Other politics
Across the ditch – it’s not as simple as a straight Labour loss
While we were dealing with a simple binary “yes/no” ballot, New Zealanders were involved in a much more complex ballot, in a system in which everyone gets two votes – one for a single-member regional electorate (as in our House of Representatives), and one for a party in a proportional representation arrangement (much the same as our Senate). But unlike our system, their parliament is unicameral. Members elected in both ballots sit in the same 121 seat chamber: 64 elected in single member electorates, 50 elected from party lists (sometimes called “special” seats, and depending on the votes the number of seats is elastic), and there are 7 Māori electorates. Māori people can choose to enrol in one of these large single-member electorates, rather than in one of the 64 general electorates.[1]
The system, imported from Germany, is designed to diffuse political power, and to protect against the winner-take-all outcomes that occur in some other democracies. As in Germany it includes a provision that a party must achieve a threshold of 5 percent to obtain a seat in the proportional representation vote – a protection against outcomes that can give tiny parties a seat, as has happened in our Senate on occasions.
Adrian Beaumont has a Conversation article covering last Saturday’s election. As is the general pattern in New Zealand, the election will not deliver a majority to any one party. Labour has lost badly, and the National Party has gained at their expense but all other parties, left and right, have picked up representation, as described in an article by New Zealand Conversation staff.
There is little doubt that Christopher Luxon of the National Party will be the next prime minister. With 39 percent of the vote so far the National Party is well ahead of Labour who hold only 27 percent of the vote, but it will fall significantly short of a majority of seats, and will be hunting for parties to form some form of coalition. On ABC Breakfast there is an interview with Jack Tame, presenter of New Zealand’s Q&A program, on the politics of the outcome. Both ACT – a right-wing libertarian party – and New Zealand First – Winston Peters’ socially conservative and economically left party – could be part of an agreement with the Nationals.
Thanks to its electoral reforms New Zealand is ahead of Australia in a transition away from the “Westminster” two-party system. It is dealing with multi-party representation in the same way as most European democracies, and there is no talk of the imagined horrors of a “hung parliament”. On the basis of established trends, it’s a reasonable bet that our days of majority government are passing, but our media and political parties are still not facing up to that reality.
1. Note for Peter Dutton: “Māori” is not a “race”; as in Australia they are descendants of the people who were there before the British invaded. ↩
Across the planet – Poland retreats from authoritarianism
It is now reasonably clear that in spite of having stacked the country’s media, law courts and other institutions with government supporters, Poland’s Law and Justice Party will not be able to form a government. Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition should be able to form government with the support of two other pro-European groups.
As background to Polish politics The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum has an article Poland shows that autocracy is not inevitable.
The implications for European unity, for Ukraine, and for Europe’s struggle between authoritarianism and democracy are in an interview on the ABC’s Saturday Extra, where Geraldine Doogue interviews Martin Krygier of the University of New South Wales and of Vienna’s Institute for Human Sciences: Elections in Poland. (13 minutes) At the time of the interview it appeared that the Law and Justice Party would probably be returned to office.