Join the new world

My name is SledDog and I intend to run for Congress on November 25. I’m going to draw on my Canadian experience again. I know that gets a bit boring. Given that when I started in politics there Canada was a fairly well established nation state with relatively little in the way of political upheaval it may not apply directly to the New Zealand experience, still there’s something to be taken from it... and besides it’s the experience I have.

In Canada Transparency was always a big political issue. When I started members of Congress would state their voting records on the various bills put up on the Country Administration page. That was fine except that the way that the Canadian process worked, most of the important work was being done in the Congressional Forums. Bills were debated and voted on in the forums before they were posted on Country Administration so that any legitimate law that got posted would have a near unanimous vote for, while illegitimate bills – those that hadn’t received 24 hour debate and any lulz motions – were required to be voted down. Some of us felt that if you were aiming for total transparency you needed to post how you voted in those forum votes – or at least the forum votes that were open to the public. And eventually, because participation in the forums is very much a part of what we advocated some of us tried to list our contributions to various debates.

Of course Transparency didn’t just go to voting records and participation in debates, and it wasn’t only found in the in-game newspapers. It was a requirement at the start of each session that members of Congress state their conflicts of interest. This included listing the companies they controlled through their organizations, their membership in military units and/or private militias, and political parties or other groups. It was understood that you couldn’t propose a measure either in the forums or (especially) on in-game is support of an industry or group that you were involved in. You could participate in the debates, and in fact the statements of people in an industry could give insight into the impact and needs of a particular sector, but making a motion based on your political, military or business involvement was considered beyond the pale and was frequently considered grounds for voting it down.

In the interests of Transparency, I can tell you that because I was not elected to Congress last month I don’t have a political record in New Zealand to talk about. Through my Org, Toonton Enterprises, I own two companies in Canada. Canadian Airlines is a Q1 Moving Ticket Company that does not trade in the New Zealand Market. Bren Guns is a Q2 Artillery Company with four licenses including a license for New Zealand. I am a member of the NZDF – formerly of 202 Platoon (Raging Moas – in fact I came up with the name; not a huge achievement since there were very few names proposed) and now of the Second Land Group, 3rd Auckland (thanks to Darkmantle’s reorganization). I belong to no other military organizations. I am a member of the Super Sweet Sixteen Party (not that I particularly like the name, but...).

Now that I’ve engaged in my own transparency I’d like to call on Cabinet to do some of their own. The government released their budget in the forums. It’s quite openly available there but I believe that when a budget is proposed it should also be posted in-game either in a government newspaper or in a newspaper controlled by the Finance Minister. Furthermore I believe that any listing of expenditures should include a breakdown of what the money is being spent on even if specifics necessarily have to be censored. Similarly I believe that some details on income need to be posted.

Just as an example, we have something called the Ministry of Fun, under Wahoo Bob. The Ministry of Fun receives 7% of the monthly budget for current presidency. According to Wahoo Bob this money will be used for prizes and such for raffles and contests. Which is fine, except that the role that the Ministry of Fun will be playing is not necessarily readily understood by the public and certainly not the public who don’t read most of the stuff in the forums. The public has a right to know how their government is spending their taxes. Once the Ministry of Fun gets started will it be self-sustaining, or even a source of revenue for the government? After all the purpose of a raffle or lottery is to bring in more money than it pays out in prizes. The Ministry of Fun should be a constant drag on the public purse, unless there’s a very good reason for it.

The Ministry of Fun is just an example. I’m not saying that it is bad or good. What I am saying is that I don’t feel that what they’re doing is fully understood, and I think that may be the case with other ministries. Government Ministries need to be open about what they do; they need to maintain transparency to the public and the best way to reach that public is not to restrict their explanations to the forums. Because despite what some people might think, the fact that you aren’t on the forums doesn’t make you a lesser class of citizen. The money that they pay in taxes is being used just as much as that of the person who reads the forums and posts on them every day. All New Zealand citizens deserve to know where the money is going and why taxes are changing. And to respond to someone who asked why we needed a budget, that’s the answer. We need to know where the money is going and to know that it isn’t being wasted or going into someone’s pockets (which is also something that happened in Canada).