We are in a period of remarkable political stability, both major parties having been elected for three terms, but we probably owe the stability to their economic management rather than the electoral system we adopted nearly 20 years ago.
It is not working in the way its advocates expected. They looked forward to multi-party governments in which no single party would invariably have its way. Decisions would reflect the proportionate influence of all parties that could comprise a true majority of a Parliament with proportional representation. Governments might be less cohesive but that would be a price worth paying for Parliaments of a wider range of allegiance.
That is what electoral reformers wanted, and most voters went along with it as a kind of revenge on both main parties for the upheaval of economic reform. But it became quickly apparent that the voters still valued strong government above all, and that most of those who voted for a minor party retained their allegiance to a major one.
Winston Peters lost half his support the moment he went into coalition with National after the first MMP election. He would probably have lost the other half if he had gone with Labour. Polls before the election showed his supporters divided.
National voters didn't welcome that coalition either. They muttered about tails wagging dogs though in office Peters was pretty tame. As "Treasurer" he adhered to economic policies he detested.
The next coalition looked more likely. The Alliance were all Labour people who left over Rogernomics and their leader, Jim Anderton, had been reconciled to Labour under Helen Clark. But Anderton found his own party uncongenial in power and left it. Without his electorate the Alliance disappeared at the 2002 election.
That election was a golden one for other minor parties because the polls gave National no chance of winning it. Peters' party got 13 seats, Act got nine, Peter Dunne's United Future picked up eight. The Greens, with nine seats, could have formed a new coalition with Labour but Clark preferred Dunne's centrist party.
By then, all small parties were becoming wary of coalitions. Their fate in the polls as soon as they entered a coalition suggested the public did not want small parties in power.
Clark and Dunne came to an arrangement that left his party out of the Cabinet and let it vote independently in Parliament on all issues except those of confidence in the Government and its financial supply.
Confidence and supply agreements became the standard arrangement for governing partnerships but they haven't brought the smaller partner electoral reward. United Future was reduced to three seats at the 2005 election and only Dunne survived in 2008. Peters' party, with seven seats when it became another Labour partner in 2005, was wiped out in 2008.
Since then Act has been reduced from five seats to one in its first term with National and the Maori Party has lost four of the five electorates it held when National came to power.
So what is going on?
We are still a two-party democracy, like Britain, the United States, Australia and many places with smaller parties in their margins. Two parties reflect the fundamental tension between individualism and socialism, opportunity and equality, personal responsibility and protective care.
Much as it might disappoint electoral reformers, we do not want government to be bargained with the marginal players. Bargaining happens, possibly more than we know. It happens in back rooms and almost never attracts news coverage. The smaller partner seldom makes a public show of disagreement with something the governing party wants to do, and the latter takes ownership of any compromise reached.
Both parties know only one of them is the recognised legitimate government. The Westminster heritage has re-asserted itself, just as it did in Britain last week.
