In a weekend of depressing news, the discovery that around 1 million New Zealanders failed to cast a vote on Saturday really takes the cake, no matter your political persuasion. So many attempts have been made to get to the bottom of voter apathy and yet no single explanation seem capable of shedding light on the phenomenon. Certainly in this election it can be assumed that the surety of National’s success and Labour’s demise kept some people away, thinking their vote would make little difference either way.

I must also not be alone in despairing at the almost complete lack of political coverage during the Ruby World Cup, save for the odd scandal or new polling data. From memory it wasn’t until the Wednesday following the nail-biting final that a combination of grinning jocks and slippery handshakes disappeared from the front page news, to be replaced by the sudden realisation that the election was a mere six weeks away. Is the turnout so surprising when so few could muster the energy to talk politics over the deafening roar of rugby fever?

Young people have come under even more fire for their particularly dismal turnout, an outcome that the Electoral Commission sought to avoid with its campaign to highlight the low enrolment rate of 18-24 year olds. In 2005 the Commission released a research document on young peoples engagement in political life, finding that a combination of disengagement, naivete, and distrust prevented young non-voters from making an effort. While there is not much to be done about the percentage who thought harder about the weekend than they did about their future, the dismaying revelations that many of those surveyed felt that making no choice was better than making the wrong one (or an ill-informed one) speaks to the scale of the problem.

Veteran commentator Brian Edwards had a thing or two to say on the subject earlier in the election cycle, making a strong case for the relationship between apathy and the glaring lack of civics education in the New Zealand high school curriculum . Having tutored first year politics, I can attest to the astonishing lack of knowledge that many of my fresh-out-of-school students displayed about elections, parliament and the whole democratic shebang. Many were eager to learn but it was certainly an uphill battle for those coming from a position of surprising ignorance. For the vast majority who don’t take a path through law or politics, that basic political education may never arrive. This year’s double whammy election choice (parliamentary and electoral system) may have been the final straw for those who feel overwhelmed by the many choices before them, and perhaps we can’t blame them.

Even as someone who was always going to vote, some of the commentary on this years electoral contests was off-putting to the point of nausea. Specifically, the ‘Battles’ between so-called blokes (John Key and Phil Goff) and babes (Jacinda Ardern and Nikki Kaye, in Auckland Central). It’s almost too depressing to dissect. Key and Goff’s attempts to ‘man up’ – recalling fist fights, revealing an unlikely love of Tui, claiming superior navigation skills -
merely reveal the tragic absurdity of the bloke stereotype. As Marianne Bevan over at Eleven Hours Ahead pointed out, these ‘real men’ which our would be PM’s are desperately trying to mimic never really existed. Moreover, their attempts to buy into this outdated cultural trope serve only to entrench the most harmful stereotypes for men that do linger- be strong, be the everyman, don’t think too hard about anything. Or else. It is difficult to back up my suspicion that few, if any, New Zealanders respond well to this kind of targeted pandering. Even if they did, there is zero justification on the part of both the leaders and the media for promoting the bullshit values that bloke culture perpetuates, at the expense of a legitimate discussion on real challenges that face the nation.

On the flipside, Nikki Kaye and Jacinda Ardern seem to be doing their best to rise above the tidal wave of insulting references to babes, jelly wresting and their martial status’ that have featured so prominently in coverage of their electorate. One particularly appalling article by Johnathon Milne at the Listener insisted their good grooming obviously meant they were vying to out-babe each other, and the only reason he was writing the article (and why we read it) was because the candidates were both young and attractive. And we wonder why female candidates still only make up 33% of Parliament?

Dodgy attempts to generate political controversy are not new. Nor, obviously, are double standards: me strong, you sexy. But let’s not pretend that by accepting shitty reporting and lazy stereotyping we aren’t doing more and more to turn off young people (and old, for that matter) from a crucial process that does so little to include them as is.

Local elections are famed for managing to spur even fewer voters than the big one every four years. Nonetheless, the election of Celia Wade Brown to the position of Mayor in 2010 was a significant gesture from the citizens of Wellington. Wade Brown shares a hairstyle but little else with departing Mayor Prendergast, who, rightly or wrongly, was judged by many pro-Celia voters  as erring too often on the side of business, and not the sustainable kind. Wade-Brown is a dedicated Greenie, a believer in better public transport, “vibrant communities” and economic well-being. A freeranger in spirit.

It seems strange, therefore, that under her watch, Wellington is likely to face the unpleasant situation of choosing between a variety of stupid propositions to improve traffic flow around the Basin/Mt Vic/Airport corridor. Next month we will get to ‘choose’ between a flyover that follows the curves of the Basin Reserve, or one which diverges slightly before joining up with the Mount Victoria Tunnel. A flyover in a city of 195,000 people, a city whose central can be crossed from one end to the other on foot in about an hour.

Public opposition to the flyover, and various other proposals including a second Mt Victoria Tunnel and a four lane road to the airport, was reportedly at 78% in 2008. There is little evidence that the public has changed it’s mind since. It feels particularly perverse given the current Mayor’s dedication to cycling, her preferred mode of transport even when heading to her own press conferences. We can afford to create a second tunnel, but there isn’t a cycling lane from Newtown to the City? We are used to myopic policy concerning climate change related issues in this country, but ‘better’ roading is nowhere near as connected to our economic performance as agriculture. Who are they trying to please?

Mostly, this seems to be another example this government’s backward approach to forward thinking in transport. As Rod Oram pointed out in a  Sunday Star Times weekend column, the government has gone to extreme lengths to undermine Auckland Council’s plans to extend railways in the central city, claiming that existing road, parking, and bus infrastructure can easily expand without hiccups until 2040. The Council and it’s consultants reckon that “an Auckland population of 2.2 million would result in another 500,000 vehicles if we stick to our existing road-dominant investment in transport”. No one knows where those cars would go.

None of this is exactly surprising. The central government was diagnose a long time ago with an inability to calculate the difference between long and short term gain. As these plans are rolled out piece by piece across different parts of the country it’s difficult to unite various affected groups under a concerted effort.

One group of concerned citizens, however, have eschewed the standard action plan and have resorted to some pretty Trickster-ish behaviour in order to draw attention to the idiocy of these plans. The Economic Illiteracy Group, who attribute most terrible decision making to stupidity not conspiracy, have taken it upon themselves to educate our elected officials, chiefly by supplying handy calculators and My First Jumbo Book of Numbers. The nine councilors who forced a meeting behind Mayor Wade Browns back to support the roading project received maths books and calculators which, it was hoped, would help them to understand basic cost-benefit analyses and to learn “what that pesky `negative’ sign means”. The letter also warns that “it’s never good to look like a dick in public. So avoid making stupid statements about how roads are an investment in the future or how they create jobs, because all the people who’ve already read the book and mastered the calculator will think you’re a moron.”  Ian McKinnon called the anonymous letters “an attack on the democratic process”, a somewhat hyperbolic representation of a process involving a mere 44% of the local population.

Sometimes the best way of speaking truth to power is to make fun of it. It might not be mature, it might not always provoke the intended reaction, but it can get people talking.

an image of the flyover by the campaign prepared by the save the basin reserve campaign.