As an MP Sir Geoffrey Palmer had a huge impact on the interlocking shapes of government and parliament. The great reformer is still brimming with ideas for improvement.
Sir Geoffrey Palmer resigned as New Zealand's Prime Minister 33 years ago but never stopped working.
As an MP he was significantly responsible for modernising both Parliament and government, but he still ponders tweaks to improve New Zealand politics and democracy.
These days he does that thinking, not from the Beehive's top floor, but from his office across the road in New Zealand's (arguably) top law school.
Listen to the audio podcast interview with Sir Geoffrey Palmer.
From here he watches what works well, and what fails. He still publishes at a high tempo, demonstrating that eight decades haven't diminished his energy, intellect or passion.
As any other citizen can, Sir Geoffrey appeared late last year to make a submission to Parliament's Standing Orders Committee when it met to consider changing Parliament's rules. Palmer's suggestions were bold. Bolder than were likely to be taken up. He was looking for changes that would insulate Parliament from new and urgent threats.
I was fascinated, and asked if we could meet so that I could hear more about what he would do, if he ran the circus.
Perils to democracy
Palmer sees a number of threats that have "weakened the prospects for democracy", and he can see that we can't take democracy's continuance for granted.
"Rot and decay can easily set in... you only have to look at places like Hungary... there are many more dictatorships than there used to be. Populism is very rampant, and populism really stems from authoritarianism, and authoritarian populism is a sort of dangerous competitor to democracy these days. The international research shows that democracy is not nearly as fashionable as it was."
Democracy is very fragile, he says. "It's fragile, because democratic societies operate on openness. They operate on free speech, and that allows their opponents to use it against them."
"The development of social media has made the conduct of democratic government greatly more difficult." There are "many diverse voices, but enormous confusion, and a great tendency towards conspiracy theories. None of those things are helpful if you're going to have a stable democracy."
He points to the disasters of Trump and Brexit and the current poor state of politics in the UK and US as troubling for us who have often looked to them as role models.
"The lessons you can learn from them at the moment are bad lessons."…