Parties win power on a set of promises. Then Parliament votes — week after week, on hundreds of bills you never get a say on. By the next election the record is buried under a fresh set of promises, and almost no one is held to what we actually wanted. This is the part of democracy that goes unwatched. So we built a place to watch it.
It runs as a loop — and accountability leaks out of it at every turn:
The system isn't broken at any one step. It's that no one closes the loop. You consent to a manifesto, not to the thousand votes that follow it — and by the time you vote again, the record has been recast as a scorecard and papered over with new pledges.
In late 2024 the Treaty Principles Bill drew the largest public response to any bill in this Parliament's history. New Zealanders showed up in numbers never seen before — and the machinery simply could not take it all in.
Officials described the system as "groaning… under the weight of hundreds of thousands of submissions." — Principal Clerk, on the Treaty Principles Bill process (RNZ, Feb 2025)
And it wasn't a one-off. Months later, about 159,000 people made submissions on the Regulatory Standards Bill, with 98.7% opposed — and the select committee sent it onwards regardless of those 159,000 voices. It has since passed into law.
This isn't about one bill, or one side of politics. It's the opposite: bills of every stripe pass every week with a tiny fraction of that scrutiny, and many skip the select-committee stage — and public submissions — entirely, under urgency. When even a record-shattering turnout can't all be heard, the everyday votes happen with almost no one watching at all.
If we're honest, most of us never really decided where we stand — bill by bill. We inherited a side, or we got comfortable with one. Three quiet habits do most of the damage:
None of that makes you a bad citizen — it makes you human. But it means our vote can drift a long way from what we'd actually choose, issue by issue. This tool sets the party colours aside. You judge each bill on its merits, in plain English — then see how that lines up with how MPs actually voted. Some of the matches will surprise you.
It's our country. Our democracy.
It's time we put accountability back into it.
This tool can't replace Parliament, and it isn't a referendum. What it can do is give every New Zealander a standing, structured place to register where they stand — on every bill, in plain English — and then show, bill by bill, how their representatives actually voted. Not the promise. Not the scorecard. The record.
One person, one place, one running tally of where the country actually sits. That's the loop, closed — by you.
Sources — Treaty Principles Bill: Justice Committee final report · Parliament press release · RNZ — "the summer of 300,000 submissions" · NZ Herald. Regulatory Standards Bill: Te Ao Māori News. Figures are written-submission counts as recorded by the select committees; the record figure was reported as "more than 307,000 lodged" with the final verified total still being confirmed at the time of reporting.