EDITORIAL: MMP makes mockery of politics

LOUIS PIERARD
THE major fault of MMP - which its supporters would be the last to recognise, let alone concede - is how it has contributed to the degradation of New Zealand political life.
And the best example is provided by the first to be quoted condemning the weekend announcement by National Party leader John Key to hold a referendum on Mixed Member Proportional representation.
Winston Peters, the most noteworthy beneficiary of an electoral process in which everything is subservient to the need for forming governments, said the referendum was what was sought by ``a small proportion of the business elite' which was backing the party. He does, after all, owe much of his support to those who feed on conspiracy theories and it is only natural that smaller parties would question the examination of a political system that has given their causes such eminence and has endowed them with importance. The Greens, too, say there's no public appetite for change. But the evidence is against them (in no small part from reaction to their success in engineering changes to public policy).
His entertainment value aside, Mr Peters' political persistence is an object lesson in what is wrong with MMP. First as Treasurer under National and now a Labour Government Foreign Minister who has made his name attacking foreigners and has openly criticised his Prime Minister's trade deal with China Mr Peters has - like the symbiotic crocodile bird - capitalised splendidly on the need for the strong to do what it takes to achieve political power. MMP was rushed in after a 54 per cent to 46 per cent vote as the antidote to a two-party system in which winner took all. But it has since proved a way of ensuring that unworthiness is crowned.
Minor political talents can exert influence wildly out of proportion to their mandate because MMP makes them strategically significant. As veteran retired politician Mike Moore adroitly put it: It is not so much a case of the tail - but what is under the tail - that wags the dog.
Mr Moore blames MMP for the fact that Parliament can no longer perform its ``solemn and historic duty of scrutinising, questioning and challenging each other ... Why won't National question NZ First, why won't Labour contest the Maori Party? Both National and Labour stay silent because it's dangerous to challenge them, you may have to form a coalition government - that's MMP'. The process lacks honour, he says, ``let alone dignity ... why don't NZ First and the small parties care if 95 per cent of New Zealanders oppose them? Because they only seek to break the 5 per cent threshold of MMP'.
MMP paralyses initiative and inspiration, stultifies leadership and stunts horizons. It also makes accountability to the electorate secondary to inter-party ingratiation. It takes power away from the voters and gives it to the party structures through the list system. A placing on the list rewards political candidates rejected by their electorates. The cushion of the list throws a lifeline to aspirants considered by their constituents to be lazy, ineffectual or arrogant.
It would pay to listen not to the cries of the little parties, who fear their perpetual summer might be threatened, but to the many disenchanted by the cynical expedience and vanity of today's politics.
One would have expected MMPs' supporters would appreciate having the chance for it to be endorsed and its critics banished if they sincerely believed it was New Zealand's wish that the system remained.