Mike's Minute: Has the political divide gotten worse?

I cannot recommend a piece of reading enough in the Listener, and reproduced elsewhere, on a longitudinal study that now spans 35 years and 12 elections. 

It's gripping. 

A couple thousand people each election are given dozens of questions. 

Its weakness is some of the questions are vague enough to throw up responses around things like health care and public services. We like them and we want more, no surprises there. But how much more? What if the money is wasted? 

We don’t get to know that stuff. 

The David Lange Government of 1984 blew it big time, went way too far and upset too many people. I remember it well. 

We love strong leaders. We are more socially conservative than you might think. 

The electoral system doesn't represent what we actually want, or like. We like the death penalty, yet we've never had it. 

There are two highlights for me: Labour's moves around Māori and introducing Treaty of Waitangi principles into some legislation. 

The majority of us, decades ago, didn’t want it. We don’t have the 2023 results yet, but I bet you nothing has changed. 

Which I would have thought would lead you to ask, why hasn’t it been fixed? 

It's a bad idea that's been allowed to fester and cause ongoing angst and upset for decades. 

Secondly, there are signs of increasing dissatisfaction, concern and unhappiness. The authors say it's not like the 90's. 

I remember the 90's. It was Ruth Richardson and Jenny Shipley. It was welfare reform, the mother of all Budgets, the burning of effigies on Parliament grounds. You can see the edginess these days with similar discourse and protest. 

But it's suggested political polarisation has declined over the past decade. 

Really? Do you believe that? 

I don’t. I don’t think we have ever been more divided and never been more stark in our views of the country and the world. 

Social media, distrust, fake news, polarising views and stands – I have no idea how they've concluded this. Read it and see if you disagree.  

But on most stuff, we haven't changed. The times change, the circumstances change but, broadly, we don’t. 

I'm not sure if that’s good or bad. 

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