We had a really interesting discussion at one of this morning’s remit workshop on electoral reform. There was strong support for the idea that Labour should initiate a debate on how to improve the way the MMP system operates. I didn’t hear anyone speak in favour of a return to First Past the Post (FPP) and a number of people raised concerns about the Supplementary Member (SM) alternative that has been suggested.
We have now had 5 general elections under MMP, the first result in a National-led coalition, the second, third and fourth resulted in a Labour-led minority government, and the fifth has resulted in a National-led government. I think Kiwis understand MMP, and I think they are voting strategically. However I also agree that improvements can be made that will help to address some concerns. Among the things we discussed were:
- increasing the number of electorates and decreasing the number of list MPs
- making the party vote threshold apply without exception, which would mean that a party that wins an electorate seat but does not cross the threshold would not get extra list MPs
- entrenching the Maori option
- notifying those whose special vote was disallowed because they were not on the electoral roll that this had occurred and inviting them to enrol
There was also an interesting discussion on ‘waka jumping’ and whether proportionality should be maintained throughout the parliamentary term. While people generally felt that someone who ‘waka jumps’ from their party should not be allowed to remain in parliament, there was concern about the implications of trying to maintain proportionality in the case of by-elections.
Overall it was a really useful workshop. Personally I am strongly in favour of retaining MMP but I agree that some really useful changes can be made that will make the system better.
Labour surely needs to come out and oppose the government who clearly want to get rid of MMP. The Nats have never liked democracy really.
mjwkiwi – rest assured we’re opposing the National govt on a daily basis!
Chris – great post. I agree entirely we must keep MMP but we also need to ensure we’re not just the party of no.
We want to keep MMP but we need to have ideas about how to make it work even better!
Increasing the number of electorates is an interesting suggestion. The number is of course increasing with each post-census boundary change (as it did under first past the post – starting at 80 and moving up to 99 by 1993). We initially had 60 general electorates, and 5 M?ori, and now have 63 and 7.
You might reset the number a little higher (e.g. 18 South Island general seats instead of 16), but this very quickly lowers the number of list seats – 41 with 18 SI electorates, 33 with 20 SI general seats. A census or two from now and you’d be creating a near permanent overhang/disproportionality – if we don’t have one already. One ‘solution’ might be to set the number of list seats at a specific number – say 40 with 18 SI seats, and let the size of the House increase as the population disparities grow (as it did under FPP).
Also, like entrenching the M?ori option, it would require either a 75% majority vote in Parliament, or a referendum. You might get Maori party support – more electorates means more Maori electorates, but that’s also a reason for them to support FPP. Changing to a 120 seat FPP Parliament would see at least 12 – and probably 13 – Maori seats.
Interesting discussion, Mr Hipkins. I suspect that Labour’s support for MMP now is more pragmatic than philosophical and is a function of having less fear than they did in 1993 when your party opposed MMP because you were worried that you would lose support to parties like the Alliance.
That aside I think one of the bogeymen which won’t get play, but should be thought through if MMP is going to work, in my view, is that under MMP electorates are very large. Too large in my opinion. I can’t see how an electorate MP can look after and reasonably represent 60,000 people. One of the interesting features of SM is that you can increase the number of electorates to say, 90, which make them much more manageable. Under SM you can’t have proportionality, but you can cap the number of MPs.
I don’t know how many list MPs you would need under MMP to create 90 electorates in total, making electorate seats more manageable in size but still proportional, but I suspect 45-50, which would push the parliament up to 135-140 MPs. A difficult prospect to sell to the public, increasing the number of MPs, but in my view quite important.
Mr Mallard I think has talked about how modern communications means that MPs can communicate much more easily with constituents than they used to, which is a good point. It would be interesting to hear from Labour electorate MPs who have been around for a while just how manageable their electorate workload is and how easily they can represent their constituents.
As someone who voted for MMP (Yes there is someone who admits to this in public!) Watching how Labour as one example(syncially) allowed list MP’s to retire on the Govt tit (J.Sutton) just to rejuvenate their parliament benches. Yet we were told by all parties @ election time to review the list on the strenght of their parties respective candidates.
Why are you so scared to review the system, how do you know that there is not a more appropiate system that would suit NZ, and for the betterment of the country, also the term why not 4 years instead of 3 with the right controls.
