PAUL TAGGART
In the words of the Bee Gees "Oh, What a Night."
Three-quarters of the nation's voters turned up at the polls, most of them then sat up watching the election results; yet, today, we still have no idea who will be running the country next month.
The commentators' pick is Labour as they have one seat more than National, and Winston Peters had made a pledge to support the biggest party post-election.
However, what sort of a system allows a highly unreliable politician - who, incidentally, was rejected by his own constituency in favour of a Tory bore with a testicle obsession - to decide who runs the country?
If anything proves MMP is a fiasco, then Saturday night's shenanigans is it.
And, surely, the point of list MPs is to ensure talented people with skills can be added to a party's team without having to spend several elections fighting unwinnable seats. The best example is National leader Don Brash. But on the other side of the House, Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen is another high-profile MP who now doesn't have to worry about a constituency, but can, instead, concentrate on balancing the country's books.
But both of the major parties' lists were stacked with existing constituency MPs. Therefore, there is no incentive for them to campaign in their electorates, or even care about their constituents.
Take Hawke's Bay. Napier was one of the safest Labour seats in the land when Geoff Braybrooke stepped down two elections ago. The selection of controversial lawyer Russell Fairbrother then resulted in a split in party ranks.
Three years ago the Labour majority was slashed and, on Saturday, clean-cut businessman National's Chris Tremain put Mr Fairbrother to the sword.
And across the river in Tukituki, former investment banker Craig Foss ran a monster of a campaign to unseat cabinet minister Rick Barker.
But the weird thing is that Messrs Barker and Fairbrother, despite being rejected by their electorates, will continue to fly to Wellington each week and collect more than $100,000 a year in pay and perks as they now become list MPs.
What's more, they will be free to care even less about their home cities than they did before as they won't have any electorate responsibilities.
Same money, less responsibility. What a joke. It is like an employee being fired by the boss, but getting to stay on his full salary and keep the company car.
Under the former system, Mr Fairbrother would have been back defending criminals in Napier court and Mr Barker would have returned to calling strikes as a union official.
The fact that Hawke's Bay's rejected MPs will continue to suck hundreds of thousands of dollars out of our pockets each year to fly around the country - around the world if they desire - sums up perfectly why MMP should go and we should return to First Past the Post.
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