Mai Chen on MMP

Mai Chen has an article in NZ Lawyer on MMP. Some interesting aspects:

The skills for which the Right Honourable Helen Clark was often lauded, in governing under MMP (with a minority Government and disparate ‘support’ parties), seem to have been easily acquired by her successor, the Honourable John Key, despite Key never having been in Government. The new Prime Minister is now operating comfortably with a minority government under the MMP system after only six months in office. So comfortably, in fact, that this may be undermining public sentiment for change. It ain’t broke, Kiwis may say, so why fix it?

I’ve observed this also. The mroe sucessful John Key is at managing a minority Government, the less likely people are to vote for a change away from MMP.

Mai Chen then looks at options for reforming MMP, rather than dumping it. She focuses on the criticism that ACT got five MPs on 3.65% party vote and NZ First got none on 4.07% and proposes:

(a) Reducing the threshold to three per cent or removing the threshold altogether, which would likely result in a greater proliferation of smaller parties; or

(b) Requiring all parties to meet the five per cent threshold before they can have any List seats over and above their constituency seats. In the 2008 election, this would have meant that ACT would only have one MP, and the only minor party to obtain any List seats would be the Greens who won 6.72 per cent of the party vote.

I’ve long supported the threshold being 4%, not 5%, as recommended by the Royal Commission. If the threshold was lowered to 4%, there would be a stronger case for removing the back door method of an electorate seat to get List MPs.