As someone who is for changing S59 crimes act. Why is it that 87% voted for a change and yet we have 90% of MP’s for the status quo.
The EFA being passed, Supreme court in NZ there is no balance to only requiring 50.1% of MP’s to support for a change.
FPP should not even be considered, and for many to use this as the alternative is being mischievous at best.
Tim – I’m with you on electorates being too large. I use all sorts of communication techniques as a local MP but it is a real challenge to serve all parts of the electorate as effectively as I want to.
The analysis I have seen suggests we could have 90 electorates and 30 list MPs and the proportionality would be preserved. From memory applying that to the 5 MMP elections we have had the biggest overhang would have been 4 extra seats. That’s just from memory though. Someone else might have the actual nos handy.
Is MMP really democratic – from where i sit it entrenches power in the hands of the party hierarchys not the voters.
Whats the point of voting someone out just to see them back in Parliament as a list MP?
making the party vote threshold apply without exception, which would mean that a party that wins an electorate seat but does not cross the threshold would not get extra list MPs.
Trust a big party to support a shift to a less representative system.
The threshold creates unfairness, when for example ACT gains representation with fewer votes than NZ First because they won an electorate. But the solution to that is to give NZ First repreentation by lowering the threshold – not to take ACT’s away from them.
Whats the point of voting someone out just to see them back in Parliament as a list MP?
Why should the people of podunk have a veto on whether a talented MP with a national support base gets into Parliament?
I/S – I think we need to talk about the threshold. The Royal Commission recommended 4% but we ended up with 5%. The current electorate seat rule favours small parties that have a strong support base in a geographical area over small parties that have a strong support base that is more geographically spread.
Hence the unfairness of the ACT / NZ First result. NZ First got more support but no seats. ACT got less support but 5 seats. Similarly, in 1996 the Christian Coalition got over 4% of the vote but no seats, while in 2002 the Progressives got about 1.8% of the vote but got 2 seats because Anderton kept his electorate seat.
Chris: Yes, we do. The way to resolve the unfairness of the ACT / NZ First and Progressive / Christian Coalition results is to give the latter parties representation by lowering the threshold – not denying representation to the former parties.
Any reduction would be an improvement. But ultimately the problem will persist until we remove the threshold entirely.
Whats the point of voting someone out just to see them back in Parliament as a list MP?
I understand the public concern about this. In my electorate Peter McCardle quit National to join NZ First, was resoundingly defeated at the election but came back on the NZ First party list and ended up a Cabinet Minister in the National-led govt. People still talk about that 13 years later and use it as an example to discredit MMP.
However it’s not an easy issue to address. I’d be opposed to preventing people standing both in an electorate and on the party list because that would make it difficult for the bigger parties to find candidates for some seats they have no chance of winning. It would also disadvantage small parties who run list MPs in target seats in order to increase their profile and raise their party vote.
And as I/S points out, we could lose some really talented MPs from parliament who may not win an electorate but have a broader national appeal.
Electorates are the problem and so, therefore, not the solution. Go full proportional and you could have 120 electorate MPs – they’d just be chosen from the ones that made it into parliament. You could even then say that you have an electorate for every X,000 voters. As the population increases the number of MPs increase proportionally.
You obviously didn’t show the party that you wanted that MP gone from parliament. If you had then they wouldn’t be on the list. As I’ve said elsewhere – list MPs are more accountable than electorate MPs but it does require that people actually let the parties know that they don’t want that person on the list.
A bit difficult for me to attend conference (from Sydney), but the remoit sessions sound interesting.
RE – MMP reform – I like the idea of lowering the threshold to 4% but only for parties of the left and then applying the percentage threshold rule strictly (regardless of electorate seats won) only to parties of the right …..ONLY JOKING.
No, seriously, I think lowering to 4% and at the same time applying the percentage threshold strictly even where a party has won an electorate seat but has less than the 4%, ia the way to go (although the thought of that right wing christian party possibly getting seats a few years ago when they got more than 4%, makes one rethink the wiseness of such a strategy).
Peter Benson
I don’t really see that letting the overall number of seats grow with the population would really meet with too much opposition.
The threshold is by far the most serious problem with the current system, as it’s not only manifestly unfair, but it leads to less representative voting patterns. For instance in the last election the party that most closely matched my views was the Alliance, but I was effectively unable to vote for them as it was clear that such a vote would be wasted. I’m sure there were similar voters across the spectrum who were forced to make similar choices. Surely parliament would be better off if it fairly represented ALL the views of the community?
