Seems like there’s gonna be another referendum, this time on whether or not our wee nation should stick with its present electoral system. We currently use MMP, mixed-member proportional representation (a.k.a the Additional Member System (AMS) in the UK, says wiki). Basically, you vote for parties, not people. The seats in Parliament are divided up among the parties to match the percentage of vote they receive. There’s more to ie (e.g. you vote for people as well) but that’s the important bit.
So this referendum will ask whether we want a change. Idiot at NRT is not at all impressed with the process, BK Drinkwater is open to advice, and I’m sure all the other poli blogs will start in on it soon enough.
I have a lot of love for MMP. Under the proportional system we’ve seen the diversity of our representatives grow massively, and the rise of a tier of smaller parties to a status where they can genuinely influence policy and gain wins for their constituencies. It ain’t perfect; but it’s a darn sight better than the winner-takes-all system we used to have.
Naturally, there were entrenched interests that fought hard for the old system, when we debated the change to MMP back in the 90s. Lots of money was spent to argue that MMP would destroy democracy. Lots of carefully spun lines were added into the discourse. One of them that bothered me when I was a teenager and still bothers me now is how under MMP, MPs have no direct electoral responsibility. They weren’t elected by the people, and that means that they can do what they like because the voters can’t chuck them out at election time!
It’s an inane criticism, but that hasn’t stopped it from turning up in letters to the editor at least once a week for the last ten years. (This is probably not an exaggeration.) It’s inane because it misunderstands the very nature of representative democracy and that this ideal is better met by a proportional system than a electorate-based winner-takes-all one. Of course each MP still has a constituency – it’s the proportion of the entire nation who voted for that party! When I tick the Green box on my ballot paper it means that I want that slate of MPs in Parliament. Maybe I don’t agree with or even like all of them, but that doesn’t change the fact that my vote puts my weight behind them.
(Now, there is actually something important hiding inside this criticism. Under MMP, members are accountable not to an electorate directly, but to the party. It is the party that gets the vote; it is the party that determines the order in which people are added to the list. The party says who gets in and who gets out. There is some issue with accountability there, at least potentially. But when you look a little harder, it’s much less prevalent in practice. AFAIK the Greens, the Maori party and even Labour all have strong channels through which party membership can influence the representation they assemble. Even National has avenues through which this can play out. So accountability to the party can mean, and should mean in a healthy democracy, accountability to the party members. I can find little to get upset about there.)
This criticism is a piece of spin generated back in 1992 that has been circulating through the NZ political conversation ever since. It is based on a complete misunderstanding of democracy, as the doctors behind the spin were no doubt well aware. It has stuck around because it speaks directly to the paranoia of the reactionary – when new faces appear in politics and say things I don’t like, I want to get rid of them! The old way let me do this.The new way doesn’t!
New faces saying things I don’t like may not be representing my interests, but they’re representing someone, probably someone whose voice has not been heard in politics prior to that point. This is an improvement. It means that MMP is working.
And I don’t think that’s anything to complain about.