Dialogue: Parliament more effective as amateur winter sport

The surest way of improving Parliament would be to replace professional politicians with part-time citizen MPs, writes RICHARD PREBBLE*.

Remember when rugby was a winter sport? The idea of playing in February, the hottest month of the year, would have been regarded as lunacy. And the players were all amateurs. They played for the love of the game and earned their living doing something else.

The same used to apply to politics - the country's biggest sport. (Yes, it's more popular than rugby - that's why it is on the front pages and rugby is on the back.)

In the old days, Parliament was strictly a winter sport. The House of Representatives did not meet until the cows had dried off and the farmers had time to think about the nation.

Parliament started sitting in May. Most years, all the business worth doing was done by October.

When I was first elected in 1975, Sir Robert Muldoon never brought Parliament together before May - usually to coincide with Labour's annual conference, just to muck it up.

An MP's job was regarded as part-time until 1973 when the Higher Salaries Commission, without public consultation, changed our constitution in a fundamental way. The commission ruled that MPs were now full-time professionals.

MPs were to be paid as if politics - a job for which the only qualification is that you are on the electoral roll - was a profession.

Once MPs had recovered from their astonishment, they naturally accepted the pay rise.

As time went by, they realised that if they were being paid as full-time professionals, they had better start being full-time.

As Parkinson's Law says - work expands to fill the time available.

Select committees started meeting even when Parliament was not sitting and the parliamentary sessions started getting longer. The standard of parliamentary debate fell. The debating chamber began to turn into a kindergarten. The cost of running Parliament steadily increased.

It's been downhill ever since.

Now, we are debating whether we should have 120 MPs or 99, and whether to stick with MMP, go back to first-past-the-post, or change to another voting system.

A parliamentary select committee has just reported, after careful consideration and months of listening to evidence, that we should have 120 MPs and keep MMP.

What a surprise. Did anyone expect that those elected by the present system would criticise it?

Frankly, the committee's report was a waste of time. But most of the criticism is far too limited. Just going from 120 to 99 MPs won't make a difference. Going from first-past-the-post to MMP has not altered the fact that whatever the system, we are still electing politicians.

I think the public's real concern is that Parliament is now being run by a class of professional politicians who are out of touch.

What people really want are citizen politicians who are part of the community to go to Wellington and represent us.

I like the Swiss parliamentary system. The Swiss, widely believed to be a model of democracy, have just seven full-time cabinet ministers for a nation of five million people. The rest of their MPs don't get paid.

The Swiss Parliament rarely finds more than three months' business a year. Local issues are solved by local people.

If we didn't pay MPs, we wouldn't care how many there were. The Swiss have 246. That's real local representation.

Then we could attract really talented people to be MPs. When I was first elected, Parliament had QCs and business and community leaders.

Now, we find almost half the Labour caucus is comprised of former trade union officials. About 40 per cent of Labour MPs are former teachers or university lecturers. (Some have been both unionists and teachers, if you're wondering how the figures add up.)

Parliament is bereft of anyone with business experience. If Act was not in Parliament, there would be no one with experience as a director of a publicly listed company.

So why not make Parliament an amateur winter sport again? Why not have a Parliament of part-time citizen politicians who are part of the community, who can focus on the real issues and not waste time - and taxpayer money - debating trivia?

Who knows, we might start a trend. Rugby might go back to being a winter sport as well.

* Richard Prebble is the leader of Act.