Philip Temple: Time to fine-tune MMP

There were two MMP elections last weekend. One in Germany and one here. Yes, I have put that the right way around. MMP was created in Germany, has been operating there for 56 years, and our system is based on it, as recommended by the Royal Commission on the Electoral System in 1986.

But there have been two flaws in the translation of MMP that have contributed to our still having eight parties in Parliament after four MMP elections, when the Germans at the same point had only three.

First, the one electorate rule.

For a party to gain representation in Germany it must gain at least 5 per cent of the party vote, as here, or three electorate seats. Because the number of German electorates is much greater, the commission recommended that parties here should just have a one-electorate hurdle.

It seemed fair enough at the time, but it has turned out to be much easier for a minor party to win and hold one electorate here than three in Germany.

It is not much of a hurdle at all.

Look at what would have happened in this election if the one-electorate rule had not applied. It is unlikely that Epsom electors would have bothered splitting their vote and Act would have disappeared. Both Peter Dunne and Jim Anderton would remain only as independent electorate MPs, hangovers from first-past-the-post days.

The number of parties would, in effect, have been reduced to five.

It is time to either abolish the one-electorate rule or make it a two-electorate rule.

Second, the Maori seats. These are an anomaly under MMP, a system based on national political proportionalities, not on constituencies of group interests. Separate seats based on race are in essence undemocratic. In this election these have led to the introduction of another party into parliament and an overhang of two seats, increasing the number of seats needed for the creation of a working government.

Does the German experience have any lessons for us in this area? For the first two MMP elections in Germany, threshold provisions were loose and allowed for diverse political and ethnic representation at the end of World War II.

The first German MMP Parliament had nine parties plus independents. But after three elections, political integration was complete and the number of parties were down to three: a main party of the centre left, the Social Democrats; a main party of the centre right, the Christian Democrats (in permanent coalition with the Bavarian Christian Social Union); and a centre minor party, the Free Democrats, which took between 6 and 12 per cent of the vote.

For six terms spanning 24 years, German governments were coalitions of either the SPD or CDU/CSU with the FDP.

The Greens arrived at the 1983 election and then, after reunification in 1990, a left-wing minor party with its origins in the old East German Communist Party. That's the situation today, with two main parties taking 70 to 80 per cent of the vote and three minor parties each having between 5 and 10 per cent.

Looking at the German experience, and recognising the anomaly of separate Maori seats, the commission suggested that if they were abolished there should be a transition period of two or three elections when Maori parties should have to meet a reduced threshold, enabling political integration into the MMP process.

It is clearly undemocratic that voters on the Maori roll can have their cake and eat it by voting for Labour with their MMP party vote and electing Maori Party MPs in reserved electorates in which no one else can vote.

There is now a majority parliamentary consensus that the Maori electorates should go. Their continued existence is likely to bring more criticism of MMP.

Political scientists who should know better have been saying that this election showed voters have swung back to a first-past-the-post system in MMP drag. But what it has really shown is that voters are trying to reach the real MMP model of two main parties supported by two or three minor parties that are viable in the long term.

If the one-electorate rule were to be reformed and the Maori electorates dissolved then we could look forward to elections that produced that configuration.

Until these reforms are made we will continue to have complicated and unsatisfactory negotiations after election night and the potential for unstable minority governments.

Unusually, the Germans have also ended up with a stalemate. During the election campaign the polls showed the CDU/CSU consistently 4 to 10 percentage points ahead of the SPD, with the FDP and Greens polling at about 7 per cent, giving a mandate to a traditional CDU/CSU/FDP coalition.

But on election night the CDU/CSU ended up less than 1 per cent ahead. Although the FDP received almost 10 per cent of the vote, that was not enough to give parties of the right a majority.

The left could achieve a majority if it were willing to incorporate in a coalition not only the Greens, with 8.1 per cent of the vote, but also the Left Alliance with 8.7 per cent. But the SPD sees political suicide going into coalition with a far left party.

The Germans, unlike New Zealanders, have no experience of managing minority MMP governments and may prefer to go for a "grand coalition" of the two main parties, which has occurred in the past. Interesting MMP times for both countries over the next few weeks.

* Philip Temple is a Dunedin writer who in 1998 received a Wallace Award from the Electoral Commission for his outstanding contributions to electoral matters.