5 reasons to love MMP
MMP supporter Maxine Boag says that while MMP is "not perfect", Saturday's article 5 things we hate about MMP "focused only on the negatives". Here are her five reasons to love MMP, warts and all.
MMP means everyone's vote counts equally, no matter where you live.
Whether you live in Hawke's Bay or Howick, under MMP your vote counts equally. This means National voters in safe Labour seats, Labour voters in safe National seats, and voters for small parties all have their votes counted just as much as anyone else.
Under the old First Past the Post system hundreds of thousands of votes were wasted, and the First Past the Post look-alike option Supplementary Member system would produce similar inequities.
Only a vote to keep MMP locks in an independent review to make it better.
Many of us agree that the current MMP system is not perfect and some tweaks are needed. Only a vote to keep MMP will allow improvements to be made through a review to be carried out by the independent Electoral Commission.
A vote for any other system could see the baby thrown out with the bath water, so those of us who support some tweaks to the current system need to support MMP on election day.
MMP works.
MMP has produced stable governments of the left and right National-led ones in 1996 and 2008 and Labour-led ones in 1999, 2002 and 2005.
It also hasn't stopped governments from making critical decisions when needed - the Canterbury earthquake recovery legislation earlier this year received unanimous support across Parliament.
If we don't like our politicians, MMP allows us to boot them out just like any other system as happened to Labour last election and National in 1999.
MMP has given voters more power.
MMP gives people choices - we can vote someone to represent us locally as well as the party we most support. Now everyone's vote counts equally and elections aren't won based on the votes of a small number of people in marginal electorates.
For decades, under First Past the Post, National and Labour could, and did, hold absolute power while winning well under 50 per cent of the popular vote in the election. And both parties Labour after 1984 and National in the early 1990s abused this power by backtracking on or completely ignoring their election promises.
MMP has delivered a Parliament that looks like us.
Sections of New Zealand society formerly under-represented or with no representation at all now have voices in Parliament.
The 1993 Parliament, the last before the introduction of MMP, had 21 women MPs from two parties National and Labour. There were six Maori MPs and one Samoan, but none from other ethnic backgrounds.
Fifteen years later, it is a very different story. In 2011, there are 37 women, belonging to five political parties. There are 14 MPs of Maori ancestry and MPs with Samoan, Tongan, Tokelauan, Indian and Chinese ancestry.
Maxine Boag co-convener, Keep MMP campaign, HB
Need for balance
In the middle of a piece on "Understanding the Referendum" (November 5), presented as being unbiased, you included "5 things we hate about MMP".
Was this an advertisement and, if so, who paid for it?
If it was intended as journalism, it is hopelessly unbalanced without either offering "5 things we love about MMP" or giving five problems with each of the possible systems.
Whatever happened to the ideal of unbiased coverage?
MMP is not perfect no system is.
But it's far better than what we used to have. And it is the fairest system on offer.
Robin Gwynn, Hawke's Bay
Editor's note: The writer refers to an MMP feature supplied to the newspaper by APN's centralised features service. The inclusion of the "5 things we hate about MMP" story is regretted as it was not balanced. Hawke's Bay Today has offered space to balance the report.