Austin Mitchell: MMP no paradise but it beats the rest

Much as I'd love to, I can't vote in this election though I've a better right to comment on it than my fellow non-voters the Exclusive Brethren - or Exclusive Bolivians, as I heard them called on 1ZB talkback.

I've always taken an interest in New Zealand elections, being a political Rip Van Winkle who co-authored the first New Zealand election book, on the l960 election.

It was called New Zealand Politics In Action although unsympathetic critics - all New Zealanders reviewing books about their own country are unsympathetic critics - suggested that the "in" and the "action" should be all one word.

That hurt me, because however much the natives claim to be bored stiff with their elections and pissed off with their politicians, both excite me because they are one of the few forms of excitement left to a geriatric politician who has spent so long failing the practicals.

This is the most exciting election I've seen since the giants of yesteryear - such as Lange, Kirk and Muldoon - slugged it out.

As a refugee from Britain's May election I see extraordinary parallels. In each case a Labour government which presided over a long period of economic growth is telling it's people, "You've got it good. Keep it that way," then wondering why it doesn't get gibbering gratitude. The Opposition is trying to distract attention from this by squeezing every boil on the bum of the body politic, from race to regulation and taxes.

Conservative parties from Bush to Britain now clamour for tax cuts- the only policy they have because they believe that is the only way to stop feeding the beast (their name for the public sector).

Yet it's difficult for them to pretend that they've discovered an elixir of economics that has eluded previous finance ministers - cutting taxes while maintaining services.

Those people who assure me that New Zealanders will fall for it because they like a gamble are dead wrong.

It would be sexist to say that in each country Labour has the prettiest leader, so I'll leave that to Paul Holmes.

Yet there is the similarity that because Labour has the longer-standing leaders the Opposition focuses every available grumble on them (although Helen Clark has skilfully evaded the Iraq battering given to Tony Blair), but with new leaders the Opposition tries to dress up monetarist mutton as lamb to make electors forget their new leader's tainted past, whether at the Home Office or the Reserve Bank (both in the Torquemada tradition).

Another similarity is that Blair looked petulant at the electorate's refusal to be as grateful as he thought they should be, and in New Zealand Clark seems baffled by a similar phenomenon.

Apart from the fact that Blair is really a conservative and Helen Clark a social democrat, the real difference between the two elections is MMP.

Don't get me wrong, I support MMP. We should have it in Britain. It keeps the politicians on the shorter leash the electorate wants.

At election time it avoids the British folly of fighting the whole campaign for the benefit of 50 marginal seats while largely ignoring the rest of the country. In New Zealand the parties have to work hardest in the safest seats to get as many votes as possible, ensuring that there is not a high proportion of people thinking, "Why bother voting?"

The benefits of MMP really emerge after elections, ensuring that governments can't drive the steamroller of the elective dictatorship.

In Britain's 200l election and the 2002 New Zealand election, Labour received a comparable share of the vote. Helen Clark had no overall majority and had to share power. Blair had a majority of 164 to do anything he wanted.

In MMP, the power of the people is doubled with two votes which changes elections from a horse race to an exercise in differential calculus.

When talking to New Zealanders throughout the country I'm amazed by two things. First is how much they dislike and generally mistrust their politicians. Friendly comments such as "I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw them" may have been directed at me but I took them to mean either that something has gone dreadfully wrong with the relationship or that New Zealand politicians have been doing something horrible to their poor people.

Or maybe New Zealand electors are just a particularly ungrateful lot.

Second, I've been struck by the abstruse calculations people are making. In my British electorate of Grimsby I just tell them: "Voter give an honest curse, defend the bad against far worse." On that basis, flawed as I am, I still get elected.

In New Zealand I've talked to people who think the best way of helping Labour is by voting Green, National by voting Act (presumably because their leader has no Hyding place) or helping the Greens by voting Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party.

So two votes do give New Zealanders the chance to split hairs. Even if the Archangel Gabriel were to stand for parliament, some would still want to vote for a minor party with big hair in which odd ideas nest.

All this makes polling inconsistent and difficult to read. The media then hype-up those uncertainties to make the game more exciting. I'm more simple-minded than that and haven't lived through the history which gave Peter Dunn so much common sense or made Winston Peters such a stirrer.

So I can't see why this election should defy the old law that "Oppositions don't win. Governments lose."

However many money-off vouchers and glamorous giveaways National comes up with, Labour's economic record is something between good and brilliant. It's doing a serious job of restoring the balances and improving public services, such as health and education, which were so damaged in the 80s and 90s.

There are more people in work, the growth record has been better than that of any other advanced economy, and Clark has avoided major blunders.

So what's the case for change? Like the Exclusive Brethren, I can't express that view in my own vote. My very first vote was for Labour in 1960 and would be again on Saturday if I could still vote in New Zealand.

This election, my New Zealand wife was the first person to vote in Hokitika when special voting opened on August 30. As someone who lacks the gentlemanly instincts of Don Brash, if I ever find it wasn't a vote for Labour, I'll break her arm.

* Austin Mitchell is a British Labour MP