The threshold essentially means it is impossible (or at least very very unlikely) for a new, or returning, party to (re)enter the house on policy grounds instead they must rely on personality.
Thus we end up with a couple of big parties, and far too much policy being done behind closed doors (intra rather than inter party).
Why have electorates at all? At present your electoral vote has absolutely no influence on who becomes the government and often every little influence on who gets into parliament as often losers get in on the list.
You could still have a separate Maori list with a proportionate number repreentatives elected.
Its feasible the Maori Party, labour and Greens could get represenatives from both lists.
With regard to Phill’s comments… let’s get real. If there is absolutely no threshold, then a party with only 0.1% of the party vote would expect representation in Parliament. If that means one seat, then we would need a 1,000 seat Parliament!! I cannot see the NZ public supporting such an increased size of our Parliament. He quite rightly says that if he had voted Alliance his vote would have been wasted. His best bet is to join a more major party such as Labour and push for the policies he believes in, within the party.
And as I/S points out, we could lose some really talented MPs from parliament who may not win an electorate but have a broader national appeal.
That depends what you mean by “broader national appeal”. An MP 5th on the list for NZ First will not have any more appeal than if he had the same place on the National list – but he`d be in parliament under National whatever his appeal.
Chris – your memory is faulty on MMP with a 90/30 split. Assuming parties won the same proportion of electorate seats, a 90/30 elect/list split would have seen Labour in 1999 with a 6 seat overhang and in 2002 with a 7 seat overhang. That would be almost as unproportional as SM.
On the plus side it would have meant in 1999 every Labour List MP would have been wiped out so no Cullen and Wilson
With regard to Phill’s comments… let’s get real. If there is absolutely no threshold, then a party with only 0.1% of the party vote would expect representation in Parliament.
You are confusing the level of the threshold – which decides how seats are allocated – with the size of Parliament. The two are not linked in the way you suggest. Lowering the threshold does not mean a larger Parliament.
Real objections please?
That depends what you mean by “broader national appeal”. An MP 5th on the list for NZ First will not have any more appeal than if he had the same place on the National list – but he`d be in parliament under National whatever his appeal.
Sure. But at the same time, they clearly have a national constituency, otherwise they wouldn’t be on the party’s list.
At the end of the day, I have to accept other people’s choices about who they want to represent them. The same applies to the people of podunk. MMP means electorates no longer have a parochial veto on the makeup of Parliament, and that IMHO is a Good Thing.
I am very disappointed that you want regressive change to the MMP system.
One could make the party vote threshold apply without exception, which would mean that a party that wins an electorate seat but does not cross the threshold would not get extra list MPs, only if the party vote threshold was lowered to a more democratically principled 3 or 4%.
Fundamentally Parliamentary numbers ought to increase proportion to population growth; both in electoral seats and party vote allocation. This in turn would remove the democratic gross distortion of our South Island provision.
Maori option: there is an alternative option under MMP for Maori representation and that is the removal of Maori electoral seats and replacement by a Maori regional party list allocation.
Changing to a 120 seat FPP Parliament would see at least 12 – and probably 13 – Maori seats
Well,that depends on whether Maori will be forced to enrol on the Maori roll or be given the option as currently, I would have thought…
dave – no that is 12 to 13 seats based on the current ratio. If all Maori went onto the Maori roll, then there could be as many as 20 Maori seats I estimate.
dave – I can’t see that it would. I’m assuming M?ori would, as now, have the option. Were M?ori required to be on the M?ori roll, there would be many more than 13 M?ori seats in a hypothetical 120-seat FPP Parliament. Probably in the vicinity of 22-24.
My number of 12-13 assumes approximately the same proportion of M?ori as now remain on the M?ori roll. M?ori seats make up 10% of our current 70 electorates, so if there were 120 electorates this would be 12 seats on the current numbers.
I suggest “probably 13″, because M?ori were reasonably close to getting an extra seat after the last census/M?ori option, and I think, with demographic changes, will likely be due for another one next time. And this would be particularly likely with 120 electorate seats – the number of seats would actually be 12.43 on current populations (it’s rounded to 12) which is perilously close to the 12.5 needed to be rounded up to 13 (hypothetical) seats.
