Stuff: Ardern's govt has failed to deliver meaningful gains in growing trust
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In Jacinda Ardern’s rightly lauded Harvard speech last week, the best line came when she spoke of the need “to ensure [that] difference, the space where perspectives, experiences and debate give rise to understanding and compromise, doesn’t instead become division – the place of entrenchment, where dialogue departs, solutions shatter and a crevice between us becomes so deep that no-one dares cross to the other side”.
The rhetoric was impressive, the sentiment commendable, the analysis accurate. In particular, the prime minister drew our attention once again to the deep irresponsibility of social media and the algorithms that promote the most extreme content, pushing viewers towards division, not difference.
Yet for all that, the address had at least one major defect. It’s not just that the prime minister was vague as to how those algorithms could be improved, or that her much-touted Christchurch Call has only slightly amended an internet still heaving with hate speech. The regulation of global social media giants, after all, is not something she controls.
More bothersome is what is happening in Ardern’s own backyard. Or rather, not happening. One of her speech’s other themes was trust: the foundations of a strong democracy, she noted, include trust in institutions, experts and government – something that “can be built up over decades but torn down in mere years”.
What, though, has Labour done to substantively enhance trust in government? The prime minister’s own leadership has, I think, been largely positive for democracy, never more so than when she embraced kindness, and eschewed hate, following the Christchurch mosque attacks. But that is a product of her own style and personality, and will depart with her when she leaves politics.
The deeper question is whether Ardern has changed anything in the structure of government that will outlast her time in Parliament; whether there is any enduring and substantial alteration in public processes. Sadly, I think there is not.
One can point to noticeable if minor improvements. Far more Cabinet papers are published (something that would be unfathomable in many other countries), and ministerial diaries likewise. This allows us to better understand how the government makes its calls and who influences its politicians.
Public Service Minister Chris Hipkins says his fellow ministers front up to select committees far more than their National predecessors did. The promised creation of a register of the true owners of New Zealand companies will also enhance trust in public life.
It’s not enough, though. Distrust in government – or indeed anything else – may not be as bad here as in, say, the United States. There may be no crisis. But we cannot be complacent, given the democratic deficits that do exist, and the growing attempts to instil mistrust, manifested most obviously by the parliamentary grounds occupiers.
According to journalists, governmental abuses of the Official Information Act – delaying responses to questions, redacting information and other subterfuges – are as bad as ever. Statistics claiming to show more requests are answered on time may simply reflect the fact that officials have been asking for more extensions.
And all this pertains to just one half of the relationship between the governors and the governed: the dissemination of data from the former to the latter. More important, probably, is what runs the other way – the ability of the public to become involved in shaping the political decisions that affect them.
A strong democracy may, as Ardern said in her speech, rely on “debate and dialogue”, but it depends equally on political participation. If we are to build trust in government, that government needs to be much more open and responsive to citizens’ input.
This would mean, at a minimum, involving citizens more in designing the services they use, so that things happen with them rather than to them. Beneficiaries and frontline Work and Income staff should be able to co-design the way that welfare offices work, rather than having these things handed down from on high.
This would also mean adapting overseas innovations like crowdsourced legislation, in which ordinary individuals work together to suggest laws and even write new constitutions. Or citizens’ assemblies, in which a demographically representative group of people is selected to discuss a major issue and make recommendations that set or influence policy. Or community-led budgeting, in which residents hold public meetings to debate, and then directly allocate, part of a city’s infrastructure budget.
All these things are happening, right now, in other countries. They work, they deliver better services and they build trust. They provide spaces for citizens with very different perspectives to encounter each other, to listen and learn, and to find consensus.
Yet Labour had made no noticeable steps in this direction before the pandemic, and there are few signs of greater impetus now. If the prime minister wants to leave a substantive legacy, that needs to change.