Ideas@TheCentre
Who does understand MMP?
If anyone had any doubts about how widely MMP is misunderstood, they need look no further than last Friday's NZ Herald article by Jim Anderton, MP for Wigram.
Anderton is an old warrior of the Left. He was Labour Party President in the early 1980s, before becoming Labour MP for Sydenham in 1987. He opposed Rogernomics, so he left Labour to form the New Labour Party in 1989, which turned into the Alliance, of which he was leader. He was Deputy Prime Minister (1999–2002) and a Minister (1999–2008). He is currently the leader of the Progressives. In short, he should know the political process pretty well.
Along with arguing that the Left can win the next election (a reasonable proposition), Anderton also inexplicably argued that NZ commentators have ignored the importance of ‘marginal seats’ in elections. He cites Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard spending a disproportionate amount of time in these swing seats during the Australian federal election.
He then lists the 'marginal' seats Labour would have to win to regain government.
What Anderton doesn't seem to understand is that New Zealand’s electoral system is entirely different to Australia's, and that marginal seats have not existed in any meaningful way since the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) voting system replaced First Past the Post (FPP) in 1996. A given seat might swing regularly, but the ultimate winner does not affect the outcome of the election (although the Maori seats may prove an exception to this rule in the future).
In New Zealand, every elector gets two votes: a party vote and a local electorate vote. The party vote is the one that determines government: 45% of the party vote means that party gains 45% of the seats in parliament regardless of local electorate wins.
Anderton's failure to understand this puts him among the 48% of the population that doesn't know the difference between the party vote and electorate vote, and therefore doesn't understand how MMP works, a system he wishes to retain.
Now to be fair, Anderton could mean that the voters of marginal seats are the ones that need to be courted, as they will change their party vote, but that isn't what he says.
It is hard to know in this case whether the problem is the calibre of NZ MPs or MMP itself. If it is the former, at least Anderton is retiring at the next election (having failed to become the Mayor of Christchurch), whereas if it is the latter, the widely misunderstood system needs replacing.
Luke Malpass is Policy analyst in the Centre’s New Zealand Policy Unit. Luke is the co-author with Oliver Hartwich of Superseding MMP: Real Electoral Reform for New Zealand.
