Now that the country has voted resoundingly to keep MMP, it is invited to suggest ways to improve the system. The Electoral Commission has begun the discussion with a paper that raises a few familiar questions for public comment but the review need not be confined to them. The commission
Editorial: Chance to make MMP even better
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It is up to New Zealanders to say how they want the MMP system shaped. Photo / Mark Mitchell
A byproduct of this system could be greater participation in political parties. The time has long gone when parties such as National and Labour had mass memberships. They function these days on the efforts of MPs with paid electorate secretaries and some loyal activists and aspirants. People are less likely to join political parties or declare an allegiance, and they are given no reason to do so.
If they were able to register for a vote in a keenly contested list primary, it might inject life into parties at the grassroots and policy-making might cease to be the preserve of an elite that it has become.
The MMP review can also expect to hear criticism of the threshold exemption for small parties that manage to win a single electorate. It is in the interests of major parties to make room for a certain ally to win an electorate because the seat becomes additional to their proportional allocation. The ally might be then awarded two or more seats on a party vote well below the 5 per cent threshold. Jim Anderton, Peter Dunne, Rodney Hide and now John Banks have prospered on this oddity.
Proportional representation in New Zealand has developed characteristics its advocates did not expect. Unlike MMP's only model, Germany, we have not developed a taste for formal coalitions. Single-party minority governments supported by loose "confidence and supply" agreements have been preferred. We do not give three or four parties strength in Parliament. Power alternates between two familiar parties and their tiny "add-ons".
With just two changes of government in 15 years the system has proven stable. It has been deservedly endorsed at a referendum. With a tweak or two it can be even better.