My two bits’ worth in the Mixed Member Proportional debate would be that MMP certainly isn’t perfect and needs some adjusting in obvious areas. But I would hate to think that there will be overwhelming support for the suggestion of returning to First Past the Post.
Up until MMP came in, I never cast a meaningful vote in my life. I was always in electorates where there was no way that my vote was going to change anything. In rural electorates my vote would never have got my candidate past the post and in urban electorates my vote would have contributed only to the overweening sense of importance that some high-majority partliamentarians displayed.
It was once such a nominal event that I took Paul, aged ten, into the voting booth with me, and let him vote. He’d studied the issues at school and knew what to do and did it thoughtfully. But his vote didn’t change anything more than mine would have.
In those days it only mattered to vote if you were in a marginal electorate. Those were the voters who swept governments in and out. Sometimes a swing of a handful of percentage points in key electorates across the country made a huge change in the balance of parliament. Often the parliament lost skilled and experienced politicians in the carnage.
In the 1970s I proposed on radio a reform which turned out to be almost exactly what we got in MMP a dozen years later. Mine didn't have the controversial threshold at all so it could have had practical problems. But then, as now, almost anything would have been better than FPP.
Up until MMP came in, I never cast a meaningful vote in my life. I was always in electorates where there was no way that my vote was going to change anything. In rural electorates my vote would never have got my candidate past the post and in urban electorates my vote would have contributed only to the overweening sense of importance that some high-majority partliamentarians displayed.
It was once such a nominal event that I took Paul, aged ten, into the voting booth with me, and let him vote. He’d studied the issues at school and knew what to do and did it thoughtfully. But his vote didn’t change anything more than mine would have.
In those days it only mattered to vote if you were in a marginal electorate. Those were the voters who swept governments in and out. Sometimes a swing of a handful of percentage points in key electorates across the country made a huge change in the balance of parliament. Often the parliament lost skilled and experienced politicians in the carnage.
In the 1970s I proposed on radio a reform which turned out to be almost exactly what we got in MMP a dozen years later. Mine didn't have the controversial threshold at all so it could have had practical problems. But then, as now, almost anything would have been better than FPP.
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