It’s ‘winner take all’ under MMP too

Opinion: New Zealand has just had its 10th election under the MMP system. For voters aged 45 and under, MMP and the differing governing arrangements it has led to are the norm. Over the years, the system has resulted in two-party coalitions, single-party governments supported by other parties on matters of confidence and supply, or, in the case of the last government, a single party majority, an aberration unlikely to be repeated soon. But it has taken until this year for our first three-party coalition government to be formed.

However, though the political parties and most voters have become accustomed to power sharing between parties, there is one fundamental element of the old First Past the Post system that remains. The previous system created a winner-take-all environment, where all power resided in the government of the day (invariably a single party), and the party (or occasionally parties) not in government were largely impotent on the political sidelines.

Although Parliament has become more diverse under MMP, with many more parties represented in the House, this characteristic remains. Political power still resides almost entirely on the government side of the aisle – because it holds a majority of seats in the House, leaving those on the other side just as powerless as they were before MMP, to the surprise of some naïve academics who dreamed it might all be different.

In the current Parliament the 68 seats held by the National/Act/New Zealand First Government far outweigh the 55 seats of the Labour/Greens/Te Pāti Māori opposition. Tight party discipline – another hangover from First Past the Post – means that for the next three years, the Government will easily win all the votes that matter, and the opposition, no matter how worthy its arguments, will lose.

That is the way our system of government operates, and those who imagine some sort of giant kumbaya process of government taking place are woefully out of touch. Bluntly, governments govern and oppositions oppose, in just the same way they always have done. It is why there is so much emphasis on putting together viable coalitions or other governing arrangements after an election to ensure governments have a majority in the House. MMP has made no difference in that regard.

It may well be that in time New Zealand has a minority government, dependent on winning the support of a majority of the House on an issue-by-issue basis, which would place greater emphasis on the value of the proportionality of its membership. However, neither of the major parties, nor most of the smaller parties have shown any enthusiasm for that type of arrangement so far. Nor have voters shown much inclination to cast their votes in such a way to make that a real possibility. So, for the foreseeable future, the legacy of “winner take all” seems likely to remain.

The same approach also applies to the allocation of Parliamentary resources. The formula followed is a simple one: excluding members of the Executive (ministers and under-secretaries), the Speaker, and the leader of the opposition, who are funded separately, Parliament’s resources are evenly divided among the remaining backbench MPs (91 in the current Parliament).

On that basis, in the new Parliament, National will be funded for 29 backbenchers, Labour 33, the Greens 15, Te Pāti Māori six, Act five, and New Zealand First three. But National will also receive far more substantial funding for its 19 ministers, as will Act for its five ministers and under-secretary and New Zealand First for its four ministers and under-secretary. The support for ministers and under-secretaries is significantly greater than that for backbench MPs, meaning the three government parties will have far greater resources than the three non-government parties. In addition, ministers and under-secretaries can draw on the entire machinery of government to assist them in their work – a facility not available to the non-governing parties.

While the leader of the opposition is funded on a par with ministers, none of his colleagues are, nor are any of the Greens or Te Pāti Māori. Labour’s heavy election loss makes its resourcing challenge even more acute. In the previous Parliament it was funded for 42 backbenchers, in addition to its more generously resourced ministers. Now it will be funded for just 33 backbenchers, in addition to the opposition leader. That represents a substantial reduction in the resources it will able to call upon, which will significantly reduce the impact it will have. As well as not having the numbers to challenge the government in the House, it will be considerably hard-pressed to match it when it comes to research, policy development, and polling, for example.

In recent days, there has been much emphasis on the physical process of the change of government, with the customary pictures of people packing up and moving offices within the Parliamentary complex. But the transfer of power is far more than just the shift of offices. Far more significant is the transfer of resources and access to the machinery of government. This week, ministers have been getting to grips with their new responsibilities and the wider support and advice available to them. At the same time, Labour and the Greens have faced the far more depressing task of adjusting to their new reality of no longer being able to draw upon the machinery of government and the resources of their ministers to assist them.

This is not unusual – it is the way things have always been under our Westminster Parliamentary system. All MMP did was change the way MPs are elected. It did not change the fundamental way in which our government works.