Were a great many M?ori to choose to go onto (or off) the M?ori roll that would make a difference.
Okay, David Farrar just admitted MMP has a plus side so I now expect Key to cancel the referendum!
The key issue for me from today was the need to reframe the debate. The spin from National is to dump MMP and change to X. It’s an apt position for a capitalistic party – it smacks of consumerism, our habit of throwing something out if it’s less than perfect. But MMP is not a pair of shoes that are a little worn. It wasn’t a small investment. It was us buying a new house. Surely before we move we need to ensure we really do want a new place.
Rather than a rushed referendum we need to look at MMP, really look at it and ask ourselves if we need something else or if it just needs a coat of paint and a new bathroom. To be denied that discussion would be an egregious error.
Practically, you can’t have a 0% threshold as the number of seats are capped. What you’d have is a stepped threshold where each step = 1 seat. In a 120 seat parliament this is 0.82% of the vote.
What you’d have is a stepped threshold where each step = 1 seat. In a 120 seat parliament this is 0.82% of the vote.
Not quite. Seats are distributed according to the unmodified Sainte-Laguë method. This tends to slightly favour smaller parties over larger ones in distributing the rounding error, and running it with no threshold would see the smallest party winning a seat with about 11,000 votes – comparable to a narrow electorate contest.
If this is considered too low, it can be tweaked upwards to ~16,000 votes by using modified Sainte-Laguë.
Chris,
I am concerned Labour people are talking about increasing the number of electorate seats without also increasing the number of list seats – it sounds like a version of SM in all but name, and will be used as an argument by some to say we should abandon the principle of proportionality altogether.
If the motivation is gaining smaller electorates, a better solution would be increasing the number of MPs. With 120MPs New Zealand has a low number of elected representatives (per captia) by world standards, even if you take into account the lack of an upper house.
In looking to improve MMP I believe we need to look at how stable multi-party coalition government can survive more than one term. Strictly speaking no meaningful combination of parties has lasted more than one term in a formal coalition (single MP parties are not relevant). Germany provides a good contrast here.
I believe the current 5% threshold is too hard on small parties, particularly when they have been in government in the previous term.
On these grounds I am with I/S – there should be no threshold or a very small one, and a party should not gain list seats on the grounds of winning an electorate seat.
I believe such a change would lead to greater stability. The electorate seat rule makes parties too reliant on a single personality. I would rather have parties based on principle, policy and ideas and I think a lower threshold and removing the electorate rule would assist this.
I have it as 9160 votes for a single MP party to earn the 120 seat at the last election.
And the Royal Commission on the Electoral System, using modified Sainte-Laguë to show the result of not having a threshold, suggested the first seat came in at about 25,000 votes. This doesn’t exactly endear me to their analysis
Graeme: I bow to your actual numbers rather than my half-remembered ones.
“making the party vote threshold apply without exception, which would mean that a party that wins an electorate seat but does not cross the threshold would not get extra list MPs” – I think that’s a great idea – no one elected anyone apart from Mr Hide in Act etc …
An electoral system designed around the aim of ensuring those whom we disagree with aren’t represented in Parliament is just a really really bad idea.
You’re pushing for a high threshold to ensure Heather Roy and Roger Douglas are out, others are pushing for more directly-elected members (first past the post, or supplementary member) to ensure that Russell Norman and Sue Bradford aren’t there.
I didn’t vote for Act, and I didn’t vote for New Zealand First and I didn’t vote Green, but nearly 340,000 voters did, is it right that you and I get to tell them their views aren’t important enough to be heard in Parliament?
Spud: 3.65% of New Zealanders voted for ACT. They deserve representation every bit as much as the 44.93% who voted National, the 6.72% who voted Green, or indeed the 4.07% who voted for NZ First.
The onus is on the supporters of big parties to explain why they deserve democracy but the supporters of smaller parties do not. And I do not think a principled argument can be made.
My problem with that is that NZ first had more votes than Act and Act got the seats and NZ first didn’t. I have no problem with Act’s 3.65% being represented. – I am glad that certain parties – be they single issue or extreme left / right don’t get represented – I think they’d be a nuisance to the majority of NZ. So I agree with you that smaller parties should be represented, but I don’t like the extreme ones.
Chris,
“The analysis I have seen suggests we could have 90 electorates and 30 list MPs and the proportionality would be preserved.”
