Much more positive

First published in Column 8 on the 27^th October, 1993 

In spite of the strong urgings of the recent Otago Daily Times editorial, I’m going to vote for MMP. [Mixed Member Proportional]

I’ve read several views on the referendum. I’m probably more fortunate, in fact, than many voters who’ve found the argufying back and forth painfully difficult to understand, and who’ve all but given up trying. (Fortunate in the sense that reading is something I enjoy, even when the subject is politics.)

What’s been offered to television-viewing voters who read little? Fatuous Government ads which explain nothing. Tedious to watch, they turn people off in microseconds. I suspect the aloofness of politicians keeps them out of touch with people and they think we’re all nincompoops.

The same actors appear in equally expensive newspaper ads, listing the so-called facts, but offering little in the way of guidelines or help to the confused. (Did they deliberately set out to find actors who would look dumb and bewildered?)

The Times said: Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t – hardly a complement to the present incumbents – and added that this referendum was the ‘most important constitutional event since women were given the vote.’

I don’t agree that this referendum is an equally important constitutional events. The women’s vote changed this country’s history, for a much more important reason than a political one. For the first time men had to think about the way they regarded women. (And still have to.) This referendum is hardly going to change anything as important as that.

FPP [First Past the Post] has the support of big business. That alone should make us suspicious (!) Big business in New Zealand has hardly been the champion of people’s rights. When Mr Bolger called businessmen ‘heroes,’ as though they were somehow saviours of the nation, I woke laughing in the night. Big business profits aren’t ploughed back into the country, at least not into the part of the country that needs it.

Then there’s Shirtcliffe and Co, with their almighty resources. It makes you wonder what motive these pro-FPP bods have in spending so highly on campaigning for the status quo.

I’ve read two major pro-MMP articles. Both were honest enough to say that MMP won’t cure all our ills. They didn’t say politicians would somehow mature overnight, becoming capable of achieving worthwhile tasks. They did remind us that politicians mostly resist the thought of change.

They didn’t say MMP works well everywhere, though it works very well in some places.

What they did say was that FPP isn’t fair. They pointed out that for the majority of voters, FPP wasted your vote. As David McLoughlin says in an article entitled Don’t Blow the Chance of Real Reform: ‘…every NZ Government since 1951 has won a majority of seats in Parliament with a minority of votes.’ Crazy.

Dunedinites, of all voters, must be fed up being represented by Opposition members time after time. Isn’t that a result of FPP?

I’m going to vote MMP, and I hope most other people do too. It would send a strong signal to the politicians of this country, these privileged humans who notoriously ignore the rank and file who elect them.

I’d fed up with feeling that I don’t even have half a say in how this country is run. If MMP did nothing else but remind politicians that they’re the servants of the people, not their dictators, I’d be pleased.

Maybe then my tiny two-pronged vote might count for something more than a pencil tick on a page.

This curious advertisement appeared around the time of the referendum. 

MMP remains contentious thirty years later. One of its curiosities is that it allows unelected members to get into Parliament by being on a ‘list.’ The list is connected to a convoluted system that relates to how many electorate seats are won (or are not won) as against how many…well, it’s too complicated to explain here, so better to read this explanation, because after all this time I’m still not sure I understand it.

This compilation from 1996, after the first election under MMP, gives some of the views of people who voted or didn’t vote for the referendum, plus some animated explanations from Footrot Flats characters.

While MMP allows smaller parties to get a chance at being in Government, it also led to the appalling situation created by Winston Peters three terms ago, when he decided, after days of keeping the country waiting, that he would side with Jacinda and the Labour Party, even though National was ahead. This meant we got a coalition party governing us who turned out to be one of the worst in the country’s history. For many people it felt as though MMP made a mockery of their votes by allowing a coalition decided purely on the basis on one man’s say so.