Governance by press release

A miscellany of interesting tidbits emerges in comments to the last post. Pip asks if we've seen The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer. We hadn't, but judging by the plot summary we'll be asking the local video store if they stock it, or buying a copy on ebay:

Rimmer... believes the key to success is to ask the right questions. So he gets a job with an advertising agency [and] bombards England with questions. His ingenious system enables him to predict the outcome of a general election. So accomplished is Rimmer at asking questions that he finds his future wife through market research. To insure that he gets the right answers, Rimmer is not above manipulating the polls... Then he enters politics. In a short time, he gets himself elected to Parliament, becomes a cabinet minister and eventually moves into Ten Downing Street as prime minister after pushing the incumbent prime minister off an oil platform. By this time, every eligible voter in Britain can cast ballots with a television remote control. Alas, the electorate tires of the endless referendum questions that they must answer as part of their daily routine. This development serves only to catapult Rimmer to further success, for the people decide to place all decisions in his hands as dictator of England...

A lesson there for us all, as they say. A lesson too in this recap of recent history by an anonymous commenter:

Laws did not win through the back door - let's dispense with this myth now shall we? He won 43% of the vote and was upfront and obvious his whole campaign. He got 10 of 13 of his Vision candidates elected.

John Martin got 27% of the vote despite having the backing of the arts community, the church groups (who did split their votes with Chas) and the Chamber of Commerce. Mark Simmonds & Warren Ruscoe openly supported Martin's campaign - they wanted change but Laws scared them. Chas got 20% of the vote. Ray Stevens 5% and Barbara Bullock 4% (running the worst campaign ever).

Even if Chas had not stood, it would have needed ALL his votes to go to Martin - and he would have endorsed either Bullock or Stevens, probably Bullock who ran on a pro-council line. Then you have a look at all the other Laws-endorsed candidates - they took 4 of the 5 top-polling council candidates, had Leonie Brookhammer defeat a sitting councillor (Blaikie) and two well known businessmen in Rob Vinsen and Bob Walker; and then had the No 1 and No 3 candidates for the health board (Baker-Hogan & PJ Faumui).

That's the thing you have to remember about 2004 - Laws not only won the mayoralty but he had most of his candidates elected too and elected easily. Can we make a pledge to each other for 2006? We'll deal with the facts from now on. If we run away from the reality we'll under-estimate how much support the mayor really has which is the reason none of us are running in the by-election if we're honest with each other.

While some of the conclusions drawn by the commenter are arguable - who "us" are, and why anyone chooses not to stand in a by-election is really unknowable, and whether Poynter would have endorsed anyone or simply stayed out of it, for instance - the salient point here is the 2004 election wasn't, as we agreed in a comment in reply, a "hanging chad" election. There were no rigged ballot boxes. No dead people voting. No branch stacking. None of the things which can suggest a result wasn't kosher.

The problem is that while the campaign was "upfront and obvious" in terms of who was aligned with Vision (a factor that's by no means obvious in this buy-election) it was by no means obvious what the real agenda was once the Diva and his acolytes were elected, which was government in secret, with communication through spin. For example:

Finance and Administration Committee, 30 August 2005

MOTION TO REOPEN THE MEETING TO THE PUBLIC
THAT the meeting be reopened to the public and the preamble, discussion and recommendations associated with Item 9: Cooks Gardens Trust Board Finance and Governance, Item 10: Mowhanau Subdivision, Item 11: Late Item: 'River Queen' Premiere, and Item 12: Chief Executive Officer’s Report, remain confidential until all parties have either accepted the terms of the proposals or agreed to cease negotiations. The Chief Executive Officer or Committee Chairperson may then release a press report on the matter.

Aside from the subdivision, these are all matters of public (your) money and public administration. Yet it seems unlikely that the "terms of the proposals" will ever become public, since the Cooks Gardens discussions included Council involvement in the finances of the Barnes concert, and even though that event seemingly made money, there's not exactly a rush of Councillors wanting to inform us whether they took the risk of underwriting a commercial event with your money, as we suspect may have been the case.

Similarly the River Queen "Premiere": just how much is being spent, and by whom, to make Councillors look good on their trip down the red carpet, led "reluctantly" of course (he's just "too Wanganui", you know) by the Diva.

These are legitimate questions, and ratepayers have every right to know the answers - unvarnished by spin. But if they're to receive any information at all, it seems, it's to be via "press report", no doubt published verbatim and unquestioningly by the River City Press.

That's what wasn't upfront during the 2004 campaign, and no one thought to ask because that wasn't the way Wanganui had been administered up until that point. In fact, the Vision team made specific promises about accountability and integrity which haven't been met.

Just what their commitment is to truly open government is a question worth asking all the buy-election candidates. One of many.