Philip Temple: Before MMP referendum, we need a considered review

Photo / Paul Estcourt

The Minister of Justice, Simon Power, indicated that he would soon present a paper to Cabinet on the proposed referendum on MMP. Presumably this will hold true to National's election promise, that it will be held "without any further consideration". Meaning no consultation with the voters, no review or inquiry, no select committee hearings.

That is not good enough. For it is about now that we should remind ourselves, and the Government, that the voting system belongs to us - the voters - and not the politicians. That it is unacceptable for the National Party to simply tell us what kind of question we will be getting in the proposed referendum, and when, and what might happen afterwards.

Although holding a referendum on MMP is perfectly reasonable, there has been no groundswell of demand for a simple yes or no vote - except from disaffected First Past the Posters whose heyday was the politics of Rogernomics and Ruthanesia. Who even look back with nostalgia to the days of compulsory military training. Rather, there has been a growing feeling that we should have a look at how MMP has been operating.

"Kick the tyres" as John Key put it, see if they need a bit more air, whether the plugs need changing. MMP could do with a general service and warrant of fitness. But we do not need to sell the car.

Before we have a referendum, we need a considered review of our electoral system, maybe even a successor to the Royal Commission on the Electoral System that produced a report recommending MMP a generation ago.

Then we can all have our say on what we like or dislike about MMP and give it the tune it needs. Followed by a referendum on whether or not we want to drive ahead with it.

It would be, in fact, dishonest of the Government to propose a simple yes-no referendum when it knows that MMP is a modern, flexible system, capable of being modified, and one that has generally served us well over the past 13 years. It is not an unfair, inflexible and antediluvian system like First Past the Post (FPP).

This is 2009 not 1909. Even those who would like to go backwards to FPP realise that the voting public would not swallow that particular dead rat.

In a display of seeming flexibility, they agree there should be a "degree" of proportionality in our voting system and suggest Supplementary Member as a replacement for MMP. As its abbreviation indicates, however, we would be submitting ourselves to a degree of electoral sado-masochism in adopting a system that is nothing more than a proportional sham - FPP with knobs on.

We would be lining ourselves up with countries with much shorter democratic histories such as Armenia, Kazakhstan and South Korea. It was also the electoral option least favoured by New Zealanders in the "preferendum" held in 1992 to ascertain which alternative voting system we preferred.

Kiwis can be justifiably proud that we were the first English-speaking country to adopt MMP and that both Scotland and Wales have followed our example. On the other hand, as it has done in the past, FPP has kept just one party in power in London for 13 years. That is not healthy democracy.

But if the proponents of FPP or SM want to put their case, let them do so to a commission or review committee run by an independent body such as the Electoral Commission. And not try to rort the democratic process by engineering a simplistic yes-no referendum on MMP. That is first past the post in action, not the fair proportional way we have become accustomed to since 1996.

Our democracy, our electoral system, is too important to be submitted to such a sudden death process. And for it to be set up by a politically motivated Cabinet decree. The electoral system is ours, not theirs.

* Philip Temple is a Dunedin author who was given a Wallace Award for his "contribution to public understanding of electoral matters".