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.
9 thoughts on “Testing MMP”
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Even though I never fully “got” your government’s structure, I have always been in admiration of a system that isn’t a winner takes all, or most all, like my fine nation (best damn country in the world!).
But the fact that you are a wee nation and can even TALK about this subject is crazy to me…..imagine bringing a major reform to the political system that we need such as getting rid of the electoral system! Years. years……
My biggest problems with mmp are easilly fixable, but seem to have been utterly mishandled. The first is the ability of an mp elected as a member of a list to switch parties (or become “independent”) and retain their seat, which is an obvious subversion of democracy. Fortunately this has never been a significant enough problem to actually cause any problems in the way things are run.
The second seemed less worrying to me in theory but has caused more problems in practice: the “5% unless you get an electorate mp in which case others get dragged in with you” thing. If I need to state the problems with this one, I’m obviously on the wrong blog.
Fix those, and I’ll be perfectly happy with mmp. Nobody’s actually going to, but even so it’s still vastly preferable to the old two-horse race.
If this referendum goes ahead, it will be an interesting test of whether the local media can ever be responsible to anyone other than their own shareholders in how the present information to the public. I have no confidence in them whatsoever and wish we had an electoral system for news editors.
With things the way they are (polls are showing National more popular than at election time) I’m inclined to suspect there is a sufficient number of ignorant voters that a change back to FPP is quite possible.
Yep, I just called National voters “ignorant”.
We’re all going to die. *glooom*
I don’t reckon we’re gonna head back to FPP. I think there’s a lot of moneyed interests that would love for that to happen, but I just can’t see it.
‘gator: yeah man. Reform of the electoral system is the #1 change needed in the USA. Start with the electoral college at the top and the voting machines at the bottom, and meet in the middle…
I’d like to lower the 5% threshold, for sure. As much as I dislike both NZ First and Act, the result of the last election was just silly, with NZF being totally out even though they had a higher popular vote than Act.
I find it pretty hard to get enthused about MMP, except inasmuch as it’s better than FPP. Representative democracy as we have it is not representational in any meaningful way: as soon as I care about two issues that are not shared by a person or party I can vote for, I am not represented adequately – and I care about far more than two issues. If a party or MP does something I disapprove of, apparently my recourse is to not vote for them – but if the other choices are worse on more issues, what do I do?
The really, really poor answer to that is “run for parliament yourself”. It’s poor because it’s an admission that representational democracy doesn’t work: I would be running to represent no-one but myself, except by chance, and that’s not representational democracy, that’s radical democracy with all of the disadvantages and none of the advantages (I’d have to be elected in order to be represented).
Personally, I also think there are far greater, systemic problems than the particular system we use to put people who want power in positions of power.
It has been concerning how National seems to be doing well in the polls, but the person on the street is still bitching about them almost as much as they were about Labour.
What a lot of people don’t realise about MMP is that it keeps all the crazy laws in check. Yes, you heard me right. The structure of the current system means that, for the most part, the only laws that pass are the ones that the majority of the country actually cares for.
There are always unique cases, but for the most part only the reasonable laws are likely to pass.
What those “ignorant” people forget is that under the old system – the government was free to do whatever it damn well pleased for the most part. Referendum’s be damned. Of course they could be out the next election year – but the period between would usually be freaking AWFUL.
Now, if you have a government that you don’t like in power – it is bearable until the next election. Heck Labour didn’t get ousted because of any hardship in NZ. They got ousted because people were *bored* or had issue with minor laws that didn’t even effect them.
It reminds me of the Auckland Mayoral elections – it is a known case that the position of Auckland Mayor is seen by the electorate as a bit of a joke. Which is bizarre as the position is considerably influential. However voters in Auckland were asked “why did you vote John Banks?” and the common answer was “because he’s such a character.”
I know I’m kind of ranting here – but I do think that a move away from MMP would be a major step back for this country. I don’t know whether NZ is becoming more conservative or whether the conservatives are now making a lot of noise because they have finally made some headway. But I’m not comfortable with the degree of manipulative and ignorant politics that has been rising to the surface.
The only thing I take comfort in is that John Key does appear to be a moderate guy and will likely tread carefully.
Conan
Morgue,
let’s be clear here, people are represented by local MPs. That’s not to say they can get rid of them as easily as they could under FPP, but there are still electorates and people are still represented by local MPs.
I think the line that worries me the most here, and it is of course the most dramatic one and therefore likely the one the media are going to pick up on is that the minor parties hold the major parties to ransom, even if that isn’t true.
The issue here is that people are not educated about the point of Parliament and the process of creating law. They just hear the politicians being mouth pieces for whatever band wagon they’re on at the moment.
I am convinced that under MMP, the quality of the laws that are created are better, and this is as a result of the broader representation we now have in Parliament. Just because a party or parties are in the Executive does not mean that the Executive always has to rely on its supporting parties to get legislation through. They can now work with other parties in the house (that represent other interests) to get the legislation through. This process in my opinion invariably has the effect of making the legislation more robust. And, at the end of the day, that is probably the primary purpose of Parliament. To legislate. In my lifetime New Zealand had a situation where interest rates were out of control, the currency was not floating we had a Prime Minister who was also the Minister of Finance and had complete control of the Executive and Parliament, the country ended up in tremendous debt, on the verge of bankruptcy and we were thinking big.
New Zealand can never go back to that.
All: you give me much to ponder. But I should be working, so I’m just gonna look at the seagull a few more times. (But I promise I shall ponder later!)