Statistics New Zealand has finished crunching the numbers from the census and recent Maori electoral option, and come up with the shape of our electorate for the next five years: there will be one new general seat, and no new Maori seats. The Maori Party will be disappointed, but they'll have another chance in five years.
Meanwhile the creation of another seat continues the slow erosion of the list seats, from 51 to 50. We're nowhere near the danger zone yet, but eventually we are going to have to do something to correct this if we want to maintain proportionality. We can't really reapportion the electorates again - they're already about as large as can be managed - so the easiest fix is to regularly increase the size of Parliament by adding new list seats. Legislatively, its easy enough to do - as we saw last year, the relevant section of the Electoral Act is not entrenched - but it is likely to cause even more wailing and gnashing of teeth from the grumpies who think that we need fewer politicians, not more.
Probably fine until 2026 or so but at some stage will need to go to 125 at least to avoid overhang.
ReplyDeleteOf course we already have that with Maori seats and maybe with Anderton if he stands again.
I was thinking a regular increase every 15 years or so. And ideally to an odd number so we are less likely to have deadlock.
ReplyDeleteAs for overhang, its an artefact of having electorates, not of how they are allocated.
Sure, we're not near the danger zone in terms of having overhangs, but percentage of parliament elected through party lists is steadily decreasing. Some will say that's no bad thing, but it will reduce the numbers of people who represent a definite constituency, but for whatever reason would unlikely win an electorate.
ReplyDelete(totally unrelated, but blogger's word verification is pretty annoying at the moment - often takes several attempts to post a comment)
The more people we have then the more political representitives we need.
ReplyDelete120 MPs would be fine if the North and South Islands grew at similar rates.
ReplyDeleteThe more political representatives, the better only if they are all after for the common good and not for there own personal agenda.
ReplyDeleteListening to Sharples tonight talking about immigration made me think getting rid of the relic of the Maori has to happen sooner rather than later. The sort of racist/apartheid party line he was spouting was exactly the sort of thing the 5% threshold was designed to keep out of parliament.
ReplyDeleteAre the electorates really too big to be reapportioned? Some of the Maori seats are huge, and don't seem to have been all that very bad. Not exactly easy to deal with, true, but not impossible. Moreover, I suspect that the general public would rather let electorates get large than see Parliament expand (they wanted it to be reduced to 99, after all). Increasing the number of MPs might be too controversial for Parliament to agree to.
ReplyDeleteThis is the electronic age; abolish MPs and give all voters an electronic vote. Each time the division-bells go, we can send a message to everyone's Blackberry, and get their vote back.
ReplyDeleteEvery man a king.
M'lud
Next the Maori party will be calling for lebestraum.
ReplyDeleteNo, not that! Cask wine is so passé.
ReplyDeleteOr perhaps you mean lebensraum? If you're going to make unreasonable Nazi comparisons, at least get the German right.
Ahh l(i)ebestraum - love's dream. Pita is a romantic kind of guy but are you sure that he is Lizst fan? He's not even a 'lizst' mp!! I think he's more a Deep Purple and Herbs type.
ReplyDeleteInsider
I think wine is passe (how'd you get that mark over the "e"?).
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's unreasonable, as far as I heard him, Pita said that unless immigration is curbed, Maori will no longer be the most significant minority (?) in NZ.
This is startling, because,
1. is he inferring that this has been Government policy?
2. what would he suggest the MP would do about this inequity?
3. Tariana is not shy in using the old analogies herself, remember?
I admit it is a little hard to discern what they are really saying...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.stuff.co.nz/3947976a6160.html
Reset it to 60-60 (yes, that would require 75% of Parliament) and then every time a new electorate is created add another list seat. And re-apportion after every second census with a 10% leeway.
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