John Roughan: Netherworld of a list MP

In the run up to the last election I did some interviews with newcomers and potential high-risers. One of them, who came with Helen Clark's recommendation, was Labour's Phil Twyford.

He had done impressive work, I remembered, establishing Oxfam in New Zealand in the 1980s. Rare among international charities, it promoted "trade as well as aid" in a way that was more than a slogan.

Twyford was eventually appointed Oxfam International's director of advocacy and campaigns, operating out of Washington DC.

Now, at number 26 on Labour's list, he was a certainty for Parliament but during the conversation he made a point of telling me that what he would really like was to be an electorate MP.

We hadn't been talking about the relative merits of list or electorate representation. He just wanted to say he would really like an electorate.

Why, I asked. "I like being part of a community and utterly connected to it," he said.

There was not much doubt which seat he had in his sights. We were sitting in his old house in Kingsland, comfortably within the boundaries of Mt Albert where he had been a leading light in Labour's organisation since his return from Washington.

A gleam in his eye suggested not only would he inherit the seat but it could happen quite soon. There was speculation before the election that even if she won, Helen Clark would retire within the term.

So much for the best-laid plans. The Byzantine calculations that supposedly caused Twyford not to seek the candidacy last Sunday have been well canvassed.

If his party put the hard word on him to block the return of a defeated Judith Tizard from its list, it would be odd. It is easier to believe it wants the byelection to bring another new face into its team. But either way, it must have been brutal for Twyford.

It leaves him facing a career in the netherworld of a list MP, a rootless, second-class existence for any self-respecting member of the House of Representatives.

List advocates protest the second-class status a little too much. The public cannot hold list seats in the same regard, particularly when they can be a lifeline for electorate rejects. List MPs do not deserve the same status as those who have submitted themselves to individual scrutiny by a body of voters and passed the test.

How long are we going to persist with this system that awards seats in Parliament to party appointees who have never won a personal vote?

The list system could be fixed without discarding MMP. Parties could be awarded the number of seats that reflected their proportion of the vote and the excess over their electorates could be awarded to the party's remaining candidates in order of their electorate vote.

One of the benefits claimed for the party-appointed list system at its conception was its potential to bring in talented people who might not be persuaded to submit themselves to the rigours and indignities of an electorate candidacy.

People like Don Brash and Margaret Wilson. You don't hear that benefit claimed today.

Party-appointed lists would also permit a better gender balance and better representation of ethnic minorities, it was claimed. And they have. But women can win electorates, Maori have their own and appointees for other minorities have yet to be an effective voice.

The worst consequence of the list system is that too many MPs are unknown. Previously, the non-entities were at least known somewhere. They attended events and put their face in the local free-sheet.

These days I often see reference, quite late in a term, to an MP whose name I've never heard. And I'm sure I take much more than an average interest in the membership of Parliament.

The place seems to have acquired a revolving door it didn't have before. List seats must have a high attrition rate between elections. For the party appointee, replaceable without a byelection, it is easy come, easy go.

Judith Tizard, next on Labour's list, will return in the life of this Parliament. Nothing surer.

Last time I saw her she had seriously lost her once-wonderful sense of humour. If she was the reason Phil Twyford was denied Mt Albert, she is going to come back really mad.

Readers of a letter from Government House published on Thursday in reply to last week's column, would have learned that the Governor General attended a breakfast hosted by the Prime Minister at Waitangi on Waitangi Day. The rest of his day's itinerary, set out in the letter, was in Auckland.

The breakfast was for invitees. These days the Queen's representative is rarely seen in public at Waitangi on our national day.