But the problem, as has been pointed out, is that under the current process of determining electorate boundaries, the number of electorate seats does not remain static. Simply put, ’cause the North Island general & Maori electorate populations are getting bigger more quickly than is the South Isalnd general electorate population, we have a system that produces more and more electorate seats over time. So after a decade or so, you may well be looking at 95-97 electorate seats and only 25-23 electorates. Which WILL start producing grossly disproportionate outcomes in the form of large overhangs.
Bottom line – if you up the number of electorates, you will need to fix them in stone. Which means re-jigging just how electorate boundaries are determined. Which requires a 75% majority in Parliament or a majority vote in a referendum.
Andrew – even if you don’t fix them in stone, you’d still need 75% or a referendum. Section 35 of the Electoral Act is a reserved section.
The simplest way to up the number of electorates would seem to me to be to increase the number in the South Island from its current 16. At 18 South Island electorates, there would be (on current numbers) 53 North Island electorates, and 8 M?ori electorates – for 79 total – pretty close to the 80/40 split sought (and probably there next time around).
But even that needs a supermajority or referendum.
As an aside, does it strike you as odd that the sole legislative determinant of our having a 120-seat House of Representatives is a subsection which requires the Chief Electoral Officer to mark off “the highest 120 quotients” in the process of determining which list members are elected?
As an aside, does it strike you as odd that the sole legislative determinant of our having a 120-seat House of Representatives is a subsection which requires the Chief Electoral Officer to mark off “the highest 120 quotients” in the process of determining which list members are elected?
You could quite happily say “there will be 55 (or however many) list seats” (by changing “120″ to “the total size of the House” and then defining that elsewhere as “number of electorates plus number of list seats”, and then let the House grow naturally.
But that would mean more MPs. And people hate that.
Oh yes. Very easily. It just struck me as odd:
1. that it’s so obscure.
2. that it’s not entrenched.
We could adopt first past the post tomorrow, just by changing that number to zero. No need for a referendum or anything.
We could adopt first past the post tomorrow, just by changing that number to zero. No need for a referendum or anything.
I think the FPP-era politicians who passed that law – of which Dalziel is one – probably regard that as a feature, not a bug.
BTW, who said this?
Because it is arithmetically possible to receive 49.9 percent of the vote and gain no seats, one must, so long
as one uses the mixed-member proportional system, have at least as many seats dished out on the list basis as on a territorial basis. Therefore the concept of 90:30 is arithmetically inappropriate.
And have they changed their view? Inquiring minds and all that…
I don’t know.
But they were wrong when they said it, so I don’t see that it matters too much.
The things I wanted to say have largely been said, but I wanted to add my own reasons too.
And I simply disagree. We’re already stretching proportionality to its limits with the Maori Party’s 5 or 6 MPs, but I feel that the Maori Party is a special case that we can allow. Extending that to 8 would probably annoy more regressive voters who already mistakenly think Maori get too much “special treatment”, and that could be very bad. Especially so if we added more overhang seats for either Labour or National on top of that, which becomes very possible as the Greens pull votes from Labour, yet Labour and National retain a stranglehold on most electorates. No, this idea isn’t very good at all.
Best case scenario if you’re truly just worried about making electorate MPs more personal by shrinking electorates: Guarantee a similar number of list seats to today, either by having a dynamically sized parliament, or picking out a larger number of MPs. And you can just imagine how unpopular those solutions would be.
I also have to object to your the plans your party floated to exclude under-threshold parties from getting List MPs when they win an electorate. We cannot exclude the Acts and the NZ Firsts and the United Futures and the Progressives and yes, even the Christian Coalitions from Parliament just because we don’t like them. That road is a slippery slope that leads back to elected dictatorships, much like reversing electoral reform would be.
Limiting a party’s representation at all when it has the support of enough New Zealanders to win even a single seat outright is wrong. Set the threshold to the proportion of the party vote required to win a single seat outright- at the moment, that would be about .82% of the vote. For clarity, the Progressives initially would not have needed Wigram under those rules, for instance. No joke party has ever polled that high, and frankly, the risk of a joke MP actually getting elected might make apathetic voters a bit more cautious, or even more engaged.
Act got the advantage this time because the rules unfairly exclude small list-based parties. The solution to that is not to punish small parties with solid electorate support, the solution is to stop punishing small list-based parties. Radical, I know.