At the end of last year I attended an event where the guest speaker was a Senior Member of Parliament.

One of the things he was excited about was how social media was going to be used by his party to enhance interactions with the New Zealand electorate in general and young people in particular. Presumably this activity was believed to boost their performance against other contenders in opinion polls and ultimately in ballot boxes. A blog I wrote at that time can be found here http://bit.ly/1v93UZp.

So what’s the current state of play about how political parties are using social media to drive awareness of themselves and their policies?

While there’s a lot of noise, including some coming from song writers penning catchy songs about political leaders, most of the social media chatter about the election is coming from “professional” bloggers and people wedded to a particular political party, rather than from the parties themselves. Some of this is entertaining or informative. Some is born of distrust or hatred. Some is tedious.

Is any of this making a difference? Do potential voters believe that political parties are interested in their views, whether through social media or any other channels? Not by my assessment of what I’m reading and observing online.

If data from New Zealand’s 2011 general election is to be believed, the biggest slice of registered voters are those who choose not to vote at all – about one third of the pie.

“Young” people are probably more attracted to non-voting than they are to the policies of any political party. Analysis by Horizon Research in June 2014 showed that a disproportionately large number of younger voters are unlikely to vote at this year’s general election. Of those aged 18 to 24, just 65.6% said they will vote, compared with 72% of the general voting population.

But how many of these targeted 18-to-24s follow political blogs or read any political commentary online? I suspect very few. Statistics NZ analyses online media usage, their latest date was collected in 2012.

This shows that the 15-24s like online music, movies and games. They out-represent all other age groups online for everything except reading. Some of that interaction will involve social media discussions.

Political leadership should be focused on effectively shaping community discussion around issues that are important to those communities. The absence of effective shaping and lack of leadership can be observed in many online discussion forums – particularly online newspaper comments sections which produce more heat than light. Most people have very finely tuned bullshit receptors and know what material they should be interested in and what is just entertainment or drivel.

A wise person once said “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” Interactions between political parties and voters is no different. Even new arrivals, such as the Internet/Mana Party don’t appear to have any technological silver bullets that strike to the hearts and minds of young people or any other categories of voters. Internet/Mana has turned off the comments facility on its YouTube posts, presumably to save time interacting with those.

I suspect that is because it is the natural state of politicians to talk, rather than to listen, and to preach rather than to engage.

This time each year New Zealand’s 78 local councils are engaged in annual or long-term plan discussions with their communities. These discussions are intended to focus on ratifying council plans, priorities and related expenditure that shape the size of the taxes levied on ratepayers as rates and other targeted costs for specific council services.

While the purpose and nature of these discussions is known to most contributors, councils often receive submissions that have nothing to do with matters relating to the annual plan. A classic example of such a matter is whether or not fluoride should be added to potable water delivered through a council’s water supply infrastructure.

For a small number of New Zealanders this is an extremely contentious matter. However many others are comfortable with the dental health benefits associated with fluoride and with the assurances provided by the Medical Officer of Health and other reputable agencies.

That said, the anti-fluoride movement has enjoyed some successes in recent years, forcing the removal of added fluoride from drinking water in several towns and cities. These decisions to support the anti-fluoride movement were made by councillors, sometimes with little reference to medical science and often with little discussion with the wider affected community. Hamilton City’s decision to remove fluoride from that city’s drinking water is a good example, where a subsequent referendum on this matter showed that there was overwhelming support for fluoride to be included.

Annual plan submissions are usually the entry point for influencing council decisions on fluoride, probably because for many people this is the only channel they see as being available to express concern about what a council does. But that’s not the best way of handling matters like this, the related costs can be high for a council’s bureaucracy, and the anti-fluoriders have probably figured that they can grind councils down by continually using the annual plan channel.

Some councillors are feeling exposed and there is a growing mood that fluoridisation of drinking water is a decision that should be made by the Ministry of Health, rather than by individual councils.

I think that is the wrong way of looking at this particular issue. Left to the council annual plan submissions process, this matter will reappear annually. That is just silly.

Any decision about fluoridisation needs to be made once, whether that’s on a national or local basis, and decoupled from annual council planning.

It’s an issue that should be taken to affected communities and their opinions sought. Community members should consider the evidence provided by scientists, medical experts and those who believe that adding fluoride to drinking water is a risky, toxic practice. Affected communities should be given the authority to make that decision, to be endorsed by councillors. That discussion could also include a timeframe for revisiting the decision made, if the affected community believed that to be necessary.

Councillors are supposed to be representative of their community’s views and should not be put into positions where they can be bullied by interest groups. Being representative does not prevent councillors delegating decision making to communities on certain matters, particularly those involving high levels of emotion, as long as a robust, inclusive process is used.

The Ministry of Health could take charge of this matter, but ultimately this is a decision that affects individual communities, and what better way is there for those communities to determine their desired future than through their council.