Despite the introduction of the second ballot system by the Liberal Government, interest in a proportional representation system for both the lower house and the Legislative Council the upper house continued. Similar to the STV referendum option that would be offered a century later the STV option proposes between 24 and 30 electorates, each with 3 to 7 MPs , Fowlds bill proposed an STV system comprising 19 electorates each returning between 3 and 6 MPs.
The Bill failed to progress beyond its first reading with the collapse of the Ward Government in Other parties were also now becoming attracted to proportional representation. In its manifesto the Reform Party pledged that members of the Legislative Council would be elected by a system of proportional representation; in its manifesto the Labour Party promised to abolish the Legislative Council and to introduce a system of proportional representation for the House of Representatives as well. When Thomas MacKenzie formed a government in he introduced a Bill that would have introduced a system of preferential voting for the House of Representatives that adopted elements of the systems then in place in the Australian states of Victoria, Queensland, and Western Australia.
Although there were further attempts to change the voting system, all subsequent parliamentary elections until were conducted under the FPP voting system.
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The use of the system by local councils was optional and remained so until the mids. Christchurch City Council employed it in local elections in , , , and ; Woolston Borough Council used it in and More recently, the Local Electoral Act gave electors and councils an opportunity to decide which electoral system they wanted for the local authority elections — FPP or STV. Each year, from to , and again in , W. McCombs introduced similar proportional representation bills — both bills were variants of STV.
Promising to introduce a preferential voting system, the United Party, under Ward, came to power in In office United sent the Chief Electoral Officer to Australia to examine its operation there, but further interest in implementing change receded following the death in office of Ward in In the mids, with the election of the first Labour Government in and the emergence of the National Party in , the reign of the two-party system in New Zealand began.
Subsequently, debate about alternative systems of voting disappeared rapidly. By mid-century the FPP system had facilitated the consolidation of a two-party system, dominated by the Labour and National parties. Firstly, a number of closely contested elections helped to undermine the idea that the characteristic dis-proportionality of the FPP system was unproblematic. For example, in the National Party won 0.
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Two elections demonstrated that FPP could not always be relied upon to reflect the popular will by rejecting the incumbent government. In the Labour Party won more of the votes In the Labour Party won In over 10, more voters a plurality voted for the opposition than for the incumbent government; in 4, did. Both elections served to illustrate that, in requiring the plurality rule to apply at the electorate level, FPP was a system that could prevent it applying at the national level.
The Hobbit and the Middle Earth in New Zealand
As Table 1 above illustrates, FPP is a system that is sensitive to small shifts in overall support. In for example, although the National Party won a total of 10, fewer votes than Labour, National was able to form a Government on the basis of more votes than Labour spread across seven marginal seats. Similarly, in , a Labour Government would have occurred had voters in three marginal electorates voted for the Labour Party rather than the National Party. The inference drawn from the voting power of electors in marginal electorates was that it appeared to undermine the notion of political equality.
This caused New Zealand politics to be pitched to what parties saw as the aspirations of this slice of the electorate. The Royal Commission on the Electoral System noted that over half of all votes in the election fell into the wasted vote category. FPP tended to exclude from the New Zealand parliament those parties whose support was significant nationally but which was geographically dispersed, rather than concentrated in particular electorates. Interest in electoral reform was boosted by third parties attracting increasing levels of support, but winning few seats.
Over the period from to , candidates for parties — other than National or Labour — won a total of 11 seats, five of which were won in the and elections. For the election, the Social Credit and Values parties made proportional representation a campaign issue. A third contributing factor prompting renewed interest in voting reform was the emergence of new social and political movements. In combination with demographic changes from increased immigration from the Pacific Islands, these movements politicised a number of issues, and helped new political parties emerge.
