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Debatable is written by the Otago University Debating Society, which meets for social debating every Tuesday at 7pm in the Commerce Building. This week’s motion is “that New Zealand should get rid of MMP”. John Brinsley-Pirie argues the affirmative while Ben Loughrey-Webb from the Campaign for MMP group argues the negative.

Affirmative
 
MMP leads to a quagmire of bureaucracy and inefficiency; it is time for it to go. FPP by comparison is a sleek and efficient representing machine.
FPP works by electing MPs based on electorate seats only. This means that each individual MP is directly accountable to the particular region that they were voted in by. By receiving an individual mandate from the people, rather than a promotion up the list by your party, the responsibility is to the people and not the party.
Under MMP, we see MPs religiously clinging to party principles and very rarely crossing the floor against their parties. The reason this doesn’t happen is because roughly half the MPs in parliament rely on continued good will from the party hierarchy for their jobs. The party vote is not a good way to hold governments responsible either. A party is very unlikely to be voted against because of a stance on a single issue. This is quite clear in NZ; even though we have MMP there are only ever two parties who are going to form a government. Minor parties have very little sway; they are forced to become more radical in order to differentiate themselves from the major parties. Because of this, they are inherently more unstable and less effective at representing their voters. A vote for a minor party is worse than a wasted vote, it is a destructive one.
 
Comparatively, under FPP the MP’s job is secured by their electorate. The electorate select candidates while the party only really gets to choose who gets into cabinet. This means that MPs are more likely to look to the people they represent on a majority of issues, even if it doesn’t conform to the party line. An example of this is when Obama introduced the Obamacare bill and needed cross-party support. In this example, Republican politicians crossed the floor to support the bill, even though the Republican Party remains religiously opposed to it. Furthermore, in Britain MPs are elected who publically disagree with the leadership and direction of the party, reflecting the views of the people they represent.
Turning to the idea of representation, a key argument against FPP is that it does not allow smaller parties to get involved; look at the Lib Dems in Britain or the Greens in Australia. This argument is partially mitigated by the way in which there is more accountability from the people on issues under FPP. Furthermore there are still incentives for these individual MPs to cater to the issues which appeal to many people; no MP wants to hedge their bets in winning only 50.1% of the vote. So there is still an incentive for them to try to represent a wide plethora of issues.
MMP has not led to more effective governments, or more accountable ones. FPP succeeds at representing people and has done so successfully around the world for over one hundred years. It is time for NZ to grow up and go back to its roots.
 
- John Brinsley-Pirie
 
Negative
 
MMP is the best electoral system available to us in the upcoming referendum. Its most popular rival, FPP, is the worst. MMP outstrips FPP in terms of proportionality, accountability and representation.
 
First, I should get the mechanical aspect of MMP out of the way. MMP is a proportional system. The amount of seats your party receives after an election is proportional to the amount of votes it received. So, if National gains 51% of the vote, it receives 51% of the seats. Under FPP, the amount of seats a party receives is a lottery. In 1978 and 1981, National received fewer votes than Labour and yet gained a majority of seats because of the disproportionality of FPP. No party has received 50% of the vote since 1951, yet every winning party has received a majority of seats, meaning NZ was ruled by a minority for decades. This is not possible under MMP – to govern NZ, a single party or coalition must receive over 50% of the vote.
 
Accountability of political parties is greatly increased under MMP. There is a far greater range of parties in our parliament than pre-MMP. In our current parliament, we have Mana, the Greens, Labour, United Future, Maori Party, National, and ACT. Previously, there were just the three: Labour, National, and Social Credit (who would only get a few seats). Under which system are our politicians more accountable? MMP offers choice, so if you don't think a party is performing you can vote for a party that is not on the opposite end of the ideological scale. FPP, however, only offers you National, Labour, or a protest vote (Social Credit filled that role). It is even worse if you are in a “safe” electorate, as neither party has any real incentive to focus on your issues as gaining the seat is considered a formality. MMP is vastly superior.
 
John's anti-MMP arguments are flimsy. MPs will not cross the floor if we return to FPP. We had FPP for decades, and MPs did not cross the floor because of the strong party discipline which is fundamental to our politics. His comparison to the US is dishonest, as crossing the floor is part of their political culture due to their loose party discipline. As is his comparison to the Greens in Australia, who are elected to the Senate via a proportional system (STV). His talk of the Liberal Democrats is useful, however. The left-wing parties (Lib Dems and Labour) gained 52% of the overall vote in the UK election – but were unable to gain the numbers to govern because the disproportionality of FPP. So, all of the examples he provided incorrect. There seems little in the way of quality anti-MMP arguments.
 
In November we face a choice. Do we vote for a system which has provided strong and accountable government with an accurate representation of the views of New Zealanders, or a system which suppresses minority view-points, and leads to a Labour-National duopoly?
 
- Ben Loughrey-Webb