Vote for Change – to what?

A new anti MMP campaign has gone online today. It’s called Vote for change – a group that wants a fairer electoral system than MMP. But it is unclear what they want to change to as they have not endorsed a particular alternative to MMP.

That is because some of its founding members can’t agree on whether they like the First Past The Post (FPP) or the Supplementary Member (SM) electoral system.

So what do they want?

We want an electoral system that provides certainty for voters, rather than forcing Kiwis to wait for post-election negotiations. Vote for Change wants governments to be held to what they promised, not what parties manage to negotiate in coalition agreements.

It appears they want a government without a coalition and haven’t thought through how their support for either FPP or SM assists governments to be held to what they promised. It’s also clear that they don’t want MMP

MMP allows List MPs who have been voted out by their local electorates to sneak back into Parliament on party lists.

So they don’t particularly like a lot of list MPs – if they want a reduction of list MPs they`ll support Supplementary Member, in the hope that a one party government can be formed

Under MMP, MPs need to listen to party bosses to keep list rankings, instead of listening to their electorates.

That won’t change with Supplementary Member, as those who rely on list places will be listening to their bosses more so they don’t miss out altogether, let alone worry about where on the list they`ll be ranked.

Like I said, this group have not specified a decision on which electoral system to support. The group says that once they have a “substantial membership base Vote for Change will announce its decision” - a decision to support the Supplementary Member system.

A veto request to be ignored

The Legislation Advisory Committee has advised Mary Harris, the Clerk of the House to veto Larry Baldock's petition question which aims to bind citizens initiated referenda, because it would contradict the fundamental purpose of the Citizens Initiated Referenda Act 1993, which provided for non-binding referendums.

On 29 October, Larry Baldock wrote to the Clerk [DOC] responding to an October 23 letter to the Clerk from legislation advisory committee chair Sir Geoffrey Palmer, in which he said:

The Committee’s view is that the wording of the proposed referendum is defective. Indeed that Committee does not think that these defects are capable of being remedied.... The question that is proposed, in all its ambiguities and circularity, is not in our view compatible with the legislation under which it is proposed to be conducted.

[T]he framers of the [1993] Act considered the questions and decided that indicative referenda could not be and should not be binding. So the question is outside the scope of the Act.

The Herald noted that the Clerk of the House must approve or reject the final wording for the vote. Slight problem: She can't reject the wording, as a petition question - irredeemably defective or otherwise - cannot be vetoed unless the question either relates to a similar referendum held within the previous five years, or an electoral petition.

But the question can be amended. So by December 9, Larry Baldock's question, Should Citizens Initiated Referenda seeking to repeal or amend a law be binding? or a form of it, preferably with " on Parliament" tagged on the end of the question, will be approved by the Clerk.

Baldock thinks the question can have its intent clarified through public debate and the petition process. But if he is not going to clarify his intent and how he wants Parliament to respond, before the first signature is sought, it is unlikely he will get the required signatures to force a referendum.

Binding referendums would bypass the legislative and select committee process.With binding referendums, we would have to vote on specific and detailed pieces of legislation, like they do in California to amend legislation, for example, such as aiming to bypass the legislature in attempts to abolish divorce laws.Yes, really. We could end up bypassing the legislative process to change the Marriage Act 1955 to allow for same sex marriage with enough public support.

Baldock would hate that.