appeal for hearings with indifferent MPs. Most often, though, you just have to bear it along with relentlessly rising food costs and job insecurity.
Our democratic system of citizen representation and participation is eroding under this government. The latest example, where the government rammed the pay equity amendments through Parliament without notice, in urgency, and retrospectively crashed 33 pay equity claims, is an especially egregious attack on democracy.
Commentators on the Left and Right argue that this is a major political misstep the politicians have yet to fully comprehended.
At minimum some 150,000 women workers are directly impacted. We can estimate 600,000 family members are affected by the continued unfair pay in addition to the wider whānau.
And then there are those wanting to enter into those essential professions of teaching, caring, social work, because they are committed to service and to community. They all matter and almost all of them vote.
Commentators have declared this pay equity debacle to be the death knell of this government. Rightly so.
There is something profoundly unprincipled in ambushing low-paid women workers, denying them even the courtesy of grandmothering existing claims, and then touting the manoeuvre as a fiscal triumph. It was a masterclass in unaccountability and ignorance.
Yet this is not an isolated offence. Time and again, the government has rewritten the rules of entitlement, extinguishing established rights without warning or redress.
The Marine and Coastal Areas Amendment Bill is an example, now approaching its second reading.
The Bill tightens the legal criteria for Māori to claim their customary rights over the foreshore and seabed and nullifies hard-won legal victories. The Bill forces iwi back into litigation under stricter criteria. Sound familiar?
Not even our most treasured native species are spared from this government’s encroachments. Under the cloak of urgency, the government has amended legislation to facilitate the killing of protected wildlife — including our beloved, iconic kiwi.
This legislation overturns a court ruling and shields developers and infrastructure projects from legal accountability in blatant disregard for both environmental stewardship and democratic process.
Democracy is not a tidy system of governance. It relies heavily on good behaviour, commitment to its principles and personal restraint in the temptation to abuse parliamentary authority.
It requires respect for the court as a constitutional check on the exercise of absolute power. For politicians it means that people you don’t like, or respect, get to have a say about the priorities you are working on.
These people will tell you all the reasons why your priorities are wrong and what you should do better.
The representative democratic system requires you to tolerate those criticisms and at least be open to change your mind for the good of the people who are affected. It is uncomfortable and frustrating. You do not have unfettered power to do whatever you want. You are accountable.
Democracy should not be an arms race between those in power and those they represent.
Yet under the coalition government, it has become exactly that — a relentless erosion of rights, transparency and accountability.
From the pay equity betrayal to the undermining of Māori property rights and environmental protections, each new legislative scheme follows the same playbook: bypass scrutiny, silence dissent and, I suggest, govern by fiat.
But as the backlash to the pay equity debacle shows, even the most calculated overreach carries consequences. A government that treats democracy as an obstacle rather than a foundation will eventually find itself outmatched.
As confining as the fence might be, it is better for everybody to learn to respect it.
If my dog could learn that, why can’t the government?
■Metiria Stanton Turei is a senior law lecturer at the University of Otago and a former Green Party MP and co-leader.
