A long haul to the poll on polls

OPINION: Eight years till action? That's long-scale electoral system change for you. By the time it comes to implementing MMP change (or cementing the system in place) in 2017, some of us will be dead, kids now at intermediate school will be voting, and the entire electorate will be sick of listening to (and paying for) electoral system education campaigns.

Not that these campaigns will make much difference, in spite of the cost.

The simple focal point of MMP (mixed member proportional representation) - the party vote is the vote that counts - is still lost on a good slice of the electorate after more than a decade of "education".

So you can imagine the confusion when the good people at the Electoral Commission try to explain the diabolically complicated single transferable vote (STV) system, or even preferential voting (PV).

The simple, understandable supplementary member system (SM), which is a reasonable compromise between first-past-the- post (FPP) and proportional, is the way to go in the Electoral Cup Final playoff. It was nominated by the 1986 royal commission as the best system if the country did not adopt MMP.

Under SM, around three- quarters of our MPs would be democratically elected by electorates, with around a quarter being appointed proportionally according to the party vote.

FPP still has a considerable following, according to some polling, but it is not ideal in New Zealand's unicameral system. It would lead to demands for an upper house, to counter the elected dictatorship of the single chamber, and who on earth would want the cost of that?

When our upper house, the Legislative Council, was established in 1853 it was supposed to be limited to 15 members, but rorts being what they are it had extended itself to 54 at times before prime minister Sid Holland abolished it in 1951.

Polling of the electorate would show a list of desires. Fewer MPs for a start. (Possible under FPP or SM). A better weighting of democratically-elected MPs, who represent electorates, compared with list MPs appointed by the parties (SM provides this). More transparency around the appointment of party lists and a voter say in their composition. Correcting anomalies, such as ACT getting five seats (because it won one electorate seat) when NZ First, which won nearly 10,000 more votes, got no seats.

MMP supporters, apart from launching a vitriolic pre-emptive attack on SM ("it stands for sado-masochism") argue, with their blinkers firmly attached, that there is no evidence of the tail wagging the dog under MMP. That depends on the size of the wag. I recall public service mandarins reacting in shock when NZ First leader Winston Peters managed to screw more than $600 million extra out of Labour for his MFAT vote as the price for remaining onside.

After his barnstorming justice reforms of National's first "100 days of action", Justice Minister Simon Power certainly took a tentative approach on this, with an indicative vote scheduled for the next election, a vote-off for the election after and implementation in 2017.

He argued the delay was needed in order to have a public education campaign and to coincide referendums with general election polls to save cost. Sceptics would take the view that he has placed the difficult political issue on a timetable to oblivion.

Businessman Peter Shirtcliffe, who backed FPP in the last playoff, argued that a decision could be sorted at the 2011 election with a two-stage ballot. Paper A would ask simply whether change was desired and paper B would offer alternative systems, to be selected by the voter in order of preference. Two years was plenty of time for an education campaign, he suggested. That sounds fair enough, if one ignores the irony of preferential voting being used on paper B.

Earlier electoral system changes did not take such a dilatory approach. The indicative MMP vote was held in 1992, the confirming vote the next year, and the new system was applied at the following election.

Holland took only three years to abolish the Legislative Council, even though that required complicated law changes in Britain, as well as here, and the appointment of a "suicide squad" of 20 new councillors to carry the vote for oblivion.

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