1 Way 2 C the World by Marilyn Waring

Author:Marilyn Waring
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL032000
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2009-04-24T16:00:00+00:00

5 Party Animals

6 February 1988

The Royal Commission on the Electoral System reported in December 1986. A year later, New Zealanders a government circular with information on the findings and recommendations of the Commission as a prelude to the referenda we would be involved in. These would be held to determine if New Zealanders wanted a change in their voting system and, if so, what system they preferred. The dice were already loaded to push the Mixed Member Proportional system favoured by the Commission.

Did you read your copy of The New Zealand Voter in the mailbox just before Christmas? Did you discard it as junk mail or put it aside to read in the holiday period and never got around to it? I wouldn’t be surprised, for neither the circular nor the Report of the Royal Commission on the Electoral System1 are an easy read. But the issue is vitally important.

In 1981, the Labour Party took more votes than National but didn’t win the majority of seats in the House. In the same election, 20.7 per cent of New Zealand voters supported Social Credit candidates, but that party won only two (2.2 per cent) of the seats. In 1975 the Values Party and in 1984 the New Zealand Party took a percentage of votes without gaining any representation. It is to such results that the Royal Commission has, substantially, addressed itself. This current system of ours is termed ‘plurality.’ The Commission comments in the report: ‘Plurality systems everywhere have a poor record in terms of the election of women, ethnic and other minorities, and those from certain occupational and socio-economic groups.’2

Several alternative voting systems fall under the generic term of ‘proportional representation,’ designed, says the Commission, ‘to provide that the seats a party receives in Parliament are in reasonable proportion to the number of votes that that party receives in the election.’3

The Royal Commission recommended one option in particular – the mixed member proportional (MMP) system. This was done in the belief that ‘the process of choice should to the fullest extent possible give each member of the community an equal part in the choice of government.’ The effect of the recommendations does not give each member of the community an equal opportunity to participate in government, for the possibility of an independent standing for other than a constituency seat under the new system is not considered, and rendered impossible.

The Commission proposes an increase in parliamentary seats to 120. There would be boundary changes so that there would be 60 constituency seats elected on the same basis as the last election, and 60 seats elected on a nationwide party list system. The political parties would draw up lists of names in a preferential order as their nominations to take seats up to the number equivalent to the percentage of votes they each received.

We, the voters, get to vote for the constituency candidate, then for a party – and an automatic acceptance of their selection of people. The ballot paper wouldn’t even list the names.

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