July 26, 2023
NZ politicians are selected by their party and elected by us, not by a global cabal of "them". Quite simple really, but gird your loins for a long explanation of this conspiratorial thought-terminating cliche and why it's nearly impossible for it to be true.
Some people claim our politicians are “selected not elected.” The implication is that sinister forces control who forms our government, through various kinds of shady manipulation.
To start with, control of who runs for Parliament still rests with parties and their members. And the election process itself is prescribed by law and run by the Electoral Commission in a transparent way, with oversight from parties and detailed reporting.
This post was hard to write, mostly because people who think New Zealand’s democracy is a sham don’t usually have a clear account of how they think it works. It’s pretty vibes-based. So what follows is partly just a refresher on how it all works.
We have started seeing the phrase “selected not elected” doing the rounds. It needs a lot of unpacking. It’s a thought-terminating cliché, a phrase designed to shut down critical thinking before it can get started. Like “all government is corrupt” or “elections are rigged” it’s meant to discourage and disengage, not to explain. An interesting aspect of the phrase “selected not elected” is it doesn’t actually say who does the selecting, leaving it open to the listener to insert their favourite villain.
Different people offer different answers. For some people it’s billionaires. Or a foreign power. Or maybe old favourites, The Jews. Explanations are generally contradictory, but they try to appeal to a sense that our election results ought to be better or at least somehow markedly different than they are. Why aren’t the right people winning? Maybe this is why. (Again, who the Right-People-Who-Would-Be-In-Charge-If-Things-Were-Fair are differs from one account to another).
Whoever they are, if they want to get their own stooges in, they have a lot of work to do. To understand that work, we need to look at how a person makes it into Parliament and then government.
New Zealand uses the “Mixed member proportional” system to elect its Parliament. There’s a pretty good explanation of how it works on Parliament’s website:
Different parties have different rules for the selection process, which you can check in their party constitutions. But most parties, and all New Zealand’s mainstream parties, have a process that involves some combination of members voting and elected party officials selecting the candidate. All registered party rules can be found here.
You don’t even need to be affiliated with a party to be a candidate for an electorate. You can run as an independent if you want, and some people do.
So once Parliament is elected, the next bit is forming a government out of the elected MPs. Generally parties negotiate with each other to try to put together a coalition that will have a majority of votes. But occasionally (like our last election in 2020) a party will have a majority in its own right.
The prime minister will be the party leader who can convince the governor-general that their party, or a coalition of parties they have put together, can win a confidence vote in Parliament. Party leaders again are chosen through processes in their parties, generally some combination of member votes and MP caucus votes. Party constitutions specify how parties choose candidates, leaders and lists, and can be found here.
To recap the important bits here: anyone can be a candidate, in their own right, or through being chosen by their party. Party leaders are chosen by their parties. Getting into government – being part of the majority bloc, a cabinet minister, or even prime minister – all hinges on winning within your party (if like most candidates you’re not an independent) and then winning the most votes from the public. There are many people involved at every level. (See our earlier pieces on how elections are run to get a sense of it).
One thing to note about “selection” stories is that they’re somehow always right. The conspiracy explains everything that has happened so far. And no matter what the result of the next election, it’s what “they” wanted. Maybe every candidate and party is corrupt? That would imply a lot of people are in on the conspiracy, yet not one of them is talking. Especially odd since it’s pretty easy to join a party, go to conferences, and participate as a member.
Despite all that, there is a grain of truth lurking in here. Some people do see little difference between parties, or believe that the range of political views that is represented in Parliament is narrow. There’s also a legitimate debate about media coverage of politics and politicians: is it biased? Does it focus too much on personalities and not enough on policies? Is political advertising and election spending too regulated, or not regulated enough? Political scientists have good explanations about how parties appeal to the voting public and why their views might converge in pursuit of “median voters” Likewise media theorists can explain at length about the feedback loops between media responding to and creating their audiences, the constraints that journalists work under and how editorial choices get made. As with all complicated explanations for complicated problems, it might be simpler to go for the conspiracy theory that explains everything: it’s them.
But it’s pretty clear how people get to run and how they are (or are not) elected: old-fashioned politics at the low level of party organisations, and on the big stage of general election campaigns and Parliament.
The differences between New Zealand’s elections and the United States are vast. Some people in New Zealand are recycling America’s false “stolen election” conspiracy theories here when it just doesn’t make sense.
Co-governance between Māori and the Crown has a long history in this country. So why has it been turned into an election issue for conspiracy theorist parties and an apocalyptic vision by an end-times preacher?
All of the policies demanded by parties seeking the “freedom movement” vote are already government policy, except stopping the vaccine rollout. So why are they calling for that and why do they want an “independent inquiry”?