Matt McCarten: Despite a rocky start, MMP has delivered

Jenny Shipley took political cynicism to a low level and Winston Peters went fishing. File Photo / Paul Estcourt

According to a poll in the NZ Herald this week, most of us support MMP as our preferred electoral system. It was always going to take a few elections for it to settle in.

It got off to a shaky start in 1996 when Winston Peters went fishing instead of attending coalition talks. Then he jumped into bed with the National Party after consistently indicating through the election campaign he'd go with Labour.

Shortly after, Jenny Shipley rolled Jim Bolger as prime minister and ousted Peters as well. She took political cynicism to a new low by having her illegitimate government survive on a single vote courtesy of Alliance defector Alamein Kopu. Predictably, New Zealanders went through buyers' remorse.

However, I've believed most of the MMP teething problems were caused by the players, including the junior coalition leaders. Their entire parliamentary experiences were of one-party government, where every MP was required to support the majority caucus no matter what. The fact that Bolger, Helen Clark, Alliance leader Jim Anderton nor Act leaders Roger Douglas and Richard Prebble personally did not support MMP from the start didn't help either.

In 1999, Labour and the Alliance tried to make it work but even their government collapsed after the junior partner was asked to swallow one too many rats by expecting their MPs to line up behind the invasion of Afghanistan. Clark learned from the experience and allowed her new coalition partners in subsequent terms more freedom.

The main reason MMP now has majority support is our politicians have finally worked out how to manage it.

John Key, thankfully, wasn't around under first-past-the-post and seems to have mastered the challenge of accepting diversity as well as ensuring stable government. He's done it by keeping his partners out of Cabinet while ensuring their leaders get enough baubles to keep them sweet. When he wants a right-wing policy passed, he can get Act on side and when he needs a more moderate position he can always count on the Maori Party. Everyone's happy.

Of course, MMP needs an overhaul with some of the glaring rorts addressed. Just two examples that need attention are incumbent electorate MPs being dumped but slipping back into Parliament on their party list; and the situation where Rodney Hide gets the Epsom seat courtesy of National - enabling his party to get its list vote proportion of MPs. It is outrageous that Act gets fewer votes than NZ First yet gets five MPs and the latter gets none just because they didn't win a seat.

I'm confident MMP will pass in this year's referendum. If retained, it will be overhauled, when I have no doubt it will be improved. That aside, it's a fact fewer people have little confidence in going back to the old system. Neither does anyone have the energy to consider a new option.

After all, we shouldn't forget that the first-past-the-post system twice delivered Robert Muldoon a government with fewer votes than Labour.

Before MMP, governments had unfettered power. In 1984, a right-wing cabal captured the Lange government. Without a mandate, these plotters destroyed thousands of New Zealand lives and flogged off our national assets. Six years later, their ideological allies did the same thing under National. Only MMP saved us from right-wing extremism.

Those who say it's too complicated and frustrates good government don't know what they are talking about.

The first democratic country - the United States - has a written constitution that is interpreted by a political partisan-appointed Supreme Court. Then there's a lower house and an upper house. Budgetary items and political appointments such as ambassadors and judges have to be voted on by the Senate with, it seems, at least a 60 per cent vote. To manage the country, the president appoints a Cabinet made up of non-elected members.

Consequently that country's politics are gridlocked. Compared with that, MMP serves us well.

* A quick update to those readers who have inquired about my cancer. I had surgery over Christmas and it appears my odds have improved remarkably. I may be around longer after all.