John MacDonald: When MMP isn't proportional, change is needed

Do we need to go back to the drawing board with MMP?

Since the election outcome at the weekend, I’ve become more and more convinced that we need to do more than just shrug our shoulders and accept that we’re going to have 11 extra MPs.

And I’m with this politics professor who is saying today that we definitely need to do something. After the manufactured overhangs on both sides of the House.

Victoria University’s Jack Vowles’ concern is that, with 11 extra seats, Parliament won’t accurately reflect the proportion of party votes cast.

That’s where my thinking has landed too.

I know some people aren’t happy about it because of the extra cost to taxpayers of having more MPs.

I’m not too fussed about that. But I am fussed about the proportional being taken out of MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) by the gaming of the system that’s been done on both the left and the right.

So, if we decided to do something about it, what could we do?

Professor Vowles is saying today that one option could be to do what they did in Germany and exclude candidates in overhang seats.

Which I like the sound of.

When they started getting overhangs, they created more seats in Parliament to maintain the proportional representation.

But that went a bit nuts and they ended up with truckloads of MPs. So that’s when they came up with this idea of capping the number of seats.

What that means, though, and this is probably the only bit about Germany’s solution that I’m a bit wary of, what it means is if there’s an overhang and the numbers are capped some electorate MPs miss out.

And what that means is that everyone tries to avoid creating an overhang at all costs. Because it can mean electorates ending up with no local MP.

Professor Vowles has thought about that and has his own idea of how we could do it slightly differently here.

He’s saying today that if numbers were capped but there was still an overhang, we could let those electorate MPs into Parliament, meaning they could still represent their area, but when there was a vote in Parliament, they wouldn’t be able to take part.

I think that would be overcooking it. I think a straight-out cap on the number of MPs would be the way to go. Because, then, no one would bother trying to get an overhang. And the mix of MPs in the House would be proportional to their share of the party vote.

I’m not the only one concerned at how this has played out.

Former Prime Minister and Labour leader Helen Clark is saying that it could well be seen by observers that this year’s election has been flawed.

She says: “This outcome is not what MMP was designed to deliver, which was a proportional result.”

The current Labour leader isn’t happy about it, either.

But my challenge to Chris Hipkins and Helen Clark is to do something about it, instead of just complaining on the sidelines.

Because I agree that it’s wrong that the make-up of Parliament isn’t going to represent the way people voted. But nothing’s going to happen if nothing’s done about it.

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