The government is

• considering merging a variety of departments,
• carving up others,
• busy shutting down big chunks of others,
• abolishing some services,
• taking control of Institutes of Technology and Polytechs away from communities,
• studying opening up national parks to mining,
• re-re-restructuring the health system,
• oh, the list goes on.

Every one of those changes is to our public service and it affects the public, yet the government is not allowing for public consultation on any of them. They can’t get away with the “we were elected on this platform” excuse or even this government’s TINA (“the recession forces us to do this”), this is straight forward exclusion of public participation.

We, both the left and the right, didn’t let Labour get away with it, why are we allowing John Key and friends to exclude us from decisions that so directly affect our lives?