Soybean Stew

Niceties and Nuances of the NZ electoral system

On Thursday night I heard the terrible news from London where a number of explosions have occurred, presumably a work of terrorists. My most sincere condolences go to those who have lost family members in the incidents and I certainly hope that the perpetrators are brought to justice quickly. The Prime Minister of Aotearoa, Miss Helen Clark, has signalled that NZ will not tighten its border security policies in response to the blasts, quoting that both NZ and the UK are well prepared for such incidents. I assume that John Howard is doing his best to make as much political capital out of these blasts as he possibly can, again pandering to the fear and xenophobia of the people of Oz.
Yesterday, our plans for a barbeque in the middle of Masterton were thrown out of plumb after our LEC (FEA) secretary drove her car down a ditch in the morning. Luckily, she was virtually uninjured, but her car did not survive and she was badly shaken mentally. The event was rescheduled for today.
In terms of campaign issues, child care is now in the headlines. The National Party are introducing a tax break for one third of child care costs up to $5000 for working families. On the other hand, Labour has budgeted 20 hours of free child care per child aged between 3 and 5 if they go to a not-for-profit community childcare centre. The National’s Policy will remove the free child care to pay for its tax breaks and the net effect will be for private operators to yank up their charges, negating any benefit to parents who can afford to use them. It offers nothing for low and middle income families, especially the many Maori families in this electorate of Wairarapa, many of whom are on sole-parent benefits. It will deny their children a head start on early learning and jeopardise their educational and employment prospects well into the future.
Now a little about Aotearoa’s electoral system. For many years, Aotearoa was divided up into 99 electorates. Voting is optional and MPs were elected on a first-past-the-post (one vote only) basis. This system favoured the two major parties and strong majorities were often obtained. The Senate was abolished in the 1950s and now there is only one Chamber (the House of Representatives). Therefore there is no house of review.
In 1993, the ruling National government passed a referendum to introduce a proportional representation system known as Mixed Member Proportional (MMP). Under the system, the number of electorates was reduced from 99 to 69 and the number of MPs increased to 120. This system allows for representation of minor parties and the provision of non-electorate MPs voted under a list system. Electors are now given two votes: an electorate vote (for their local member, under the old rules) and a Party Vote (a vote for a single party – there are no preferences given). Each party must also publicly release their LIST RANKINGS for their candidates as members who are not successful for winning their electorate may still obtain a LIST SEAT (see below).
Note that there are 62 general electorates and 7 Maori electorates. All Maori persons have the option of going on the General Roll or the Maori Roll.
To qualify for proportional representation a party must win either 5% of the Party Vote or win an electorate seat.
The 120 seats are then distributed according to the relative proportions of Party Vote for all parties who QUALIFY FOR PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. Then, for each party, the seats are first filled by candidates who won their electorates. The remaining seats for that party are then allocated by LIST ORDER. This means, that if a minor party get 10% for the Party Vote they are entitled to a minimum of 12 seats, even if they do not win any electorates. Also there is no obligation for any electoral candidate to have a list ranking; a safe Labour seat member can have no list ranking if they are confident of re-election based on their demographic position.
Generally, under MMP, a party will rarely garner enough Party Votes to obtain 50% of the seats in Parliament. They will inevitably have to form a coalition agreement with one or more of the minor parties. United Future has said that they will support the major party with the higher proportion of total votes. The Greens will traditionally support the Left, while New Zealand First and ACT will almost certainly support the Right. It is not known which party the Maori Party would support.

posted by Max Soy @ 12:50 AM