Congratulations to Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury and his Tumeke! Blog scoop, outing Vote for Change activist Alex Fogerty for his links to an Australian white supremacist group.
Vote for Change promptly booted Mr Fogerty out of the group but not before dear old Bob Harvey quit the campaign in disgust saying, according to the Herald website, he did not want to be part of a group that had not “done their homework” on their members.
It feels a little odd to be giving kudos to Bomber Bradbury as his views and rants generally can be labelled as “loony conspiracy theory left” but a scoop is a scoop and anyone who hooks up with rabid racist groups deserves to be given the boot from a lobby group that hopes to persuade a majority of New Zealanders to again change the voting system.
Vote for Change has already had a fair battering in the mainstream media, despite the best efforts of its articulate spokesperson Jordan Williams. The main criticism coming from MSM commentators is that it does not argue for one clear alternative to MMP.
That is a little tough on Vote for Change as the coming referendum offers several alternative systems to choose if we dump MMP: First Past the Post (FPP), Supplementary Member (SM), Preferential Voting (PV), and Single Transferable Vote.
Vote for Change rightfully argues that we can’t really debate these alternative systems unless we actually “Vote for Change”. If MMP was scrapped I presume the group and its supporters would then pick up sides on whatever voting system they individually favoured.
Vote for Change, winning friends and influencing people?
Left wing commentators and blogs attacked Vote for Change as some kind of evil right wing conspiracy, a front for National and Act – neatly overlooking the fact that without MMP Act would be dog tucker and National seem quite capable of putting together coalitions under MMP.
My guess is the final referendum vote will be a narrow win for MMP – which is a shame as some of the alternative systems deserve a second look.
However, in the absence of an early Electoral Commission’s education campaign and any serious attempt by the MSM to explain the alternatives I suspect people will opt for the MMP status quo.
How many of you out there understand STV, SM or PV? I spent a good hour with Mr Google trying to get my head around the way they work and eventually decided STV sounds promising if somewhat complicated.
Hopefully the TV networks will organise debate programmes on the issue prior to the vote and newspapers will devote some space to explaining what the hell these systems mean and how they would work because I’m sure the Electoral Commission’s education campaign will be drowned out by Rugby World Cup and the party fight for the general election. Otherwise I doubt many people will seriously explore the alternative voting options.
I reckon it’s a debate we need to have so hopefully people won’t be distracted by some of the mud being thrown at Vote for Change and, instead, concentrate on the question at hand: Do you want to keep MMP or not? And, if you don’t – what do we replace it with?
Yip to all that. The perfect political voting system has yet to be discovered & probably won’t. Guess it’s a matter of lesser evils.A MK 2 version of MMP as outlined in the NZ Herald today sounds like it could be worth consideration
Yip to you, too. If we vote to keep MMP we do need to discuss ways of modifying it to hopefully improve it.
Bill, to be honest, I don’t know whether changing the voting “system” will make a blind bit of difference to its effectiveness.
Due to my complete disregard for the quality of the people who are presently inside our Parliament, I recently decided to take an active part in the democratic process for the first time (I am very possibly running this election).
I arranged to go to a not so minor party’s local committee meeting and found myself one of only four people present. This is in an electorate with a very large city population and the fact that only four people were prepared to participate in the remit and candidate selection process for a party that will very likely have more than a few members in Parliament very soon, was to me highly indicative of what is wrong in this country politically (political laziness in the extreme). We moan and groan punch the air and abuse those in power but almost none of us will even get off our arses or keyboards for an hour or two to learn about or participate in the political system millions of our fathers and grandfathers died for, unless of course there is something in it for us (hence the awfully low calibre of the representatives we have). What has also became painfully clear to me in this process is that Democracy is “management by committee”, and the reason this painfully inefficient social management system is the one we use is that mankind has explored all others and found them horribly lacking socially (aka Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and one and on).
Management by committee is the very simple idea that no one leads autocratically because as we all know, ultimate power corrupts ultimately (please note Rob Muldoon, Helen Clarke, Don Brash, Rodger Douglas, and maybe even Don Keyote?).
We get together in a rather long winded process to try and bash out the best “compromise” possible, not the one that the loudest and biggest bully simplistically wants to force upon us, but the best, “compromise”.
Having participated in this wondrous process, I now understand and realize why it is, as it is. Totalitarian behavior of any sort, whether it originates within those of us who see themselves as the human business, social or financial elite, is simply wrong on every level.
Democracy is ultimately about everyone of us getting an equal voice and an equal vote. Most importantly though, to get it to work properly, we actually have to participate in the process actively. When we simply sit back and criticize (especially nowadays on our computers), we allow those who are able to exert far greater power and influence than us to win.
So to me this means turn your computer off, find out where your next political parties meeting is, and get your ass down there. Effective change is in our hands, not the systems. That’s the lovely thing about democracy, it is “by” the people for the people, and if only four people are prepared to participate, then what on Earth do we expect to happen but a one sided mess?
As one who voted under FPP for 20 years with a near flawless record of not ever electing anyone, I will be voting to keep MMP. MMP gave me a party vote that always elects several MPs every time I vote. None of the other 4 systems offered will let me do that. Of the 4, only STV is proportional…and then only if you are careful how your draw the district boundaries and make sure you have at least 5 (preferably 7) people to be elected in each district. The other three systems (PV, SM and FPP) all contrive one way or another to give a majority of seats to party that wasn’t the first choice of a majority of voters.
MMP gives us all an effective, actually-elects-people vote. I’m still trying to get my head around the fact there are actually people in New Zealand who want to take our effective votes away from us to further their own political agendas. That is VERY serious stuff.
Do they understand what that means? I don’t think so.
The Electoral Commission tell me they’re doing a “soft launch’ of the referendum campaign but will crank it up in October.
In the meantime you can find more info on http://www.referendum.org.nz
I’m dead against MMP, ever since Winston Peters played ducks-and-drakes with Helen Clark and Jim Bolger. Can’t have another nightmare scenario like that, again. Imagine, Hone, in the same situation. Ughhh!!
[...] how ex-journo, now media advocate(?) Bill Ralston put it (echoing my own bemusement at the subject of this blog post): It feels a little odd to be [...]
@Cyril – The situation you refer to was after the first MMP election. It hasn’t happened since.
To be honest, I think you should focus on who you do support (because MMP lets you actually elect some of them) rather than worry too much about who someone else voted for. It’s sad to think you want to solve the problem by seeking to prevent them electing the people they want. Imagine if that was done to you.
How long will the right-wingers keep lobbying to get rid of MMP? Until they succeed? They use the excuse of a need for “rational debate” on the our electoral system, but then when FPP’s back will they keep saying that? On their logic, if we go back to FPP, the MMP supporters would be just as entitled to demand the same kind of “rational debate” on our electoral system that they wanted, and the right-wing/FPP supporters should be right behind them. When are the right-wingers going to be honest about their motives?