100 MPs

Barbara Stewart’s bill to reduce Parliament to 100 MPs has been drawn and will be voted on in a few weeks.

It is worth looking at who would not be in Parliament if there had been 100 MPs only at the last election. This is assuming the reduction comes from the list only.

Labour would lose 8 MPs, National 9 MPs, NZ First 1 and Greens 1. In theory also Maori Party one but as they have overhang so would be Parliament of 102 MPs. Now which MPs would not be there:

Greens – Metira Turei and Nador Tanczos would have missed out on e-day to have Turei come in to replace Rod Donald after his death.

NZ First – Pita Paraone would have missed out. Ironically Stewart herself would just make it in – in spot 96.

National – Paula Bennett, Jackie Blue, Nathan Guy, Kate Wilkinson, Mark Blumsky, Chris Auchinvole, Tau Henare, Nicky Wagner and Chris Finlayson all out.

Labour – Darien Fenton, Sue Moroney, Moana Mackey, Dave Heroera, Russell Fairbrother, David Parker, Maryan Street and Georgina Beyer all out.

Personally I don’t support the reduction to 100 (in fact think 140 is the right number). At 100 MPs overhang will become a more common problem as every five years the number of list MPs will shrink due to new electorate seats being created.

You could reduce the number of electorate seats to say 50 but some already huge seats like West Coast – Tasman would become too large for an MP to easily cover.