Their repeated failure to gain parliamentary representation, however, added to concerns that FPP was a system that delivered parliaments unable to reflect the composition of society as a whole — a society that was rapidly changing. One of the most visible examples of that was the gender composition of Parliament. Although women had first become eligible to stand for election in , it was before the first woman, Elizabeth McCombs, was elected to Parliament in a by-election held following the death of her husband.
Of the 2, members elected to Parliament at general elections from to were women compared to 1, men elected over the same period. Even after the introduction of MMP, however, women are still finding it difficult to win selection as candidates for the electorate vote, which is of course still conducted under FPP. The party list mechanism under MMP clearly helps to rebalance the gender composition of Parliament as well as enabling a more diverse range of candidates in terms of ethnicity and age to be elected.
Much positive talk will be heard in the next few weeks about matters of all kinds from people who want to be elected to Parliament. Unfortunately, too many of them will fail to recall the words they used when seeking election, and they will ignore the commitments they made to the electorate once they have been in Parliament for a year or two. So electoral reform is necessary, but attitudinal reform is even more important.
Bolger, [35].
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The final impetus for voting system reform followed the attempts by successive administrations to respond to economic developments in the s and s. Labour supporters were similarly dismayed when, following its election in , the Labour Government subsequently abandoned its traditional commitment to state interventionism, state ownership and a regulated economy. Table 2 shows that this was particularly true in the New Zealand case which did not have the types of institutional checks and balances on the policy process found in other Westminster countries such as a codified constitution, upper house or elected head of state.
Indeed, prior to the introduction of MMP for the election, New Zealand was regarded as one of the purest examples of the Westminster system of a fused executive-legislature — perhaps even unique among western democracies. That many of the most common institutional checks on executive power were not present in New Zealand was recognised at the highest levels. The most recent example of that…was the sale of Telecom.
The House went into urgency immediately after formal business and went non-stop through all its legislative proceedings, and 20 or 25 hours later the law had been changed and procedures had been put in place to sell a substantial asset such as Telecom, contrary to the overwhelming view of New Zealanders. Reform is needed to prevent that kind of abuse. New Zealand is the only nation in the OECD not to have at least one of the institutional constraints on executive power as outlined in Table 2.
Of those OECD nations using a form of proportional representation, similar percentage shares emerge. Interestingly, significant differences emerge in OECD nations using semi-proportional and non-proportional voting systems. These figures should not, of course, be taken to mean that New Zealand is completely lacking in other institutional forms that serve to check and balance the use of executive power.
New Zealand does have a constitution, part of which is written, a Bill of Rights Act, an independent judiciary, executive accountability to Parliament, a recognised opposition, constitutional conventions, and citizens initiated referenda, among others. They do confirm, however, that New Zealand is unique among the OECD in lacking any of the formal institutional checks on executive power set out in Table 2. Yet in the absence of any progress on introducing the types of institutional constraints on executive control found among OECD nations — and in the face of continuing voter disillusionment with the perceived lack of accountability of single party government — it seemed inevitable that attention would instead turn to reform of the electoral system.
The Early Voting System and Reform Efforts
People wanted an end to broken promises; electoral reform offered hope for change. In both the and election campaigns the Labour Party promised to establish a Royal Commission to enquire into a number of issues relating to the electoral system. The Royal Commission concluded that, of the alternative voting systems it considered, the MMP voting system ensured fairness between political parties and was likely to provide more effective representation of minority and special interest groups.
The Commission recommended that a binding referendum should be held on the introduction of MMP. However, in the Electoral Law Committee, in its inquiry into the report of the Royal Commission, recommended that the plurality system be retained and the following year the Government announced that a referendum on MMP would not be carried out. Nevertheless, public and parliamentary pressure for voting reform continued.
A Labour MP and the Deputy Speaker, John Terris, introduced unsuccessfully a private members bill in May that would enable an indicative referendum on proportional representation to be held. Dunedin Police cordoned off an area of the suburb of Pine Hill early this afternoon, after receiving a report of a person with a firearm.
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