Winston Peters: Voters need the facts, not bigotry

A new political group made its public debut this week.
It is not a political party and it won't be standing any candidates for election on November 26. It is, however, a highly political organisation with plenty of money to campaign for its objectives.
This latest lobby group is anti-MMP, the electoral system New Zealanders chose in 1993 and followed since 1996. Strangely, its name is Vote for Change, which nearly every opposition party in the democratic world at some time in a campaign will recite as its mantra. A change in the status quo is, after all, why they all exist.
It will indeed be an irony if disgruntled voters agree, and go ahead and vote that way - not for an electoral system change but a change in political representation.
In 1972, the Labour Party won a landslide election campaigning on "Time for a change". It had the beauty of simplicity, brevity, and positivity; a kind of "the grass is always greener" appeal that many voters find modern and empowering. Whether the government changes or not more than 50 per cent will go for it, not electorally but politically. That is the first risk.
The second risk is obvious. What does change mean? The Supplementary Member system, the Single Transferable Vote, or a Preferential Vote system, were all beaten four to one in the 1992 referendum that led to Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) v First Past the Post (FPP) in 1993.
Most likely the answer is none of the above. Most probably the answer is a return to FPP, the system preferred by Vote for Change's predecessor, Campaign for Better Government led in 1996 by then head of Telecom, Peter Shirtcliffe. Mr Shirtcliffe is now a member of Vote for Change but his organisation's role in the 1996 campaign is worth recalling. At no time back then did Campaign for Better Government present even one alternative for better government. Their advertising was factually woeful. It began by warning New Zealanders of the Italian example, unaware that the Italians by 1993 had already changed their electoral system, ending Italians having a new government virtually every year. It went downhill after that despite having a huge money advantage.
On election night 1993, television crossed to the Campaign for Better Government's base. Viewers were stunned to find only Mr and Mrs Shirtcliffe and their daughter there. Behind the money there was nothing; what the English call a thoroughly "stuffed shirt" affair.
Eighteen years later, nothing much has changed. Vote for Change publicly doesn't have a preferred alternative. Its members have yet to decide on one.
Voters want a smaller Parliament of 100 MPs, an option deliberately denied them in the 1993 referendum even though a Royal Commission said 100 MPs could work under MMP. A later referendum on that issue gained more than 80 per cent support. MPs losing their constituency seat yet sneaking back to Parliament on the list is less than 1 per cent. They will bag Hone Harawira's recent byelection and forget that Hone is an electorate member. They will conveniently overlook that under FPP Social Credit got 20.8 per cent of the vote in 1981 and yet only two MPs, or that in 1993 the Alliance and NZ First between them got more than 26 per cent of the vote and only four MPs. A further inconvenient truth will be the claim of "the tail wagging the dog".
They should have asked David Lange and Jim Bolger about that. Roger Douglas' economic experiment of 1984 had split the Labour Party asunder by 1988. Ruth Richardson's similar prescription in 1990 took National from the landslide to a hung Parliament in just three years. To remain PM, Bolger got Labour MP Peter Tapsell to take the Speaker's Office. Otherwise it would have been all over even before MMP.
The UK has FPP and a coalition government and Australia has seen countless coalitions before the current one. Parties ignoring promises and following secret agendas of small internal party cliques plus huge asset sales drove New Zealanders to choose a new system. Certainly improvements are needed. One hundred MPs is one of them. Lowering the 5 per cent threshold is not.
And I say that having got 4.7 per cent of the vote in 2008 and many thousands of votes more than some parties in today's Parliament. Five per cent is tough, but is a safeguard for stability.
And while we are at it, imagine the carnage in South Africa if they had FPP with one ethnic grouping dominating everything. Why did the many countries escaping the yoke of the old Soviet Union, including Russia itself, not go for FPP? And if West Germany had FPP there would likely never have been a reunited Germany in breathtaking speed under 16-year veteran West German Chancellor Kohl, himself a list member.
There is always room for improvement following sound public debate. Facts not fiction are needed here and not the bigoted preference of a few.