Peters is our First Past the Post hangover

by frog

There have been a few grumblings that the Winston Peters funding scandal is the fault of MMP.

John Nichols argued in the Herald on Friday:

Winston Peters’ value to both Labour and National has become abundantly clear. Both parties are pulling their punches over the donations allegations for fear of alienating him as an ally or future ally.

He’s forgetting that the Winston Peters phenomenon existed in New Zealand parliament for 11 years prior to MMP – including his first stint as a cabinet minister during 1990-91.

Nichols continued:

For instance, under MMP, Gordon Copeland, a United Future List MP, can abandon his party, switch voting allegiances and still stay on as an MP. Copeland has no mandate to be in Parliament, yet the rules allow him to continue as if he did.

In fact people may like to recall the 1993 election where Labour and the Alliance with 1,016,863 votes to National’s 673,892 (50 percent more) had 3 less seats than National. That’s not including the 2 seats and 8% of the vote Winston’s newly established NZ First Party received. During that term, as things started to fall apart for National, the recently defected Labour MP Peter Dunne, along with two other Labour colleagues, Clive Matthewson and Margaret Austin, jumped ship to form a new party (United Future) and enter into coalition with National.  This began Dunne’s long and venerable tradition of smelling which way the wind was blowing before deciding what his principles might be for the occasion.

Meanwhile Garth George also had a ‘gutsful of MMP‘ a day earlier.

We gag at the obnoxious wheeling and dealing that goes into forming minority government coalitions; and we cringe when we see the compromises which such coalitions entail, and the paucity of decisive governance.

I note that Lianne Dalziel gave the counterpoint to this view in a recent speech to a university politics class:

It is not rocket science, but if everyone sitting round the table has the same background, the same school tie, the same experience of life, then all of the risks and opportunities will not be easily identified. I believe firmly that diversity of gender, of ethnic and cultural background, of professional disciplines and life experience, makes for better representation and better decision-making.

Now I’m not sure that inviting NZ First and United Future to the table is the best way to bring diversity to government but I support the general point Dalziel is making.

I would have though George would welcome the possibility that MMP offers that a party could come into parliament that represented his views, because the two main ones certainly won’t. (We’re always there for you Garth).

That which George and Nicholls complain of has been going on long before MMP, and should we be foolish enough to switch to an electoral system that allows governments to be put together that do not represent true majority of the votes cast we’ll still see it continue.  It’s just that more often that not it will be behind the closed doors of fractured old parties like National and Labour.

Now when ACT and National negotiate it is out in the open and voters can vote for which side they prefer.  By comparison during the early 1990s ACT and National both existed, it was just they only made up one party, rather than two and voters had no influence. (Well, two if you include all the ACT-olytes in Labour).

No matter what you think about Peters, it’s not hard to find one in twenty people who agree broadly with his view on the world.  That’s not a fault of MMP, but of our collective failure to convince those voters of the paucity of his politics.