Last Straw

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1. Brad,

   20 May, 2008 at 10:25 am

   It should be noted that in 1993 NZ voted for a six year trial of the cur­rent sys­tem. In the sub­sequent ref­er­en­dum six years later NZ voted over­whelm­ingly against the cur­rent sys­tem. If not com­pletely against MMP def­in­itely against the num­ber of MPs in par­lia­ment. Labour chose to ignore this ref­er­en­dum & remain with the status quo. Is that demo­cracy?? There has also been glar­ing examples of glitches in the cur­rent sys­tem when a list MP was able to resign from her party & become an inde­pend­ent MP rep­res­ent­ing nobody & have her salary paid by the tax payer. The main prob­lem with the cur­rent sys­tem is there are too many MPs in par­lia­ment who were not voted in by the people but the main advant­age as you point out is every­body gets to have a say on who becomes gov­ern­ment. I don’t think we can claim how­ever that all of the best politi­cians col­lab­or­ate together to run the coun­try. There seems to be more bick­er­ing now than in any­time in his­tory with politi­cians dirty laun­dry being more import­ant than the run­ning of the country.

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2. Christiaan,

   21 May, 2008 at 9:20 am

   It should be noted that in 1993 NZ voted for a six year trial of the cur­rent system.

   We didn’t. Don’t believe me? The actual bal­lot paper is here.

   There’s also no men­tion of such a “trial” in the Elect­oral Ref­er­en­dum Act 1993, or in the Elect­oral Act. The prom­ise of a “second ref­er­en­dum” is a myth.

   What was prom­ised was that the new elect­oral sys­tem would be reviewed by Par­lia­ment, just like the old one (see s264 Elect­oral Act). It was. And there were next to no sub­mis­sions by the pub­lic. Par­lia­ment decided that it was fine, and that hav­ing bet­ter rep­res­ent­a­tion, a weakened exec­ut­ive, and a legis­lature that looked a lot more like New Zea­l­and were Good Things.

   In the sub­sequent ref­er­en­dum six years later NZ voted over­whelm­ingly against the cur­rent sys­tem. If not com­pletely against MMP def­in­itely against the num­ber of MPs in par­lia­ment. Labour chose to ignore this ref­er­en­dum & remain with the status quo. Is that democracy??

   The “sub­sequent ref­er­en­dum” was noth­ing to do with MMP, but organ­ised seper­ately under the Cit­izens Ini­ti­ated Ref­er­enda Act 1992 by grumpy old revanchists. Yes, it passed. Given the pop­ular­ity of MPs, that’s unsur­pris­ing (really, the ques­tion was like ask­ing whether you wanted 120 or 99 pedo­philes stalk­ing the coun­try. Who wouldn’t vote for 99?). Yes, Par­lia­ment ignored it — such ref­er­enda aren’t bind­ing after all. For an explan­a­tion of why, I sug­gest read­ing Rod Donald’s argu­ment.

   But you could check out any of the 12 sub­mis­sions against Bar­bara Stewart’s Elect­oral (Reduc­tion in Num­ber of Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment) Amend­ment Bill. Here’s one from No Right Turn. Of par­tic­u­lar note being this item 9: “In short, the goal of a reduc­tion in the num­ber of MPs can­not be achieved without fatally com­prom­ising MMP. While some would point out that a smal­ler House was approved by an indic­at­ive ref­er­en­dum in 1999, it is worth remem­ber­ing that the move to a pro­por­tional sys­tem was also approved by a far more rig­or­ous and bind­ing ref­er­en­dum pro­cess in 1992 and 1993. It would be inap­pro­pri­ate to over­turn the res­ults of that ref­er­en­dum without a sim­il­arly rig­or­ous pro­cess which ensured that the elect­or­ate was fully informed of the consequences.”

   Or you could read the (short) Report of the Justice and Elect­oral Com­mit­tee itself.

   My favour­ite reason is the reduc­tion of the power of the exec­ut­ive, as explained by No Right Turn: “A second reason for oppos­ing this bill is that it would undo all the pro­gress that has been made in redu­cing the power of the exec­ut­ive. Since the shift to MMP we’ve seen a growth in the power of select com­mit­tees, who now actu­ally look at legis­la­tion rather than merely rub­ber­stamp­ing it, and even launch their own inquir­ies against the wishes of the gov­ern­ment. This is essen­tially a func­tion of the size of the House — there are enough back­bench­ers to pay proper atten­tion to the job — and a smal­ler House would mean a lot less effort in this area. And that, IMHO, would make our demo­cracy very much the poorer.”

   Fur­ther­more, if New Zea­l­and had kept the former first past the post elect­oral sys­tem, based on pop­u­la­tion, there would be some­thing like 112 – 113 seats by now and about 119 by 2011.

   There has also been glar­ing examples of glitches in the cur­rent sys­tem when a list MP was able to resign from her party & become an inde­pend­ent MP rep­res­ent­ing nobody & have her salary paid by the tax payer.

   MP’s salar­ies are always paid by the tax­payer, no mat­ter what party they belong to. And MP’s have always been able to change parties or become inde­pend­ent. It was actu­ally fairly fre­quent in the early C20th, when party bonds were weaker.

   Such splits are part of the nor­mal pro­cess of party form­a­tion. Under MMP, they dis­tort pro­por­tion­al­ity. But I think we’re bet­ter to lump it and leave our politi­cians with a modicum of inde­pend­ence and the ulti­mate threat to walk and take their vote else­where than allow a party leader to effect­ively sack them by remov­ing them from a party.

   The main prob­lem with the cur­rent sys­tem is there are too many MPs in par­lia­ment who were not voted in by the people

   Every MP in Par­lia­ment was voted in by the people. Some were voted in in a dif­fer­ent way from oth­ers, sure, but they were still voted in. And if people are silly enough not to think about the list at elec­tion time, and approach this like an old FPP elec­tion, then that’s both their prerog­at­ive and their own fault.

   I don’t think we can claim how­ever that all of the best politi­cians col­lab­or­ate together to run the coun­try. There seems to be more bick­er­ing now than in any­time in his­tory with politi­cians dirty laun­dry being more import­ant than the run­ning of the country.

   Demo­cracy isn’t there to pro­duce good gov­ern­ment, it’s there to pro­duce our gov­ern­ment. Neither is it sup­posed to pro­duce a par­lia­ment which cooper­ates in the run­ning of the coun­try. Polit­ics is not man­age­ment. It is by defin­i­tion about dis­agree­ment. Char­ac­ter­ising this as “bick­er­ing” rather misses the point.

   Now, I’m sure you would be hap­pier if MPs just shut up and run the coun­try exactly how you wanted it to be run. But your interests have no claim to be super­ior to mine, and I will res­ist the impos­i­tion of those interests. Either we can fight about them, or we can vote and skip the blood­shed. Which would you prefer?

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