Beware of the populist

Referendums sound like a direct form of democracy: the people decide what will happen. In fact, they are wide open to abuse by populist politicians. Winston Peters’ calls for referendums on the Maori seats and the size of Parliament are a perfect illustration.

Peters’ binding referendum on the Maori seats would presumably win a majority of votes. That, after all, is one of the reasons the politician is pushing it: he’s hoping to curry favour with the majority.

But this would very probably clash with the wishes of the Maori minority. In that case, the referendum would pit one democratic principle – majority rule – against another, which is the need to safeguard the rights of minorities.

Populist politicians are always happy to do this. They seek popular support and don’t care about minority rights, and they say what they are doing is democratic.

They are happy to promote the tyranny of the majority. But this is not a democratic way of doing things.

Peters argues that the seats are ‘‘tokenism’’ and that they somehow divert attention from the real Maori issues of housing, poverty, education and so on. But many Maori will disagree. So the question is: who decides? The Pakeha majority or the ethnic minority?

This has already led to trouble with Peters’ new star, Shane Jones, who not long ago said that Maori should decide the future of the seats. There has been some rapid shuffling and rewriting history to smooth over the conflict between the two.

Presumably other Maori caucus members disagree with their leader too, but they are keeping quiet.

The royal commission on the electoral system in 1986 said the Maori seats would no longer be needed under MMP. And it’s true that under MMP the number of Maori MPs has greatly increased.

In the current Parliament, for example, 21 per cent of MPs identify as Maori, while Maori make up 15 per cent of the population. But this ‘‘over-representation’’, if that is what it is, does no harm. Maori don’t vote as a bloc on anything.

White men have long been over-represented in parliament. Nobody is suggesting they should lose some of their rights as a result.

Peters’ campaign to shrink the size of Parliament, meanwhile, represents another abuse of the referendum. In this case, he knows that there will be an overwhelming majority in support: it’s the equivalent of offering sweets to children.

The problem is that there is almost no end to the voters’ loathing of politicians. If Peters had suggested halving the size of Parliament, he would probably get a majority.

The trouble with shrinking Parliament is that there are already barely enough MPs to make the select committee system work. And the talent pool from which the Cabinet is chosen is shallow even with 120 MPs.

In other words, the urge to punish politicians and cut their numbers collides with the needs of rational government and effective parliamentary democracy.

As always, the populist seeks to scratch a widespread itch and pays no heed to the other less popular principle.