The supplementary member electoral system (SM) promoted by Prime Minister Jenny Shipley would be disastrous for New Zealand says Green Party Co-leader Rod Donald. "SM is neither one thing nor the other. It doesn’t guarantee single-party government, which is what its proponents hanker for, and it destroys fair representation."
"The National Party hierarchy should reflect on what the last election outcome would have been if a parliament of 100 seats had been elected by SM. National would have won 43 seats (30 constituency plus 13 list), Labour 37 seats (26 plus 11), NZ First 11 seats (6 plus 5), the Alliance 5 seats (1 plus 4), ACT 3 seats (1 plus 2) and United 1 seat.
"Quite clearly National would have still needed NZ First to become the government," he said. The SM system appears similar to MMP in that there are both constituency seats and list seats and voters cast two votes, one for their local MP and one for their preferred party. However, unlike MMP, the allocation of the list seats ignores the number of constituency seats each party has already won.
Therefore the two main parties end up with far more seats than their share of the Party Vote while smaller parties win far fewer seats than their share of the Party Vote. "You can see why National and some people in Labour support SM. It tilts the playing field in their favour," Mr Donald said.
"But the Prime Minister’s judgement in raising this issue now must be questioned. She is adding to political instability by turning MMP into an election issue even though a review of the system is set down for the year 2000. National should instead face up to the harsh reality that it won only 34% of the vote at the last election.
"If Shipley wants more power she will have to convince more people to vote for her party rather than trying to rig the electoral system. The fact that National clearly doesn’t like an open competitive political marketplace speaks volumes about its real agenda," Rod Donald said.
SM was the most unpopular system in the 1992 Electoral Referendum gaining only 5.6% support.
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