Brian Rudman: MMP referendum a needless distraction

Most voters are still happy with MMP nearly 20 years after Footrots Flats characters sold it to us on TV. Photo / Supplied

The National Government conned its way into office in 2008 with promises of $4 billion in personal tax cuts. Pledges it confessed it couldn't keep in its first Budget, just a few months later. Yet the electorate forgave this broken promise and has continued to give the Key Government massive support in opinion poll after poll. All of which makes its obsession with honouring another election pledge - to hold a referendum on the voting system - rather odd.

There was hardly a groundswell of discontent about MMP at the time this promise was made, except in some of the darker recesses of the National Party, and that situation has not changed. The Herald-DigiPoll survey conducted just before Christmas, shows nearly 51 per cent of voters want to keep the existing Mixed Member Proportional system of voting as opposed to 40 per cent who want a different system. And that was when prompted.

To the vast majority, it just isn't an issue. Yet because Mr Key promised to have a poll on the issue, an act was signed into law just before the Governor-General went on his Christmas holidays, ordaining a referendum on MMP be held at the time of this year's general election.

But only an "indicative" referendum, one that doesn't bind the incoming government to dump MMP if a majority vote against it. The only commitment required is if a majority vote in support of retaining MMP, the Electoral Commission will be required to conduct a public review into ways of possibly improving the system.

It will examine such perennial gripes as the 5 per cent threshold required for a party to enter Parliament, and defeated general seat candidates ending up in Parliament through the backdoor via the party list.

But the results of this review are not binding on the incoming government. As for what happens if a majority vote against continuing with MMP, the act says nothing. All we seem to have is a promise from Mr Key that if he is still around for the 2014 general election, voters will be given a choice between MMP and the most popular of the four alternatives put up for our perusal at this year's referendum.

For this year's referendum is not only asking us to give the thumbs up or down for MMP. There's a second question asking: "If New Zealand were to change to another voting system, which voting system would you choose?"

The options are, First Past the Post, (FPP), Preferential Voting (PV), Single Transferable Vote (STV), and Supplementary Member (SM). We've lived with MMP for nearly 20 years, electing five Governments into office in that time, so you have to be around 40 years old to even remember another voting system - and that was the flawed FPP that led to the change to MMP.

As for the other three nominated systems, only a handful of electoral nerds have ever known how they work. To ask the rest of us to make an informed choice between the four is nonsense.

If one was of a devious mind, you'd presume the Government was using this referendum - like the Rugby World Cup - as a distraction from the real economic woes confronting the country. And as a way of trying to keep its fractious coalition partners under control over the coming months.

The ticking timebomb that is Act on its right flank, is an on-going irritant. Polls show it only takes a bout of silliness in a minor party for the electorate to blame the voting system.

In October last year, following civil war within the leadership of Act, and the resignation of Act MP David Garrett after revelations he stole a dead baby's identity in a passport scam, MMP took a hit. Around a third of voters told TV3 pollsters that as a result of the Act ructions they were less likely to support MMP.

At the time, Act leader Rodney Hide said he was surprised the disillusion wasn't greater, and Mr Key said problems within small parties was likely to undermine confidence in MMP.

Back in the early 1990s, neither of the major parties supported the clipping of their wings that the introduction of MMP was to bring, and neither would, I suspect, be sorry to see it go. For the minor parties - the Maori Party perhaps excepted - it is their lifeblood.

For National, the weapon of not one but two referendums on the issue, stretching through to 2014, must be an attractive disciplinary tool to keep its partners in line. But to the country, what an unnecessary distraction.

Instead of a campaign centred on real issues, politicians will be distracted by having to debate the esoterica of voting systems. Particularly if the business moneybags that led the campaign against MMP 20 years ago, return to the fray. And all for a referendum that will be non-binding. Of all the promises National made in 2008, why did they feel honour-bound to keep this one?