“MPs who identify as disabled”

There was the debate on a bill to extend provisions re guide dogs to dogs which assist people with a disability generally. Three MPs, IIRC, including Gerry Eckhoff and John Wright told the House they had hearing disabilities.

In Margaret Wilson’s valedictory speech, she noted:

I must also note that Parliament has come a long way towards being more representative, but it cannot be considered to be truly representative while it remains so hard for people with a disability to work here. I acknowledge the Hon Ruth Dyson for her tireless work in that respect. In this institution people are helpful, and that is always appreciated, but it is real change that is required. I have tried to ensure that those with a hearing impairment will get some relief with the new sound system—you do not even notice it any longer. The price for working in this wonderful old building is that those with disabilities still come in the back door or struggle with heavy doors that are likely to bite their fingers off. Again, we adapt to the institution, which is yet to fundamentally recognise the need for real change.

The above is a radical change to the Westminster system, which itself is deeply flawed as it starts from the notion that the Sovereign decided to hand over some powers to the people, they would decide how much they wanted to give over and the systen would always be tilted in favour of the monarch or the government. As such the Cabinet and the ruling party hold all the cards regardless.

Consider that the occupation of politician in NZ as well as many other countries is near the bottom of the heap in terms of public trust and clearly there is a serious problem, we are having this debate about tinkering with the way that Parliament is elected but this is a sideshow. I have no doubt that vested interests that benefit from the current system want to maintain the status quo and won’t consider much more radical reforms, however I think the debate should go far beyond the system used to elect MPs to Parliament.

It’s called living and learning. Something those of a conservative bent seem dead set against.”

It’s called the discovery that MMP has not resulted in as much of a restriction on govermnment or Parliament as was first thought.

MMP should simply be recognised for what it is, a system that has largely worked to the benefit of flaky small parties. All those people that you talked about, they could have been stood in safe seats under FPP and elected that way. It is just the passage of time and the selection of more diverse candidates that has brought them into Parliament, not MMP.

MMP has not brought any radical change in the way Parliament works. All the small parties that have gained from it are flaky as. Their influence is far out of proportion to their credibility. MMP is just an electoral system primarily to benefit politicians, not the electorate. There has not been any behavioural improvement to speak of in Parliament. Ultimately greater accountability to the electorate will require more radical measures than a bit of tidying up. When I see the railing against a referendum here I remember the contradiction with the calls for one in Auckland.

“I think there was an election where one party won about 34% of the total vote”

I think you may mean either the 1993 election, where Jim Bolger lead the National Party to a dominate parliamentary majority based on only 35.05% of the vote.

Hi Tanya

I have to revisit your earlier comment.

“… or the fact that FPP delivered a government that reflected the majority of voter will.”

I completely disagree that this was the case. If it was true then the MMP wouldn’t have won out in two referendums.

Tanya, FPP was viewed as a problem for precisely the opposite reason. The concern is around the “popular” vote which is to say you can win more than half the seats in Parliament and thus govern, but with less than half the total vote. This is a distortion and I think there was an election where one party won about 34% of the total vote but cleverly targetted winning seats by virtue of having the highest polling candidates (you only need to poll highest, but the majority of the electorate may vote for someone else).

MMP is effective in so far as it is “representative” – balancing up the distortion of FPP electorate race, anomalies aside it does have the effect of being too pure. Personally, I’d rather see Single Transferable Voting for our electorates which solves the FPP problem of the popular vote, but that isn’t to say you can’t still operate a plural voting system, it does however become more complex.

I think James Caygill is right, 1/3 remaining as a proportional list representation – depending on the size of the voting population – with a greater number of smaller electorates in a supplementary member style system. I also think it’s time we either enshrine the Maori Option, or drop it all together. Depending on your view of the world, both approaches have benefits, it’s just a matter of whether you’re an electoral purist or not.

Have to board my plane, so I will return to this later. Although I will quickly say that the Labour caucus did not have a view on MMP – it was all decided on referendum. Tim Barnett, before he was an MP, (opposed to MMP) and I (in favour of MMP) used to do meetings around Christchurch to put both cases. It caused no problem within our caucus that several of us were for MMP and several were opposed (including the leadership).