Ideas@TheCentre
MMP – The doubts keep coming
Last week's, the Sunday Star Times' breathless revelation that Prime Minister John Key wants a new electoral system should surprise no one. Proportional representation (PR), that darling of the international left and political classes everywhere, is a flawed system and is up for grabs via referendum at the next election.
Should Mixed Member Proportional (MMP), PR's local incarnation, be retained by the good people of New Zealand next year?
Recent history, and the way governments have operated under MMP, suggests it should not. MMP is based on a German model that was designed in post World War II Germany as part of a complicated set of federal-state constitutional arrangements to make the rise of another fuehrer figure virtually impossible. If New Zealanders are frustrated that their government can't 'get things done' under MMP, it is precisely because it is based on a system designed to make it difficult to get things done!
The major problem with MMP is that government isn't elected directly through individual members – parties are – who then form government post facto. Few voters at the last election voted for a National/ACT/Maori Party government, even less at the election before voted for a five-headed Labour/Greens/Progressives/NZ First/United Future government.
MMP means there are many list MPs that none of us has ever heard of or know what they do but who are in Parliament at the behest of party bosses rather than standing before the voters. MMP is designed to get otherwise unelectable people into Parliament. In this sense, it is profoundly undemocratic.
Add into the mix that more than half of Kiwi voters do not understand the difference between the party vote and the list vote.
So in re-examining the options for electoral reform, in the absence of an option for a Senate, the question asked should be: what system offers the most accountable and effective governing arrangements for New Zealand?
And of the systems on offer, MMP would pull up the shortest on those criteria. The Prime Minister's instincts, it would seem, are correct.
Luke Malpass is a Policy Analyst at the Centre’s New Zealand Policy Unit. He is co-author, with Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich, of Superseding MMP: Real Electoral Reform for New Zealand.
