Open, direct is best

A LITTLE bit of transparency and accountability never does much harm.

Our politicians across levels of government need to embrace openness in order to reassure a disenchanted public.

Which is why we welcome two quite different developments in our politics — one at council level, the other

sW federally.

The first is the move to make council candidates at this year’s election disclose party and other affiliations.

As we inch toward our council election later this year, we also inch toward the unwelcome funny business that can accompany these events: feeder or dummy candidates, fake independents and secret party members.

The more information the voters have the better.

The other is the arrival of a date for High Court hearings on the dual nationality fiasco gripping Canberra.

This fiasco has played out like a demolition in slow motion.

Its victims were initially Greens MPs and so the political mainstream sat back and enjoyed the spectacle. Because it was the Greens no one seemed to care for the broader principle of MPs being ejected over a technicality. But now the full havoc the dual national affair might wreak on the Parliament is apparent with the Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce revealed as a secret Kiwi and the Opposition Leader Bill Shorten refusing to release his own relevant papers.

This is all tremendously silly and deadly serious at the same time. No one believes these are sleeper agents for dangerous foreign powers.

This leads some to say the whole thing should be ignored.

But at base this is a Constitutional matter and that excellent document provides the basis for our functioning system.

The High Court is likely to interpret the Constitution on this matter in a practical way.

(If they don’t the thread they pull could unravel more than the current Parliament.)

And some sort of certainty on this matter will give all sides of politics some oxygen to get back to what should be occupying their attention: working to improve the lot of the public.