Architect of MMP rethinks 5pc waiver

By COLIN JAMES and MATHEW DEARNALEY

The man who gave us MMP wants to do away with the system that allows small parties with electorate seats but less than 5 per cent of the party vote to get list MPs into Parliament.

The change, urged by Sir John Wallace, would have left New Zealand First with just one seat from the 1999 election, instead of the five it has.

Sir John, who chaired the Royal Commission on the Electoral System and became inaugural head of the Electoral Commission before stepping down in 1996, admitted second thoughts in a paper prepared for a weekend conference at Victoria University Law School.

Prime Minister Helen Clark said last night that her Labour Party was not about to call for any changes to a system that had recently been examined by a parliamentary committee and left intact.

But a poll last month put support for MMP at 36 per cent compared with 53 per cent in favour of the old first-past-the-post system.

Sir John said in the paper to the law conference, held to mark Sir Ivor Richardson's retirement as Court of Appeal President, that he now favoured a 5 per cent party vote threshold before a party could gain list seats.

The royal commission recommended a 4 per cent threshold, but Sir John said 5 per cent would guard against "the possibility of ineffective government if there are too many small parties".

New Zealand First won 4.3 per cent of the party votes in 1999, yet has five seats because of a "waiver" to the 5 per cent threshold eventually put into law.

This waiver means that if a party wins just one electorate, it gains seats proportional to its party vote even if it fails to clear 5 per cent.

New Zealand First has its extra seats on the strength of Winston Peters' 63-vote win in Tauranga in 1999.

Yet in 1996, the Christian Coalition, which got almost exactly the same percentage of the party vote but won no electorate seats, had no parliamentary presence.

United Future's Peter Dunne won his electorate seat in 1996 and 1999, but without enough party votes to bring any other party members into Parliament with him.

Under the present MMP system, the Alliance, despite polling just 2 per cent, would still gain three seats - as long as it won an electorate.

Sir John told the law conference that "some voters regard the waiver of the threshold as a feature of MMP which adds interest and spice to the election campaign".

"It also helps to prevent wasting the votes of electors who vote for a party which does not pass the 5 per cent threshold and - if the party has some support outside the electorate - helps to prevent a sole-MP party."

But he now thinks the waiver "is seen by voters as encouraging bargaining or 'wheeler-dealing' between two parties as to whether or not both should field a constituency [electorate] candidate in a particular electorate".

"In a close election this can make the difference between a party being able to form a governing coalition or ending up in Opposition. The New Zealand voting public is [so] unhappy and cynical about political conduct that anything which can have an aura of clever practice is better avoided. I would therefore abolish the waiver."

Helen Clark told the Herald last night before leaving for the Queen Mother's funeral in Britain that the waiver had not emerged as any issue of concern to the parliamentary committee responsible for reviewing the system.

But the committee was unable to agree on whether MMP should stay or go - or even whether to hold another referendum on keeping it.

Mr Peters said New Zealand's 5 per cent threshold was higher than that of most other countries using MMP, but he vowed to overcome media "bias" against his party and to capture more seats in this year's election.

A National Business Review-Compaq poll last month found the highest public support for the old first-past-the-post system for three years, 53 per cent, against just 36 per cent for MMP.

This compares with 53.9 per cent support for MMP in the 1993 referendum that paved the way for it, against 46.1 per cent who wanted to keep first-past-the-post.

And another poll just out, of 750 people surveyed by UMR Insight, has found the public still struggling to understand MMP despite having used it in two elections - and with a third one looming.

Just 38 per cent knew that their party vote was more important than their electorate vote in getting the Government they wanted.

This was about the same as in polls before the 1996 and 1999 elections, despite information campaigns that have cost taxpayers $5.5 million.

Sir John also rejected the need for "waka-jumping" legislation, which the Government passed but which is now under attack after the Alliance split.