Big Sky Thinking

Walking home yesterday, after visiting the Strangers Gallery in our New Zealand Parliament to hear my colleague Charles Chauvel make his maiden speech as a Member of Parliament, I contemplated, probably for the first time, the privilege of living in a democracy.

The e-Parliament is a democratic vision on a grand scale, big sky thinking as we say down here.

It's the sort of thing you come up with when there's absolutely nothing between you and the heavens on a starry night in the bush.

Only, apparently PON's e-Parliament was dreamed up in the confines of an English pub by Harvard's Bill Ury, but you know what I mean.

More than 800 legislators around the world and across the political spectrum, are already participating and this is set to rise in 2006.

You and I can also put in our two cents' worth The idea is to create: '...the first world institution whose members are elected by the people. It links democratic members of parliament into a global forum, combining meetings and electronic communication.

Organizations, companies, journalists and individual citizens are all invited to participate...[hey! that's you and me!]

Each parliament can be seen as a "laboratory" for solving problems that many countries have in common, and each should be able to learn from the experience of others'...and it 'contains an Ideas Bank of interesting problem-solving approaches that have been taken, or proposed, in different countries'

Log on to e-Parliament...have a go, go and have a say, say so, say something!