Media Release:

Auckland Business leader Ashley Church is calling on people to reject MMP in tomorrow’s referendum.

Mr Church, who currently heads the Newmarket Business Association, was a vocal opponent of MMP prior to the 1993 referendum and says that all of the concerns he expressed at that time have been realised since the system was implemented.

Mr Church has outlined 6 reasons why people should reject MMP tomorrow:

1. Confusion. After over 15 years, there are still a very large number of voters who don’t understand how MMP works and don’t know whether the List, or the Electorate vote, is more important. The procedure for electing an MP and decide who will form a Government should be simple, straightforward, and easy to understand. MMP isn’t.

2. Strategic Voting. Voting for one party in order to get another elected, such as voting ACT in Epsom to get National into Government, is one of the perverse results of the MMP system. Having to vote for one party in order to get another elected is counter to the basic principles of democracy Voting should be simple and straightforward and based on the principle of supporting the party you want in Government.

3. Disproportional Representation. The 3 yearly ritual of allowing small parties (sometimes VERY small parties) to decide who they will go into coalition with (and therefore, who will be Government) puts far too much power in the hands of the few, over the many. Parties which enjoy widespread voter support should have power in proportion to that support – they should not be able to be held to ransom by small parties of extremists with unpopular agendas as allowed by the current system

4. Backdoor MPS. Another insidious feature of MMP is the way it allows people who have been defeated in a fair electorate contest to get into Parliament by the backdoor, through the MMP Party List. If a candidate has been rejected by the voters – that rejection should stand.

5. Unstable Government. One of the repeated consequences of coalition Government, in this country, is the reality of unstable Government. One particular party has made an art form of suddenly finding a conscience 6 to 12 months out from an election and engineering its departure from the coalition – thus throwing the country into turmoil and forcing the creation of bizarre short-term coalitions. Any system which allows a small party to bring down the Government, as MMP does, should be utterly rejected.

6. Short term thinking. Because the major parties have to keep one eye on the needs of their smaller coalition partners, long-term thinking is virtually impossible under MMP. The concept of a nation-building plan which spans several electoral cycles is virtually impossible under MMP because the makeup of each Parliament differs so much depending on the configuration of parties which form the Government. Governments should be able to plan for changes that take more than 3 or 6 years to implement – but under MMP they can’t.

Ends

(Mr Church writes as an independent commentator and is not affiliated with any Electoral System Lobby Group, in any way)

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